What's the difference between 16bit and 32bit NIC?

[doodoodoo]

What is the difference between 16bit and 32bit NIC or PCMCIA Ethernet Card?
I bought a 16bit 10/100 pcmcia network card from compusa and I found it is only 2-3 times faster than my old Dlink 10 baseT card(700Mb 20 mins vs. 40 mins between two computers). Is this acceleration normal between 10 and 100 baseT cards? Is there a big jump for 32bit card?
THX

 

[Vegito]

32bit carbus type does not work for old 486 type of notebook or earlier pentium ones..
its like the PCI / ISA specs

 

[MulLa]

I think there was a review at Tom's about different types of PCMCIA NICs, go check that out and you'll have your answer.

Basically from the article it mentioned that even if a 16bit card is rated at 10/100 it can never reach the potential of 100 speed because of the 16bit bus limiting bandwidth.

 

[nightowl]

From my personal experience with a 16 bit Linksys 10/100 nic and a D-Link 10/100 32 bit Cardbus nic there is a huge difference. With the Linksys connected @ 100 mbps full-duplex, I was only able to get about 20-30 mbps and at the cost of full CPU usage on a P3 700. Also, while running at 10 mbps the Linksys would max out the CPU usage when transferring files. The D-Link on the other hand performed much better. At 10 mpbs the CPU usage was much better (under 10%) and when connected at 100 mbps full-duplex I was able to get around 80 mbps and still not max out the CPU like the Linksys did at slower speeds. In the end I learned by trial and error, but if you have a Cardbus compatible laptop go with a 32 bit Cardbus nic. It may be somewhat more expensive but it will work much better.

 

[Garion]

The "bits" are the size of the data path between the NIC and the PCI BUS. The wider the data path, the faster it will go, up to, of course, a certain throughput. For 10BaseT, either is fine. For 100BaseT, you definitely want a 32-bit bus for optimum performance. For gigabit, a 64-bit PCI slot is essential (which isn't available in the PCMCIA format yet)

Keep in mind that your laptop NIC is only part of the system. If you're running on a 100BaseT HUB, you'll never see more than about 60Mb/s, rately above 40Mb/s. For 10BaseT, it's 1/10th that. Are you running into a switch or a hub? A switch should give you close to a 10X performance jump, assuming both of your devices are running at 100BaseT, full duplex instead of 10BaseT, Half duplex AND have enough horsepower to keep up with the throughput - For Windows, a P2-400 and a bit lower than that for Linux would be a good base.

- G

 

[JackMDS]

Computer talks Binary. It can understand 0= No electricity 1= Yes electricity.

If you have the capacity of one bit, you can define only 0 or 1

2 bits can define 00, 01, 10, 11, or in decimal 0, 1, 2 ,3

4 bits 0000 0001 00010, and so on up to 16 decimal.

The equation is 2 in the power of bits. Hence 16 bits 2 in the power of 16, which is 65536 . 32bits 2 in the power of 32 which is 4,294,967,296.


When we define Digitally, measures like, Voltage, Frequency, or any other Data, the more bits we have longer numbers can be defined. Hence higher frequencies, moving more Data per time unit.

 

[doodoodoo]

Thanks guys. I am going to return it and get a 32bit one.
Happy holiday,
Dong

 

[mcveigh]

<< Computer talks Binary. It can understand 0= No electricity 1= Yes electricity.

If you have the capacity of one bit, you can define only 0 or 1

2 bits can define 00, 01, 10, 11, or in decimal 0, 1, 2 ,3

4 bits 0000 0001 00010, and so on up to 16 decimal.

The equation is 2 in the power of bits. Hence 16 bits 2 in the power of 16, which is 65536 . 32bits 2 in the power of 32 which is 4,294,967,296.


When we define Digitally, measures like, Voltage, Frequency, or any other Data, the more bits we have longer numbers can be defined. Hence higher frequencies, moving more Data per time unit. >>



Nicely said.