10mbps or 100mbps?

I'm going to be connecting my 2 computers together via a crossover CAT 5 cable and 2 10/100 LAN cards for gaming. What speeds will this set up be running at? If my LAN cards support up to 100mbps, does that mean the data will be travelling that fast or do I need something else to speed it up to 100mbps??
Thanks

Those are the max speeds that each standard is capable of (10mbps= Ethernet, 100 is Fast Ethernet), and normally you can get close but not quite to that.

Another factor is HOW you connect the pcs: a hub shares the bandwidth, so 4 rigs on a hub may be slower if all are trying to communicate. Switches use dedicated bandwidth, so each computer can get up to the max. Hubs and switches are usually 10/100 nowadays, but a few years back many of them were only one or the other.

I have never used a patch cable to hook 2 computers directly together but I would expect them to be able to use all the bandwidth as well.

The last determining factors in speed are distance and cable quality: the further away the pcs are, the more likely they are to drop packets and need to send them again. Cat5 (regular ethernet cable) is good for 100 meters as I recall..........about 320 feet or so.

If your LAN cards are on auto-detect (which they probably are) then you'll be getting a maximum speed of 100 Base-TX. Which means 100MB/S both ways at the same time. I've done a crossover LAN and you'll be getting great speeds.

-DarkArctic

Hey thanks guys! Good info.

Just remember that the speed of networks is measured in bits not bytes..so..

100 Megabits per second is only 12.5 Megabytes per second

and out of that 12.5 you'll be very lucky to get over 7MB/sec