PCIe NICs

[HCHTech]

I was ordering some inventory for the residential side of our business, and was wondering about those single lane PCIe NICs like this for example. These days, I always put in gigabit cards, but I wondered what the throughput limit was on single lane PCIe - is it lower than gigabit? Some quick googling came up with 250MB/second for single lane PCIe, and gigabit is about 125MB/second, right? Of course those are theoretical maximums.

So just wondering, am I wasting money buying gigabit single lane PCIe NICs? The typical consumer box that they would be used in probably wouldn't even notice the difference over 10/100.

 

[Markverhyden]

I think the whole gigabit thing is way over played. Over the years I've only seen a handful of situations where gigabit made any noticeable difference. They were always businesses and involved very large file, in the gig's+, or direct editing larger files, in the 50 mb's area for example.
And they had the infrastructure to match it end to end.

For consumers I just don't see them spending $1000's for a proper NAS with 15k spindles or SSD's. Of course that does not stop me from recommending Cat6 cabling and gigbit switchs. It's not like those technologies are even double the price of Cat5 and 100mb. But I still work hard to get them to understand they may notice very little improvement due to the other bottlenecks.

By the way, that's a really great price!

 

[HCHTech]

that's a really great price!

Indeed. D&H doesn't even have any PCIe gigabit cards. I may have spoken too soon, I go to order a handful and the link times out. Oops.

Edit: Well, it let me in after a fashion, so I ordered 5. That should hold me for a while.

 

[Markverhyden]

I checked at Micro Center and they had a TP-Link PCIe GB model, looks different though. Some $50/ea.

 

[freedomit]

We have 250Mbs internet so gigabit NIC's are a must over 10/100 and same for all customers