I only know that because I setup freenas, they are all sticklers there with hardware and swear by them. I tend to agree as realtek tend to drop alot, or as you said not as fast. Unfortunately now my server has a realtek nic, i managed to get a i7 2600 for free (beats the old dual core i had) but try to source a ITX board on sandybridge was a nightmare, had a choice between using a 750ti for gamestream using a shield or a intel nic card so I picked gaming of course Now I just wish I could use Gameex with my shield only works on a few emulators