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Most modern motherboards include adequate networking. Here's when you need a dedicated card.
Modern motherboards ship with 2.5GbE LAN and often WiFi 6/6E. For most home users on gigabit internet, 2.5GbE provides headroom above your ISP connection speed. WiFi 6E is fast enough for everything except competitive gaming or high-throughput NAS use.
10GbE NIC: If you have a 10G switch and NAS, or run high-bandwidth local network workloads. Dedicated WiFi: If your mobo's WiFi is poor or absent. Gaming NIC: The Intel I225-V and I226-V 2.5GbE chips on most boards are solid — dedicated gaming NICs rarely improve ping.
WiFi 7 (802.11be) offers higher peak throughput and lower latency via Multi-Link Operation. If your router supports WiFi 7, a WiFi 7 card is worth it. Otherwise WiFi 6E is excellent for most use cases.
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