nvidia nf4 gigabit nic

[Scott]

I've found multiple places that brought up the argument of weather to use the forcedeth driver or the nvnet driver for the nforce 4 gigabit lan. Which do you guys use/prefer? And where do I find the forcedeth driver? Is in the kernel, and have I not looked hard enough? or is it separate like the binary nvnet nic module?

Thanks
--Scott

[shoegoo]

Looks like forcedeth is in the kernel since 2.4.26 and 2.6.5. I believe I have just used forcedeth rather than the nvnet one for my nforce lan boards.

[Michael]

Forcedeth is what is used by Phoronix during testing, rather than NVIDIA's alternative. NVIDIA does indeed realize the success of Forcedeth and the open-source alternatives for some NVIDIA hardware, such as them endorsing Forcedeth for nForce 500 series, as they haven't yet produced a new closed-source nForce Linux driver update.

[Shadewalker]

As far as I know, the kernel forcedeth driver is limited to 100mbps whereas nVidia's closed-source driver can use the full potential of one gigabit.

[foobar]

As far as I know, the kernel forcedeth driver is limited to 100mbps whereas nVidia's closed-source driver can use the full potential of one gigabit.

Looking at the source it seems that the driver does support GigE.

[Shadewalker]

Looking at the source it seems that the driver does support GigE.

Which kernel release is that? Apparently it has a web page (http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/), and I noticed this interesting bit:

UPDATE:

NVidia has contributed gigabit support to forcedeth, so I'll work on integrating their patch and fixing remaining bugs in it. If you want to try it, download forcedeth_gigabit_try19.txt and apply it against the latest 2.6 kernel.

I have no idea how recent that is, however.