[Networking] Looking for 1Gbit+ Dual, Tri or Quad port NICs

[Vice]

As the topic title suggests I am looking for the fastest Network Interface Cards you can get for a reasonable price. (e.g. not over ?600 per Card)

I've Google'd this on and off for several months investigated many different cards that I've been able to find and checked all the usual retail locations (Scan, Ebuyer, Overclockers, Ebay) that might stock such items but I've not really found much.

So I'm looking for a card that has either 2, 3 or 4 1000Mb/ps Ethernet connectors with a PCIe interface (4x, 8x or 16x) with drivers for Windows. Alternatively I'm also looking for any cards that have a single 2Gbit or faster port.

I'm willing to pay around ?400 per card, if only I could find some. Ethernet is preferred but I am willing to look at Fibre Channel cards as-well.

Any suggestions greatly received and again I've looked all over and not come up with much.

Thanks!

[+BudMan]

Curious where your going to connect this super fast card too?? It makes little sense to have a 4 port gig card or fiber channel if you have 10/100 switch to plug it into.

Not sure were you got the idea there is such a thing as a 2GB single port ethernet card?

You could go 10Ge, but depending on what you have to plug the card into is going to come into play. Example here is a 10Ge card

http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?event=viewPro...51&pid=1647

SMC10GPCIe-10BT - TigerCard™ 10G - 10G PCIe 10GbE 10GBASE-T Server Adapter Card

But I think its a bit above your budget ;)

I am really curious what your wanting to accomplish -- once we know that, we can help point to ways to do just that. But there are plenty of PCIe gig cards out there.. Anything in the server line should be "fast" enough for you.. say something like this, these are the cards we normally put in ESX hosts.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...&lid=628335

The PRO/1000 VT Quad Port Server Adapter from Dell

edit: maybe your looking for something like this??

http://www.killernic.com

[Vice]

Curious where your going to connect this super fast card too?? It makes little sense to have a 4 port gig card or fiber channel if you have 10/100 switch to plug it into.

Not sure were you got the idea there is such a thing as a 2GB single port ethernet card?

You could go 10Ge, but depending on what you have to plug the card into is going to come into play. Example here is a 10Ge card

http://www.smc.com/index.cfm?event=viewPro...51&pid=1647

SMC10GPCIe-10BT - TigerCard? 10G - 10G PCIe 10GbE 10GBASE-T Server Adapter Card

But I think its a bit above your budge;);)

I am really curious what your wanting to accomplish -- once we know that, we can help point to ways to do just that. But there are plenty of PCIe gig cards out there.. Anything in the server line should be "fast" enough for you.. say something like this, these are the cards we normally put in ESX hosts.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/product...&lid=628335

The PRO/1000 VT Quad Port Server Adapter from Dell

edit: maybe your looking for something like this??

http://www.killernic.com

Thanks for the links. Basically I want to connect a server with extremely fast I/O to a workstation and I need higher then 1000Mb/ps transfer speeds. I said 1Gbit+ because well that's what I need a card faster then 1Gbit. 10Gbit is perfect.

I was also looking at PCIe cards that have multiple 1Gbit for example a PCIe 4x or 8x card with 4x1Gbit connectors for four separate workstations to connect to the one server with multiple independant links which won't suffer bandwidth issues due to other workstations accessing the server with maximum saturation. A Switch/Router would not be involved.