[n_w95482]

My new motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one being a Vitesse VSC8201 PHY (shows up as "nForce Networking Controller" or something like that) and the other a Marvell 88E8001. A few days ago, when I had my cable modem hooked up to the Vitesse, my connection suddenly died. I thought it was my modem being stupid so I reset it. Unfortunately, while the diagnostic lights on the modem came up fine, the PC wasn't getting an IP address from the modem. After messing with it a bit, I decided to switch it over to the Marvell, which was able to get the IP address after about 3 or so seconds. I figured that something might have been wrong with the Vitesse so I just disabled it and went on my way.

Earlier tonight, I tried hooking up my P3 600 to the Vitesse via a crossover cable. I was able to manually assign it an IP address but it wouldn't communicate with the P3 and vice versa. I thought it may have been a problem with 98 until I tried using the Marvell and it worked perfectly. I knew by then that something was definitely up with the Vitesse chip so I tried reinstalling the nForce networking drivers to see if it would fix it (I had a similar problem with my Abit NF7-S's onboard Ethernet which cleared up after I let it sit for about 6 months then reinstalled the drivers for it). Unfortunately, the driver reinstall did nothing for it.

So, in short, is my second onboard Ethernet port dead? It would be nice to be able to do ICS with the P3 without having to buy a PCI Ethernet card, as I don't have room to spare in the case if I do go SLi later on down the road. Should I try reinstalling XP then testing the port again? If it is dead, should I go through the trouble of RMA'ing the board?

Edit: Could it also be related to me overclocking my CPU? The Vitesse runs off of the PCI-e bus while the Marvell is on the normal PCI bus. Maybe there's some weird thing with PCI-e and overclocking with this board.

 

[Snake785]

Try lowering the clock speed and try it then. If there is a weird thing with PCI-e and overclocking with your board, then maybe overclocking isn't the best thing to do if it screws around with other components on the board.

 

[n_w95482]

It would be pretty ironic if overclocking is indeed screwing things up as this board is basically built for it . FLaRe also suggested something I hadn't thought of: getting a router. I may get one soon just to simplify things but I'll have to wait and see if I have enough money to do it.

 

[stilz]

You know what would be more ironic? Having a setup like yours and not have money to get a router . Darned fine machine you got there.

 

[n_w95482]

Heh, true . Well, it's just that I've had a lot of expenses in the past month or so and I start college on the 16th and when that happens, I'll have less time for work, which means less $ . Now that I've been thinking about it, I think I may go pick one up on Monday. Anyone have any suggestions on good models/brands?

 

[cooliscool]

Do you need gigabit ethernet? If not, any brand should be fine.. I have a $10 Linksys 10/100 in the Tualatin and it works fine sharing my connection, has for around 2 years. My board has Marvell 88E8001 Gigabit like yours, and it too works perfectly, so naturally I'd recommend Marvell chipsets for Gigabit.

 

[RF]

It would be pretty ironic if overclocking is indeed screwing things up as this board is basically built for it . FLaRe also suggested something I hadn't thought of: getting a router. I may get one soon just to simplify things but I'll have to wait and see if I have enough money to do it.

Ive been telling you for SO LONG to get one ffs!

 

[n_w95482]

Those D-Link gaming routers look nice but they're so expensive. I'll ask my dad if he wants to share my cable connection with me and if so, I'll get the wired/wireless version. If I get a Gigabit router now, I'll be able to use it for many, many years so I think I might go ahead and get one.