Trip down memory lane for PC building got me a bit angry... A pointless rant

[madsci1016]

Had a manual fall out of my closet. Well, my 5 year old son's closet, but i assume it got there from me, lol. 

 

 

Got to reading to remember the good old days of 2005 PC building, but then i got a bit angry. 

 

How have we had onboard Gigabit LAN from the IDE, DDR1, PCI(non-e still) days and are *just now* getting something slightly better? Like you could pick (literally, though not confirmed) any other bus/connector/spec on this board and show we are 5x-10x better/faster (or more) almost 20 years later, but not onboard wired networking? 

 

To save anyone looking it up, multigig Ethernet (2.5Gbps, 5Gbps) as a spec was ratified in 2016 but i can't remember seeing it wide till what, 2021? 2022? Yet we get new wifi routers out BEFORE the spec is even finalized. Again, wtf?

 

Ok pointless rant over. One last pic for nostalgia. Also who still has nightmare about IRQ assignments? And i kinda miss audio cables to the CD drive. 

 

[AlwaysFSX]

You know what's even more annoying! Not having PCIe 1x 10 gig NICs readily available with a lot of motherboards having a single 16x slot, some m.2, and the rest being 1x electrically (especially mATX).

[Skipple]

26 minutes ago, madsci1016 said:

To save anyone looking it up, multigig Ethernet (2.5Gbps, 5Gbps) as a spec was ratified in 2016 but i can't remember seeing it wide till what, 2021? 2022? Yet we get new wifi routers out BEFORE the spec is even finalized. Again, wtf?

Well, mainly because no one really cares about it. Honestly, for the past 20 something years, unless you were transferring large files on your own LAN at a regular basis, there wasn't really a need for multigig speeds, and that sentiment still kinda exists to this day. So to invest in R&D and putting the technology on the board, would be a huge waste of money for a feature that the end user isn't going to care about. And if you were one of those people who did care about multigig speeds, you would have bought an off-board NIC anyway. It just wasn't necessary (and still isn't necessary for 98% of users).

 

Wifi speeds are an actual limitation for users right now. Having faster WiFi that allows for more clients actually makes a tangible difference for users. 200-300mbit/s is actually something that people want and need improved. A 5-gig NIC build onto their motherboard? Not so much.

[Crunchy Dragon]

8 minutes ago, Skipple said:

Well, mainly because no one really cares about it. Honestly, for the past 20 something years, unless you were transferring large files on your own LAN at a regular basis, there isn't really a need for multigig speeds. So to invest in R&D and putting the technology on the board, would be a huge waste of money for a feature that the end user isn't going to care about. And if you were one of those people who did care about multigig speeds, you would have bought an off-board NIC anyway. It just wasn't necessary (and still isn't necessary for 98% of users).

 

Wifi speeds are an actual limitation for users right now. Having faster WiFi that allows for more clients actually makes a tangible difference for users. A 5-gig NIC build onto their motherboard? Not so much.

Even workstation boards are 10/100/1000Mbps 99% of the time, having 10Gb is a rarity outside the server space.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, madsci1016 said:

And i kinda miss audio cables to the CD drive.

My god why?  It was a vastly inferior solution as it relied on the CD drives cheap DAC vs streaming the PCM directly to your potentially vastly superior sound cards DAC.  Also lossless ripping of CDs were then possible.

 

As for your rant, other people have already covered it - until Gigabit broadband came along then most people simply didn't need faster and slapping another $100 on the price for expensive 10Gbit NICs would have been rather silly.  The cost and noise level of a 10Gbit switch back then was impractical for home use for almost everyone too.

 

It was a solution for corporate networks eek a bit more speed out of their aged wiring that triggered NBASE-T to be invented and naturally its roll out was slow, as most people still didn't need it.  Plus in the early days due to lack of demand and 10Gbit dropping in price thanks to data centres upgrading to much faster speeds, 10Gbit NICs started to flood the used market, reducing any cost benefit for NBASE-T.

 

Its a combination of faster broadband, SSD capacities increasing, the chips used in home NAS devices getting a lot faster, that meant it was finally useful.

[Lurking]

Who has Gbit (per user) Internet at home? Who has 10Gbit routers and switches at home? Who needs 1Gbit or faster at home? 4K Video still is rare and just 25Mbit.

