Our 3Com 3C980 Fast Server Card was, like most nic's, installed right out of the box. The P3 server was easily configured with the included CD, and the network was up and running. It has now been about 6 months, and not one single problem has occurred.

3Com has had some bad luck producing long-term reliable nic's in 2000 and 2001, but this seems to be one exception to that. There were no driver conflicts, Windows 2000 server was able to detect the card without problem and communicate with it at high speed without tweaking.

So the cost was about $50 more than a regular network card. For a server, we wanted to be sure we had reliability in the hardware. Perhaps a $30 nic would do, but why should you risk the downtime?

The server card is designed for higher data throughput over longer periods. Unlike a normal nic where there are far more and greater peeks and valleys in use, the server card will not fail with heavy usage.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 115
Driver Availability: Don't Know