I have a project I'm working on and I'm trying to decide between these two chips.
I was wondering how easy it is to work with these chips from a hardware/software perspective and how good the developer/designer support is from these two companies.
AX88796 has lower power consumption and is NE2000 compatible, also cheaper. they have knowledgable driver support enigneer too. most embedded network product in Taiwan use this chip, they just do little modification to their old 10 Mbit NE2000 ethernet design to support the 10/100Mbit speed.
I also have a project with AX88796.
I strong recommend to use this chip.
And they have a good presentation file to tell you
how to implement packet driver and how to handle
the ethernet ring buffer.