 

And when a website opens slowly, it is on server side, not your MB Ethernet port that is responsible.

 

If you need to move large files around at home, you also can get premium or pro hardware. You might be 0.01% of the population.

[madsci1016]

Man, some of you get WAY too invested in such a pointless rant and it shows, though after recent events and 400 pages i guess thats the trend tho.

 

For those that missed the sarcasm, it's there. I thought it was interesting there's one main part of a mobo that hasn't changed in 20 years  (that not held onto for legacy reasons like a serial port, basic io, connectors, etc). 

 

That said, I might as well join now. I think you all missed the most simplistic explanation on why multigig took 5-6 years to start to show up, the business suits didn't 'get it' and don't like change till forced. The "no customers would care" i don't believe, since those buying bare motherboards are already such a small subset of PC buyers in general, that the even smaller subset of those that wanted multigig would actually ending up being a large chunk of that PC building subset (i know all my buddies with NASs have wanted it for years). Since motherboard makers are really integrators it's not much of a design/cost difference to pick a multigig chip over a gigabit chip when you have to redesign the board every cpu socket gen anyway.

I'm more inclined to believe the suits went "Market research shows no one makes multigig switches yet so we don't need multigig NICs" and the suits in charge of the switch makers went "Market research shows no one puts multigig in motherboards yet so we don't need multigig switches". And we were stuck in that vicious cycle of no options for consumers. 

 

Anyway I'm gonna go back to saturating my 10G home network with file transfers to my SSD NAS. Even saturated the 20G aggregate to the NAS the other day when two clients were pushing files. 

[Dedayog]

It was incredibly overkill when it came out, so they future proofed it so there was no bottleneck, while providing an upgrade path for many years

 

What's really going to blow your mind is that cars have been using TIRES for over 100 years, no upgrade!  Insane!

 

Sarcasm for your morning.  You're welcome

 

[IkeaGnome]

24 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

What's really going to blow your mind is that cars have been using TIRES for over 100 years, no upgrade!  Insane

Ackchyually rubber compounds have gotten much better.

[Dedayog]

Just now, IkeaGnome said:

Ackchyually rubber compounds have gotten much better.

Wait so you're saying these weren't Michelin Pilot Sport 4S's?!

 

 

 

[IkeaGnome]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

Wait so you're saying these weren't Michelin Pilot Sport 4S's?!

 

 

 

Nah. They weren’t BFG KM2s either. 
Those also had tubes in them. We’ve since upgraded from those. It would be a shame if we could just change out a cheap tube when you ran over a nail. 

[Skipple]

52 minutes ago, madsci1016 said:

Man, some of you get WAY too invested in such a pointless rant and it shows

You posted a statement and people disagreed with you. Not sure how that's makes us invested. 

 

52 minutes ago, madsci1016 said:

Anyway I'm gonna go back to saturating my 10G home network with file transfers to my SSD NAS.

*moves REMUX blu-ray mkv files back and forth between PCs* 

"Yes, I am very consumer."

 

Seriously, what are you doing that you are constantly, or even semi-frequently saturating a 10G link? 

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, madsci1016 said:

Since motherboard makers are really integrators it's not much of a design/cost difference to pick a multigig chip over a gigabit chip when you have to redesign the board every cpu socket gen anyway.

I fail to see your point here as that is EXACTLY what is happening right now, because right now is the point where due to demand now existing it indeed is not much of a cost difference.  A few years ago it WOULD have been a big cost difference, that's the point.

 

Also the fact that today it costs more to make a motherboard as things get faster, more layers are needed, etc.  So the extra cost of adding a 2.5Gbit NIC is less noticeable when the board costs $300 anyway than a board costing $60.

[Lurking]

My recent "very low end for AM5" MB came with 2.5 Gbit. Looks like most more premium MB should have that as well. So, I'm not sure why OP thinks it isn't moving forward. 

 

And as long as 1Gbit routers and switches are pricy, having more on budget MB is pointless. Same for lack of fast Internet or the need for over 1Gbit. 

 

10Gbit home network isn't common. This isn't even common in businesses. My workplace still is 1Gbit and we actually use network drives (and, it is too slow).

