Performance of multiple port GigE on one PCIe card

Question

I have a Dell T7500 server with 3x Intel Pro 1000 GT cards, simultaneously receiving data streams at or near 1 Gb/s each. This is for a somewhat real-time processing system so I'm looking to maximize network/CPU performance on this machine. In an effort so save PCI slots, I'm considering replacing these 3 cards with an Intel PRO/1000 PT Quad Port Server Adapter.

Questions:

1) With this new card, will my machine be presented with 4 individual GigE network interfaces, each able to run at GigE speeds, or does this act more like a router?

2) Am I going to affect the network/processing performance of this machine?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Yes, you will get 4 independent network connections that can do 1Gb/s each. This will not impact processing/performance in terms of CPU/RAM on the machine, as these are all good hardware-based cards.

The one thing you might need to worry about is the bus on the PCI-x slot. That looks like an x4 card, so you should be just fine. I'd be a little worried about an x1 bus carrying that load.