I was playing around with a couple of Intel 1000T Gigabyte 32bit PCI adapters. I originally had Intel 100/S adapters in two machines. I was using QTest 2.1 (benchmark) and the two XP Pro machines tested out at about 93M using a CAT5 Crossover cable directly between the boxes (bypassing my 100M Switch). I then swapped in the 1000T cards and ran the same test again using the CAT5 Crossover cable. My throughput went up to 260M or 320M depending on which machine did the sending. I am not sure why it was faster one way compared to the other. I was trying to see what the actual throughput would be between two Gigabyte adapters. I have seen articles mentioning that the 32bit PCI bus cannot handle Gigabyte transfers in the first place. I am unclear whether my transfer rate was limited by the Cat5 Crossover cable or whether my machines could just not transfer any faster. Does anyone have actual numbers of Gigabyte transfer rates using Cat6 cables and a 1000Ghz Switch or over a Cat5E Crossover cable? My thought was that a direct connection test would be the fastest way to transfer data. My machines were both 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 machines running XP Pro with Intel's latest drivers. I did notice that in testing over my Lan to other machines that my throughput in in the 90-95M+ range between Win2k or XP Pro boxes. It drops down to 50-60M+ range when a Win98SE machine is on the other end. I presume the Networking is not as robust in Win98SE so it limits somewhat the transfer rate.

I get 7+ gigabytes per hour on my 10/100 system. Do a home transfer test and see what you get. You may just need more tweaking.

I think I need to clarify my posted transfer rates. It is my understanding that the 10/100 standard on a non duplexed card can transfer 100 Megabites/per second which is roughly 10 Megabytes per second which is roughly 36 Gigabytes/hour. So the fact that you are getting 7+ Gigabytes/hour is well within specifications. Gigabit cards should in theory allow 10 times that throughput or 360 Gigabytes/per hour. The QTest utility tests the transfer rate between any two computers on a LAN that have IP addresses. The 300M QTest transfer rates I posted between two Gigabyte cards are Megabite rates/per second. The would roughly translate to 30 Megabytes/per second or 1.8 Gigabytes/per minute or 108 Gigabytes/per hour. So my 10/100 LAN was running at 90%+ of the posted specification where as my 1000 LAN was only running at 30%+ of specification. I was just wondering what people who used actually 1000 rated components ie. switches, wire, patch panels, jacks, and patch cords were experiencing in real life. I did not have the patience to finish a test where I was trying to copy 650 Megabytes across the Gigabite Crossover cable.