Hardware ReviewsLinksys EtherFast 10/100 LAN card (LNE 100TX) Part of the Linksys Fast Ethernet Network Starter Kit we recently reviewed, the Linksys EtherFast 10/100 LAN card is a capable performer. And at a very reasonable street price (we found it for $26.95 plus shipping at NECx), this card would be a good addition to many home network setups. Our only major concern with this NIC, as with the kit, is what appears to be a serious compatibility problem. For more details, read on or see the review on the Linksys kit. Overview
The Linksys EtherFast card is a sound, basic interface card. It uses a PCI slot interface and bus mastering design to theoretically reduce CPU use during operation. It's an average-sized card (among the new small PCI cards) and has a clean layout on the board. Since the card we obtained for evaluation was part of the network kit, we don't have any information on the retail packaging that normally comes with the Linksys card. But, again based on the kit, we expect that Linksys does a good job of packaging the basic instructions and required driver diskette with the card. Overall, the card looks well built and we have no quality concerns about this or any other Linksys product. Installation Installation, as we noted in the kit review, went fairly smoothly. We did, however, run into one significant glitch and we have yet to hear from Linksys about what they think might have caused the problem or if they have determined a solution. In short, when we installed the card in our advanced test machine and turned on the machine, we got NO video signal. Blank screen. Then, without us touching anything, the machine turned itself completely off. Obviously, it could only do this since it uses an ATX power supply that allows software shutdown. But, wow, that was a problem. We fixed the problem by swapping out the video card and everything then installed fine. But, the video card that caused the problem was an STB Velocity card (based on the RIVA 128 video chip). Since that is a popular card with a popular video chip, it should be enough to warn everyone to check what video card they have before buying this card. Performance Again, our main performance test involves two reads and two writes of a 30 megabyte file. The red bars on the chart below reflect results at the 100Mbps speed and the blue bars reflect results at 10Mbps. Overall, the card averaged 26.06 seconds at 100 speed and 41.98 at 10Mbps, the former was only 2.5% slower than the comparable D-Link card and the latter was only 3% faster than the D-Link. We think that is a wash just about any way you cut it. Unlike the D-Link card, though, the hub indicated hardly any packet collisions during the tests. In fact only the 10Mbps read tests showed any collisions at all. (In the D-Link tests only the 100Mbps write tests showed did NOT indicate at least some collisions). That said, we found no problems with the files copied, even with collisions, so this may not be a major concern either way.
Summary Overall, the Linksys card is a good performer at a good price. With the one exception of the whopper compatibility problems with our STB video card, installation was also not a problem. Bottom line...if you don't have a STB video card, this NIC would likely make a worthy addition to your home Ethernet network. Grade = A- Details
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