Gigabyte pushes quad-LAN motherboard
8 May 2008 | 06:39 BST
Forget quad-graphics, it's all about the network
HAVE YOU EVER plugged your computer into a network router and thought - "Wow, I wish I had three more LAN connectors on the back of my machine?"
For the two of you that have, Gigabyte has just the board for you - its new P45-DQ6 motherboard, based on Intel's P45 chipset which sports four (count 'em) gigabit ethernet jacks.
Whilst many motherboards come with dual LAN these days, four is pretty much unheard of. In fact,we have no idea what on earth you would use four LAN ports for. Nvidia pioneered a feature on its chipsets a couple of years ago where it would pull two gigabit LAN ports together to give Windows a virtual 2Gb connection. Which, of course, is totally pointless since no other device on your network is likely to be able to talk that fast.
Yes, there are home server applications that require decent amounts of bandwidth - but without running some firewall or routing software on your PC, multiple network ports appear to be more of a gimmick than a genuinely useful feature.
Are we wrong? Is there a whole community of network-o-philes out there who like nothing more than to jack into as many RJ45s as possible? We're sure you'll let us know. In the meantime, you can see the weirdness for yourself, here. µ
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