Hardware ReviewsD-Link DFE-530TX 10/100 PCI Adapter Not at all surprisingly, this is a solid card from D-Link. Two of these cards make up a major part of the D-Link starter kit that we reviewed earlier and that received our Editor's Choice award. As a single card, there wasn't anything that really "wowed" us about this card or the package, but we simply found little at fault either. As we'll note below, the performance wasn't quite up to what we've seen from others. Nevertheless, this card offers quite a lot for a street price of around $24 (we found it for $23.95 at NECx). Overview
This is a good, inexpensive card that provides both 10Mbps and 100Mbps. That's important to those of you starting a home network with a 10Mbps hub. When you move to a 100Mbps hub, this card will be ready to take advantage of the added network speed. The included 12-page manual does provide some introductory information on fast ethernet, auto negotiation (between devices on a LAN) and the PCI bus, but beginners won't find that very helpful in terms of answering "how do I share files on my computers"). Still, it's more than some companies give you at this price point (as in 'next to nothing' from some) so this isn't a huge complaint. As you may know from reading our review of the D-Link starter kit, we believe D-Link is a good company that offers some of the best value in network hardware today and this card is no exception. Installation Installation under Windows 98 was an absolute breeze and followed right along with the details in the readme file on the diskette. For beginners, we prefer some of the software instructions to be included in the printed manual, but D-Link notes in the manual that due to differences and numerous updates in operating system installations that they've moved those to the readme files. OK, we suppose. The lack of any detailed Windows98 instructions is particularly not a problem, since the install wizard started right on cue and took us through all the steps. We wouldn't have needed to look at the software installation manual anyway. As we noted in the kit review, be careful when installing under Windows 95 to point the installation wizard to the Win95 subdirectory on the diskette. Otherwise, it will install the files in the root directory, which actually work with Windows98 (and we believe Windows95 OSR2) but not the original Windows95. One point about installation, by the way, while we're discussing it. It may seem strange to beginners that we talk a lot about installation being easy and without problems, when you might expect that as the norm. (All of you vets, stop laughing). The truth is, with so many different peripherals inside computers these days, with so many standards, from so many companies, conflicts are more the norm than not. Thus, when we find a card that installs on our test machines without a hitch, it is worthy of praise. Keep in mind, however, that our test machines are clean. No other applications are installed and there are few peripherals. Installation on any "real world" machine may be a bit trickier. But if you want an easy time, stick with a card that caused us few if any problems. Performance Our main performance test involves two reads and two writes of a 30 megabyte file. (See our explanation of how we test for more on the setup and tests) On all four tests, the D-Link card averaged 43.25 seconds in 10Mbps mode (blue bars below) and 25.40 seconds in 100Mbps mode (red bars). Both scores were essentially on par with other cards we've tested and we doubt you'll notice much difference in day to day performance.
Summary Overall, this appears to be a good card for the money. Installation was an absolute breeze and performance was not bad. Beginners may want a more complete package of instructions, etc, but that isn't the focus of this or any single NIC card. Instead, beginners we'll want to consider a network starter kit with lots of information to help get them started. To get absolute top marks, we would have liked to have seen top performance and a bit more "how to" in the manual. Overall, though, we don't think you can wrong with this D-Link card as an addition to any home network and, if you're starting out, two of these cards together with the unique dual speed D-Link hub make a great kit. Check out our review of the complete kit. Grade = A- Details
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