Any intel based dual port NIC for PCI (not PCIe) slots that is recognised by ESXI?

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RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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I haven't tested it on anything more recent than 5.1 (at least I think it was 5.1, it was a while ago), but I have successfully used a dual port intel 1000 MT in a PCI slot (mind you it is a PCI-X card, but it is backwards compatible).

EDIT: As far as I know, the backwards compatibility with regards to using a PCI-X in a PCI slot is not guaranteed as it also depends on the motherboard. But it should work if the motherboard is not too old.

For the record, I have used 1000 MT NICs in an Intel board with a n330 Atom, and a board with a Q45 (or perhaps it was Q35) chipset, neither of which have real PCI-X slots.
 
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R

RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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epicurean said:
Thank u Sir. Would a X8 Supermicro motherboard be top old?
Click to expand...
I see no reason why it wouldn't, as it is more recent than the boards I were using, but as always there are no guarantees.

I did a little research, it seems that support for the 1000 MT was deprecated (and removed) with ESXi 5.5.
However that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't use it, as it may be possible to use the same tricks that people use to get Realtek and other non-officially supported NICs to work, but you should definitely do some research.

Oh and I forgot to mention, that when you insert a PCI-X card into a PCI slot, which is slightly shorter than the card, a few of the "traces" will protrude slightly beyond the slot. So if you do this you should ensure that the NIC will not interfere with other components on the board.
 
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Dev_Mgr

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Sep 20, 2014
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A 32-bit/33Mhz PCI slot (typical for most non-server boards), can do about 133MB/s shared between all PCI devices. So a dual 1Gbit NIC will never be able to get full speed as 2 x 1Gbit is well over 133MB/s. PCI-X is typically 64-bit, and can even run up to 533MHz, but this is very rare (not sure I've ever seen a board with this, but the PCI-X specs allow it). Typically server boards don't go over 64-bit/133MHz, which would allow for full bandwidth for dual 1Gbit ports. Servers from the PCI-X days would often also have multiple PCI busses so that you could separate devices and not have to let them share the available bandwidth.
 
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