nForce 3 250 Gb question

[EvilManagedCare]

So I shell out a little extra a while back for a motherboard using the nForce 250 Gb chipset because among other things I wanted to use the 1 Gigabit/s network card. I look in the network setting only to find it's running at a 10 Mbps transfer rate. Granted I know little about NICs, but shouldn't this be running at 1 Gbps aka 1000 Mbps. Can this be changed and how do i do it? I have a connection to the Internet via cable, so I wasn't sure if this was something the ISP controlled.

All help is appreciated. Incidentally the motherboard is a LAN Party UT nF3 Gb.

Brandt

 

[edelbrock]

If you have it plugged directly into you cable modem then it is a 10mbps link. That is all it needs. You will not see a 1000Mbps link until you plug it into a Gigabit switch.

 

[EvilManagedCare]

That's exactly how it'ss plugged in. Am I really missing out on anything performance wise? And I will ask this question sheepishly because I have difficulty understanding networking: What exactly is a Gigabit switch?

 

[Agamar]

A switch is a device that allows you to plug in multiple network cards from different machines to form a network.

 

[MDE]

You're not losing any performance, I doubt your connection goes much over 3Mbps.