It seems that this most widely used onboard network chip is not really supported under Linux.
Let's see for whom it works and for whom it does not. Please feel free to post a short summary to either effect.
On my campus systems (F14, AMD890 chipset, quad-core Phenom@3.2 GHz, 8 GB RAM) the copying of files occur at 9.5 MB/s at the very most, while dual-booted WinXP or Win7 can pump at more than 100 MB/s.