Hi, this thing has been bothering me for a good while- are 100 Mbit cards enough today or is gigabit the new standard? I have a 200 Mbps internet, yet my NIC is not gigabit, so.... Why do somePC manufacturers still sell PC's with 100 Mbit cards?
Unless you live in Japan or something, modern consumer internet services are so slow most people wouldn't notice if you gave them a 10 megabit adapter.
Chances are the 100 megabits chips are just simply cheaper.
I think for a while the Realtec 100mbit had extra software compatiblity that made them more desirable for corporate users, but that probably hasn't been an issue for a while.
I'd recommend getting a gigabit card anyway, as the implementation even for 100 Mb is better. (iirc, buffering improved) In addition, you've still got LAN speed, and your max speed is above the old fast Ethernet ones.
@SomeGuy: My ISP's fibre plans hit the baseline for fast Ethernet, and anything above the cheapest tier would require Gigabit... That's just Canada though.
I guess I'll get a gigabit card then, as 100 Mbps will not even allow me to use my full net speed(speedtest is about 90 Mbps upload/download), even 1000 Mbps connections are cheap there, about $11 equivalent per month, yet some people use gigabit ISP plans with 100 Mbit cards, which won't make much sense.
I'd say there's simply no reason not to get a gigabit card this day and age. It's so cheap there's really no reason not to. Gigabit is pretty much standard by this point, I can't remember the last time I saw a PC ship with anything less.
If your other networking gear doesn't run at 1 Gbps, it's still a good idea to get 1 Gbps NICs... they'll negotiate down to 100 Mbps and you can work on upgrading the rest of your gear. I just wouldn't waste money on a 100 Mbps NIC.
For me, I'm getting to the point where 1 Gbps is too slow. I'm really surprised we haven't moved more toward 10 Gbps gear all around by this point. But 10 Gbps gear is still stupid expensive.
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Chances are the 100 megabits chips are just simply cheaper.
I think for a while the Realtec 100mbit had extra software compatiblity that made them more desirable for corporate users, but that probably hasn't been an issue for a while.
@SomeGuy: My ISP's fibre plans hit the baseline for fast Ethernet, and anything above the cheapest tier would require Gigabit... That's just Canada though.
If your other networking gear doesn't run at 1 Gbps, it's still a good idea to get 1 Gbps NICs... they'll negotiate down to 100 Mbps and you can work on upgrading the rest of your gear. I just wouldn't waste money on a 100 Mbps NIC.
For me, I'm getting to the point where 1 Gbps is too slow. I'm really surprised we haven't moved more toward 10 Gbps gear all around by this point. But 10 Gbps gear is still stupid expensive.