Yeah...this really bites the folks that don't do a lot of networking and expect things to 'just work'. The forums are filled with threads that start with 'I have this weird bug/failure I can't debug...' that peter out with 'I replaced the NIC with a good one and problem went away'. Those crappy (looking at you, Realtek) NICs have all sorts of bizarre issues that the vendors clearly don't care about beyond 'works in Windows...ship it'. IME, if it's an Intel or Broadcom chip, you're probably fine.
> if it's an Intel or Broadcom chip, you're probably fine.
You'd think, but a good test is to punch into google "e1000e proxmox issues" or "i210 proxmox issues." You'll discover that in addition to i225 issues another commenter is talking about, the Intel NICs shipping on the USFF PCs also have catastrophic issues in Linux and Windows.