you can always go with cards natively supported in mac os, if you are willing to spend some extra dollars on a pcie card with matching ID numbers there a very few cards that actually work out the box with no kexts needed most are dual ports with an 4X interface some are 1X interface with a single port
depending on your machine and mac os version
lets go by kext
the AppleIntel8254XEthernet.kext , will support the following 2 card/chipset
Intel 82545EM with ID 8086,100F this card comes only in PCI-X format will also fit in a regular PCI 32bit slot
this card is mainly for older machines that still use a PCI slot, I dont even know why this card is still supported in mac os monterey, most newer machines have only PCI-e slots i tried this card on very old motherboard booting monterey and it works perfectly fine no kexts needed
second card:
Intel 82571EB with matching ID, 8086,105E ,, this card comes in 4x pcie interface with dual ports, both ports works fine in macos monterey, no kexts needed, this card im using as i make this post
now the AppleIntelI210Ethernet.kext
Intel i210 .. with matching ID 8086,1533. this card comes in 1x pcie interface with a single gigabit port
tried in monterey works out the box as well with the loaded apple kext no patching of any kind needed
second card
Intel 1225-LM with matcing ID 8086-15F2... note that this card is NOT the 1225-V found in most newer boards, this chipset is natively supported in macos but is also the most expensive card to buy, comes in 1x pcie interface with a single 2.5 gbps port
works natively since macos Catalina and up. no kext needed
Now Intel82574L.kext . I have not found a card with this chipset to natively match the IDS in the kext most cards out there based on 82574L chipset have a device if of 8086-10D3 and not 8086-10F6 so the card will not be detected , you can get it work using a kext injector that i have somewhere in my files, once you load this injector the cards shows up natively using apples kext
Enough of Intel !!!
if you still use Mojave or older you can always use the tried and trusted Marvell Yukon kext.
this card comes in 4x pcie interface with dual ports it appears to be genuine apple product as it has an apple part number on it, it uses the the marvell 88E8053 (i think) and matches the IDS in the kext
you can also make it work in monterey by loading the kext in opencore
word of caution , while these cards work natively not all of them are the same you just cannot go to ebay or amazon and start buying cards thinking that it will have the matching ids, you will make a mistake if you do, all of this card have a unique identifier given by Intel i have managed to find the correct part numbers for these cards
i will try to post pictures including the product code is anyone needs it
here is picture of the first card based on the 82545EM chipset as you can see in the barcode the correct identifier is A92165
i will post more info or pics if anyone needs it
