Have you tried to force the speed? I had problems with a Netgear router and some network cards.
If you force the speed to 100Mb rather than Autodetect, it will often work.
I have a Netgear router and a Netgear card in one of the PC's - hmmmm....
But I agree that NVidia chipsets have some dodgy integrated peripherals - I used to get stuttering sound from the A7N8X onboard sound, so I disabled it and plugged in a cheapo Creative generic card. The firewire is pretty much unusable after SP2 - it's a 50/50 thing whether it will recognise my firewire/USB external disk, so I use USB instead. The worst thing is that I bought some no name DDR333 memory. The machine was unstable until I underclocked it to 266.
It's a shame really, Intel processors may be a bit more expensive and slower, but I never had any issues with their chipsets. Ok, they tend to have less onboard stuff, but given how cheap it is to buy cards, it's not really a problem.
Well, hopefully they will use the ULi expertise to improve the integrated peripherals and other things - though meanwhile we have to live with NF4 and its issues. Its hard to know what to recommend for a system build right now. I do think AMD has the edge in CPU's at the moment, though. Sucks about the memory - I tend to go with Crucial/Micron - they have never sold me a bad stick.
"My NF4 board is OK, but one of the LAN ports has already failed"
Just out of curiousity, what level of failure are we talking about here?
I had major problems with large downloads on my nForce4 GigE port (A8N-SLI Deluxe) forcing me to use the Marvell GigE port instead, and a friend with the same board shared these problems. It turned out it was the nVidia "ActiveArmor" firewall screwing things up. I just didn't install it after a format and I haven't had problems since. I had my friend uninstall it from his, and he has not seen any trouble either.
I have the A8N-SLI Premium. I was getting the "a LAN cable is disconnected" message, and the router showed no connection to the PC. I thougt maybe it was the cable so I replaced it, but no help. This was to the NV4 LAN port. When I switched to the Marvell port, everything came online again. I found several other reports of these ports failing on NV4 boards, so its not just me. I never installed the NV4 firewall - I'd already heard the word on that.
Of course, if you're referring to a total port failure, I have no idea what it may be, but just remember that nVidia does not make the PHY interfaces for the LAN ports, they just make the controller circuitry. A totally dead port could be a fried PHY chip, which in the case of my motherboard both of them are Marvell parts.
Well, that's interesting. I still suspect its a NV4 chipset problem, though, because in some of the reported cases, its the Marvell port that's gone out. Some unlucky folks even lost both of them, had to buy add-in Ethernet cards. Unless all the MB OEM's use the Marvell PHY chips, there's something else going on. Integrating more and more "features" on the motherboard - a trend that NVidia has certainly accelerated - also adds more stuff to break.
If you don't want Nvidia what else is there? Via chipsets are not what they used to be and the ATI southbridge has horrible USB 2.0 performance...
Its a good point - NVidia has pretty much cornered the market for AMD MB's already. ULi was providing an alternative on the "budget" boards, and could have launched some kind of challenge in the performance/hobbyist niche as well. Competition is a *good* thing. My NF4 board is OK, but one of the LAN ports has already failed, and the it runs way too hot. Unless VIA can make a comeback, NF5 will dominate the next generation, whether it deserves to or not.
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Its a good point - NVidia has pretty much cornered the market for AMD MB's already. ULi was providing an alternative on the "budget" boards, and could have launched some kind of challenge in the performance/hobbyist niche as well. Competition is a *good* thing. My NF4 board is OK, but one of the LAN ports has already failed, and the it runs way too hot. Unless VIA can make a comeback, NF5 will dominate the next generation, whether it deserves to or not.