*Source: Tech Report (
http://techreport.com/onearticle.x/13010)*
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For years, gamers, enthusiasts, and even mainstream users have been getting their networking for free. Whether integrated into core logic chipsets or deployed in third-party chips, Gigabit Ethernet controllers have become a staple of modern motherboards, from high-end offerings all the way down to the budget fare. In fact, apart from a couple of cards we keep around for testing purposes, I haven't seen a discrete network card inside even a halfway-modern PC for a very long time.
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