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when and why do u need Gigabit?

F

faye

Platinum Member
Hi,

Some motherboard has Gigabit Lan supported and while some don't. And there is a huge price different.
but anyways, let's not talk about the price different.

what exactly does GIGABIT LAN use for? for internet? or for LAN so u can get 10/100/1000?

hmm.. my case, i have a 10/100 networkcard in system A and about to purchase a system B, will i get any advantages on B if it has gigabit lan?

or am i totally making non-sense? gigabit is something else?

thanks
 
your home internet connection won't even top a 10mbit network card, so no, gigabit is not for the internet.

gigabit is for lan traffic only. If you run a large network with many file servers and such, then you may need it. Very few people will even come close to topping it off on their home network.

As for your network. Since system A is 10/100, your system B will only get data from A at 100mbps max. The extra 900mbps will not be used...

If you were to upgrade system A to have a gigabit network card, then you might see an increase in speed if you are copying BIG files between the two, but that's about it.
 
It would be usefull for transfering large amounts of data across your lan to other pc's with a gigabit interface. It wont help your internet connection, which at this time would still be the bottle neck even with a 10 or 100 MBPS nic.
 
I often copy Gigabytes of information from my PC to my home server, a good reason why I upgraded to Gigabit Ethernet. For most home use, 100 is plenty of speed.
 
At the moment Giga is of Value while installed in Busy Networks that run server software and high level hardware that is already tuned to use Giga efficiently.

In contrast to the 1000% improvement that you would expect. Putting Giga into regular a small networks results in 25% improvement at best.

By next year when Longhorn (Windows 2005/6) will come out entry level system would be capable to benefit more from the Giga.

However if you are not stressed by the extra expense it is a very ?Cool?, Geek ?Social Advantage? to be able to say: ?Hey, I have Gigabit Network?.:beer:

"Boring" 😉 Technical Notes:

Giga means that the Internal Clock is running 1000MHz. Trying to attribute it to "Speed of Transfer" is a Marketing thing.

Current Giga NICs are highly dependent on the OS and System used. Nowhere in the real world it is close to 1000% (x10) improvement.MS's TCP/IP protocol on WinXP is not yet optimized for such high speed communication.

Under "normal situation" between two home computers on a peer to peer Network. The gain of "Speed" might be only 25% (x .25).

I.e. if your system is 100Mb/sec. and yields 10MB/sec. transfer, by replacing the NIC with Giga NICs and the Switch with Giga Switch the Network will probably yield 12.5MB/sec. to 15MB/sec. (if your hardware is fast).

If one of the computers is equipped with Real Server OS like Windows 2003 the "Speed" from Server to client might improve by 150% i.e. you will get 25MB/sec. (x2.5)

If you install Giga on Double Xenon Computers with fast SCSI RAID, and Server Software you might get 400% (x4) improvement.

All numbers are approximation for demonstration purposes, YMMV.

Link to: The Big Giga Thread

Note: 1GHz = 1000MHz. 1000Mb/sec. (b=bit) is 125MB/sec. (B=Byte) 8bits = 1Byte. For Byte you use Capital B.
 
So only big LAN will take advantage on Gigabit, I just have 2 PC + 2 notebook and one more pc in the future. all of them share a dsl line for internet, still no need for gigabit, rite? I only run WinXP pro , or may be Longhorn but this is too far away from now.

so great to have all of u experts to explain everything to me. I am very appreciated.

 
The price of gigabit is low enough that I don't see much of a point in buying 10/100 anymore (for me). But either should work just fine.
 
One thing you get is bulk data (file copy) performance - copying around CD or DVD sized files can use a speed boost. Even just having file serving performance be faster, you notice. Another thing you get is future-proofing.

If you connect a 10/100/1000 NIC to a 10/100 NIC you end up with a 100Mb/s link and clearly that's not faster. A 10/100/1000 NIC is often a better designed MAC core and thus will load your CPU less and/or achieve line rate more easily, but not all are that way. In particular, the RealTek gigabit controller is the same crappy design as the RealTek 10/100 controller, and the RealTek gigabit controller is what many of the motherboards with on-board gigabit use.

If you get an 875P chipset motherboard with an 82547GI controller (CSA gigabit), it attaches to the chipset north bridge using a special proprietary bus that bypasses PCI, and it delivers a level of performance that you will never get out of 32 bit 33MHz PCI. If you're leaning that way on motherboards anyway, getting a board with that on board would be worth the money. I have several systems with Abit IC7-G boards and their raw network performance is amazing (though real-world performance will tend to be limited by a spectrum of other things).

What motherboards with on-board gigabit are you looking at?
 
There is no right and Wrong here.

I think that the reason that this issue comes up is because many new Motherboard comes with on board 1000Mb/sec.

So people figure hey I have already one Giga card, may be I should switch to Giga.

Well a for Normal Consumers a Good Giga card is above $30 (regular plain vanilla NIC $0-5). You need to keep your current Router and add to it a Giga switch.

It ends up with more than $100 expense. For most Pros and businesses such an expense is nothing. But a lot of guys here might use it for better purposes if they know what they are going to get (or more precise what they are Not going to get) out of this $100+ hardware.

In sum of you getting a new Mobo and an Onboard Giga card is few $$$ get it.

But then use it as 1000/100/10 card and Forget about the Giga until the right time comes.

:light:
 
I upgraded my network to gigabit back in november and consistantly get 25 MB/sec at the low end up to 40 MB/sec at the high end between two Windows XP machine. I can get close to 50 MB/sec when the Windows 2003 Server is involved (either sending or receiving). So, I would definitely say with decent hardware, you should be able to at least double your 10/100 speeds, and probably even more.

For the record, I have onboard LAN on the two workstations and an Intel Gigabit card in the server. The switch is the linksys one that sells for about $160 and doesn't allow jumbo frames.

Jonny
 
Originally posted by: jonny13
I upgraded my network to gigabit back in november and consistantly get 25 MB/sec at the low end up to 40 MB/sec at the high end between two Windows XP machine.Jonny
Click to expand...
May be you should tell us the secret I do not remeber else where (including my own Giga) seeing such claim 40MB/sec. (320Mb/sec.) using two WinXP computers.

 
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