Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Hi, im on the 2MB service, i currently have a 10/100 onboard lan. Do you think i might notice any benefit at all (even if its .1 of a kb) by replacing this with a seperate Gigabit ethernet card.

I know the speeds of my connection dont even touch near that, but its just somthing i want to know.

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Unlikely... it will still link to the modem at 10/100mbit and communicate at them speeds (Maximum throughput which you wont achieve using NTL)

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

I would find it extremely unlikely you will get any benifit from this, as the CM is only 2Megabits, and the 10/100 is already capable of taking 20 times that bandwidth.

If you were to replace all the network cards on your nework, and get a gigabit router, then you would get a benefit on copying data between machines on your own network, but other than that, there is no real point in changing the card.

HTH

Zovat

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

So the modem NTL 200 doesnt support a Gigabit transfer. Im just wondering if i can grab a little more response time out of my connection as im a keen online gamer.

Could you reccomend any tweaks for online gaming i could do on NTL, or any hardware i can purchase.

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Nothing you buy (except a faster connection) could decrease your latency but a decent PC always helps to increase your framerate, which is almost as important.

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

if you're using an onboard LAN, you might get a teeny bit faster response from a PCI LAN card, due it it using a minute fraction less of your CPU... but i wouldn't bother, and a gigabit card will make zero difference.

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

I've got both on board and pci.. but i generally the on board... i tried serveral times to see which was better connected to directly to my modem when playing.... virtually identical... didn't notice any difference...

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Exactly because the card is irrelevant... unless the modem was pushing over 100mbit megabit a second (Impossible with your cable modem Max is 34mbit or 32mbit if i remember correctly) then it wont help. (Plus the modem would need to support 1 gigabit)

If you want faster performance than try tweaking your network settings using something like Tweakmaster... Although personally I feel that all they want is money and the programs dont actually work seen as modern OSes are intelligent enough to adapt to network changes... ALA Win2k and above and Linux/BSD/etc

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

I would try a 3com-based pci network card (like the 3c-905tx) if you're looking for slightly improved reaction times. Reason for this is because many 3com cards (like those I mentioned above) have their own processor onboard, so it does not need to query the cpu as much for help processing the information coming in/out. The benefits are slight, but may help you out. My partner had a realtek rtl8109 based NIC and SoF2 (when played online) used to get a little stutter every 20secs (exactly 20secs). Did a bit of reading online... changed settings on the config file, changed drivers and everything. One guy mentioned the network card (I thought "wtf?" at first) so I got a 3com from ebay for a fiver. Believe it or not, SoF2 runs a dream on her PC now! (for info, the specs are Athlon 2000+, 512Mb DDR, GF5700 gfx)

I would check through the network configuration like others have already said though too... Also check your services (if using a WinNT based OS like Win2K or WinXP) to stop/disable some of those that you do not require to be running... this site may help - http://web.archive.org/web/200411280...servicecfg.htm (the original site is down at the moment - it says it is being re-constructed for whatever reason).

Hope that helps anyway!

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Realtek cards have onboard processors... I have a 8139 and it has an onboard processor... thats in my old system though

Also even if it was using CPU it would be literally insignificant since your modem isnt that fast, it barely has an impact on your network card/processor... an Athlon 2000 should handle it fine

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

RT8139s are usually software based

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Just depends on the design... I think it was PLANET that did one with an onboard

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

Realteks can be a bit of an oddity - often excellent, though some things don't like them.

My old Intel 82558 was a dream, and the extra software for it to count/drop packets gave extra ways of dealing with storms - I had it eating the Welchia ping storm to avoid it filling the firewall log with garbage.

New machine has a VIA chip.

In many cases, the onboard is almost the same as the PCI.

Re: Will a GIGABIT ethernet card help me
 

3Com and Intel were unbeatable back in the day before companys like Realtek came along with their cheap fast chips and started eating market share.

At the minute im using a Marvell Yukon Gigabit chipset and its pretty damn good :)