I upgraded my quad core home server with a standard AMD 1700 chip (8 cores/16 threads) and my quad core had an integrated graphics card. So I had to add a basic graphics card to my server and that forced me to use the 10GB NIC I was using with it. I only had room for PCIe 1x cards, of which only 2.5G cards are available. I got a Sabrent 5Gb/s NIC and solved most of my bandwidth problems. It was a hit from a 10 gig card, but I've still never been able to support speeds over 5G due to the transfer rate limitations of my RAID array. The Sabrent won't work on full 5G for me, but it's about 70 megabytes per second faster than my dedicated 2.5 gigabyte card. On my old B350 motherboard (USB 3.1) speeds from 312 Mb/s to 350 Mb/s are supported. A newer motherboard might allow more transmission, but I'm pretty happy with the USB solution, which has speeded up my internal network. In case you are wondering, I have a Netgear switch with 2 active 10G ports, 2 active 5G ports and 2 active ports. 2.5G ports, my house is connected to Cat 7 and 6a. I've had sustained transfers over 10 Gigabit copper cables, peaking at 5G, but without an M.2 to M.2 on the other end, I'll probably never surpass 5G speeds. Before making any assumptions, make sure you have an internal network infrastructure in place. Network card gives you more speed. This will only happen if you are using point-to-point connections or don't have a switch that can operate at higher network speeds.
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