cat5 vs cat6 cable for gaming?

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andy317

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May 28, 2013
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I need a cable for my pc to connect to the internet from living room to my bedroom. I've been looking on ebay and noticed there are two type of Ethernet cables, cat5 and 6. Why cat6 is more expensive than cat5? Does it make any different if i choose cat6 instead of cat5?
This is my Onboard Lan: LAN Chipset
Realtek 8111E
Max LAN Speed
10/100/1000Mbps
Thank you for any input!!
 
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HopelessNoob

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May 28, 2012
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IMO get cat6 cause it's faster and more reliable than cat5
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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Points:
1) All cables must be CAT6 and the modem/router, and network chip/card must also be gigabit compatible or you'll be bottlenecked by whatever cable/component is too slow.

2) CAT6 is pointless for network in most countries.
*My ethernet connection is 725KB/second which is LESS than 1MB/second. Cat5 can handle over 10MB/second. Cat6 can handle over 100MB/second in theory but in reality your network will throttle you.

So unless you have an awesome network connection that's far above average it's just pointless. The only OTHER usage of CAT6 is for LOCAL networks in your house for file-sharing and that definitely WILL make a difference.

For example, if I shared files between two computers (hard drives) I might average 70MB/second which is far above CAT5 speeds. I would require THIS setup:
1) CAT6 cable from PC#1 (gigabit capable network chip) to router
2) Router (must be Gigabit capable)
3) CAT6 cable from router to PC#2 (gigabit capable network chip)

In the above example, we require BOTH network chips to be gigabit capable, the Router to be gigabit capable, and CAT6 cables between both PC's and the router.
 
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bill001g

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Aug 9, 2012
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First it is very unlikely you will actually find cat5 cable anymore almost all of it is cat5e. Even cat6 cable is mostly the newer 10g rated cat6a.

cat5e cable is fully rated to 1g at the maximum distance of 100m. It will perform EXACTLY the same as cat6 cable when hooked to equipment that can only run 1g.

Which is more expensive tends to be driven my market demand. Many times you will find cat6 cheaper than cat5e. Buy whatever is cheapest you will the same results.

Now even cat6 cable is not cat6 in most cases it is cat6a. cat6a is used for copper 10g ports. We are a very long way before home users can afford 10g interfaces....or any normal pc can actually use it.

Mostly normal cat6 cable is a waste of money. You have all the people that think it is better because it has higher frequency capacity. What they forget is there are only 2 standards used by most people. 1g which cat5e does fine and 10g which you really need to use cat6a to go any distance. There is no 2g or 5g or any other speed you can use this cable for...so technically it CAN run faster but there is no device to hook it to.

Cat6 cable was invented years ago because of the way 100m was implemented. 100m only uses 2 pair of wire. to run 1g on 2 pair you need a much better cable. The cable vendors loved this lots of cable to sell. The equipment manufactures though got together and invented another standard 1g that uses 4pair. Since it now has more wire it can use lower quality cable like the cat5e. So nobody but maybe cisco and a couple other vendors even built 1g interfaces that can use 2 wire. Needless to say the cable vendors didn't like this and did their very best to mislead consumers into buying cabling they did not need. In most cases they are specifying numbers for 2 wire 1g standard nobody adopted knowing only your very technical person knows the difference between 1000t and 1000tx
 
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wacabletech

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Dec 15, 2012
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So unless you're an exception to the rule, your internet speed is likely under 100 Mb/s, in which case either cable will do what you want for Internet access, you may be able to make use of GIGABIT for Local connections like streaming a movie off a media server in your house or something but you'll flat out not use a gigabit internet connection unless you are an EXCEPTION to the rule. Most people are running 50 or less Mb/S for internet speed these days. Even more are on 10Mb/ or less except the Japanese and Koreans I think [they all have fiber networks as I recall runnig around the major cities seoul and what not but the rest are all like us], or if you live in Kansas city and got Google fiber.

 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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*Some mistakes corrected:

1) Cat5 and Cat5e both support GIGABIT (I thought Cat6 was needed).
- this translates to 125MBytes/second max (150x what my server allows and plenty for LOCAL network)

2) Cat6 allows 10xGigabit (crazy high speeds. Total overkill for most).

Summary:
If Cat6 cable costs the same, go ahead though it'll make no difference likely. If Cat5/5e is cheaper get that. Again, 5/5e supports up to 125MBytes/second (if your router/Ethernet chips support Gigabit). A BLURAY MOVIE for example, probably requires 10MBytes/second at most to be streamed.
 
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manofchalk

manofchalk

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May 11, 2012
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If your wiring up your house, use the best Ethernet revision available. No point limiting your future expandability options by using an older standard. Who knows, its possible in the future you could get a Fiber connection and actually be able to utilize the full bandwidth of CAT6 cabling in your house for your internet connection.
 
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photonboy

photonboy

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Jun 20, 2006
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Agreed.
The price difference seems to be small so consider CAT6 especially if it's a hassle to run the wire or wires in the first place.
 
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J

joseph_73

Commendable
Jun 15, 2016
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