I'm going to buy my first wireless ADSL modem/router (hard wiring to this pc) but.. My motherboard (MSI k9n sli nforce 570) has an onboard 10/1000 network card (standard RJ45 jack). Is this ok for speed/gaming online etc or would I be better off getting a seperate ethernet card installed? Might sound like a daft question but just as on-board sound etc uses more of the cpu's processing power than a dedicated card with it's own processors..I was wondering if on-board network also drained the cpu/other resources as opposed to having a seperate card. TIA Andy. (Yep I'm not clued up beyond plugging a basic USB modem..I also suppose having a modem shoved in a USB port was no better anyway)

Well I have never found any deficiency in on-board NIC's since PI PC's

The on-board Internet Interface will be as good as any. Network Interface Cards don't use much processing power at the best of times. The on-board chips will do most of the processing and the networking software that will take up most of the CPU processing will be the same whether you use on on-board card or a separate PCI card. Stuart

Thanks for the posts..will stick with that then..Just bought a Belkin wireless modem/router & plugged it in to that port. (Can't believe how easy it was..new pc & the thing had me connected back to the net in seconds!)Anyway...Cheers again..Andy.

One thing you might do is visit the mothergboard mfr's website and see if there are any newer drivers for the onboard NIC.

You will find that server network adapters are made to help offload processor resources. As to if you can get any improvement in game play with one I couldn't say for sure without a test. They are rather expensive but in my systems they really do show dramatic reduction to cpu usage. I will point out that my guess would be to keep the onboard nic, your weak link would be the ADSL connection. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

Thanks for the comments..will look for updates with the rest of the mobo... No probs with it so far anyway so it'll do :¬)