This is only true for very basic Ethernet hardware. Various interrupt mitigation schemes came along in the late 90s along with gigabit ethernet. Even low-end Realtek gigabit chips have various segmentation offload and interrupt coalescing features these days.

Those schemes have varying levels of effectiveness. I personally experienced this wasn't a given even as late as the 2005-2010 era, when our purchases were shifted towards certain models specifically due to the issues with drivers or buffer limits.

I learned never to underestimate how much functionality a major vendor will be willing to cut if it saves $.10 per unit shipped…