🚀 go-pugleaf

Doug Burg <doug.burg@mail.wdn.com> writes:
>
> My question is will I see any real performance difference w/Comcast
> @Home between an ISA and a PCI nic.

I wouldn't expect to notice a difference.  An ISA bus usually runs at
(or close to) 8MHz.  It is 16-bits wide, but it can only move data on
half of the clock cycles, yielding a maximum theoretical bandwidth of
8MB/s (or 64Mbit/s).  In actual practice, you can usually see 5MB/s (or
40Mbit/s) from an ISA bus.

I would be surprised if your cable modem is capable of providing more
than 2Mbit/s, which is 1/20 of what the ISA bus's useful capacity is,
and 1/32 of its maximum theoretical bandwidth.  In other words, the bus
isn't going to impost an artificial limit on your bandwidth.

But this is all theoretical.  There are factors that have nothing to do
with the bus that could affect performance.  For instance, the PCI card
may be based on a different chipset, or be from a different manufacturer
altogether.  Also, you will almost certainly require a free IRQ for the
ISA card, while the PCI card will probably be able to share an IRQ with
another device if it has to.  Also, it is likely that the ISA card will
not be Plug-n-Play compatible, while the PCI card probably is - meaning
that it will probably be easier to set up and install the PCI card.

-- David