Where can I find specifications of my ethernet card?

Question

As the title says, I've got an ethernet card but not enough specs information.

I have tried looking in Device Manager -> Properties but no dice. Google searches haven't revealed much.

The card is an

Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 PCI-E Ethernet Controller(NDIS6.20)

...and I'm specifically looking for maximum data transfer rate of the card.

Any links or ideas?

Solution 1

It's a Gigabit ethernet card, so 1000Mb/s but it'd be nice to have a neat way to prove it!

Solution 2

In short: it's difficult.

First of all because Qualcomm bought Atheros that bought Attansic. And with each additional link in the chain it seemed like they cared less and less about Ethernet (so much that latest hardware is better off downgraded).

Second, there's an incredible amount of confusion between the transceivers (AR80xx) and actual complete network controllers (AR81xx).

Now, the close temporal proximity of 8021 and 8121 presentations makes me suppose the former is inside the latter. And according to documents the first is definitely Gigabit (so I would suppose the NIC)

But then, for as much the driver and PID might be the same, let's remember we are still talking about 3 separate chips. And AR8113 datasheet confirms that's just 10/100. As for AR8114.. I could only find sparse and discordant info.

So, it all depends.

Solution 3

According to this page, it's 10/100mbps card. http://www.atheros.cz/atheros-network-drivers.php

Comments

[Ben]

+1 for the info - yes, it would be nice. How'd you know that it's a Gigabit?

[barlop]

I googled the first bit of that line, I googled Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 . The first link says "Atheros Communications Inc. (R) AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit/Fast Ethernet Driver "

[barlop]

Finding the datasheet for free isn't that likely.. old.nabble.com/… "Bad news for you Cedric. Atheros, like Broadcom, Marvel and others.....pretty much won't talk to you unless your building 250K+ EAU. Atheros has authorized design houses, with contact information on the website. If you want to engage with them, its $10,000 to do so, and that gives you access to datasheets and not much else. How do I know? Well...we went down this path about a month or so back, and decided that it wasn't worth doing. "

[barlop]

but a google of atheros data sheet 8121 comes up with datasheetarchive.com/Atheros%20AR8121-datasheet.html but I can't see if they've got it there and if they do it looks like they charge.

[barlop]

I hope somebody can give a better answer.