 

Sounds like this thread is just an opportunity for OP to mention their 10 Gbit Home Setup. I have to drive my Ferrari now. I just wanted to casually mention that and complain that most cars sold still are economy cars.

[Dedayog]

27 minutes ago, Lurking said:

My recent "very low end for AM5" MB came with 2.5 Gbit. Looks like most more premium MB should have that as well. So, I'm not sure why OP thinks it isn't moving forward. 

 

And as long as 1Gbit routers and switches are pricy, having more on budget MB is pointless. Same for lack of fast Internet or the need for over 1Gbit. 

 

10Gbit home network isn't common. This isn't even common in businesses. My workplace still is 1Gbit and we actually use network drives (and, it is too slow).

 

Sounds like this thread is just an opportunity for OP to mention their 10 Gbit Home Setup. I have to drive my Ferrari now. I just wanted to casually mention that and complain that most cars sold still are economy cars.

@Lurking do you not have a GPU?

 

A Ferrari but no GPU.  Your priorities are messed up!

[Lurking]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

@Lurking do you not have a GPU?

 

A Ferrari but no GPU.  Your priorities are messed up!

I just haven't updated my signature yet. I have whatever the most expensive Nvidia (or AMD) has to offer. The UPS guy yesterday dropped it off at my 10,000 ft mansion, right next to the pool. I don't understand why most houses don't have a pool. Or a guest house next to the stable.I hope the last part helps explaining the GPU situation.

 

/S

 

I don't game. And AMD fortunately decided to make iGPU standard again.

[madsci1016]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I fail to see your point here as that is EXACTLY what is happening right now, because right now is the point where due to demand now existing it indeed is not much of a cost difference.  A few years ago it WOULD have been a big cost difference, that's the point.

 

Also the fact that today it costs more to make a motherboard as things get faster, more layers are needed, etc.  So the extra cost of adding a 2.5Gbit NIC is less noticeable when the board costs $300 anyway than a board costing $60.

I could tell you i'm an embedded designer to establish credibility to tell you you are wrong, that the amazing thing about 802.3bz was it enabled better speeds WITHOUT significant and expensive EMI/RF design changes to support higher frequencies (like 10G requires), it would be easier to just diffuse your reasoning in example.

 

I bought an Asrock B550M in 2020 for $120 and it had 2.5G onboard LAN. Motherboards don't have to be expensive to support well designed protocol improvements, clearly. 

 

2 hours ago, Lurking said:

My recent "very low end for AM5" MB came with 2.5 Gbit. Looks like most more premium MB should have that as well. So, I'm not sure why OP thinks it isn't moving forward. 

I didn't say that, i said why did it take so long to become more mainstream? It was ratified in 2016, chips started coming out in 2018, and motherboards (even low end ones like the above) could be found in 2020 (but were VERY far and few between), but even today there are mainstream expensive boards that don't have it. Which is just silly. And proves there wasn't any real reason why it COULDN'T haven been mainstream other than business suits deciding against it. 

 

2 hours ago, Lurking said:

Sounds like this thread is just an opportunity for OP to mention their 10 Gbit Home Setup.

Seems like i could just list stuff like that in my post signature, if that was my intention, evidentantly. 

 

5 hours ago, Skipple said:

Seriously, what are you doing that you are constantly, or even semi-frequently saturating a 10G link? 

. 

Multiple kids, first grandkids in the family actually, 4k recordings for the family, routine uploads to youtube since they all live states away, editing, etc. You get the point. Also why i hang onto symmetric gigabit fiber as my ISP over the 2-5Gig asymmetric cable that rolled down my street months ago. Also what forum are we on again? You made me have to check. 

6 hours ago, Dedayog said:

It was incredibly overkill when it came out, so they future proofed it so there was no bottleneck, while providing an upgrade path for many years

I agree with that. I'm just grandpa grumpy that i've been stuck with limited options since 2016. I finally gave up trying to build a 2.5G home network a few years ago since options were still terrible and used 10G stuff was getting cheap. 

[madsci1016]

16 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

You know what's even more annoying! Not having PCIe 1x 10 gig NICs readily available with a lot of motherboards having a single 16x slot, some m.2, and the rest being 1x electrically (especially mATX).

You get me. I did just try one of those m.2 10G NICs after Linus showed one on video. I had to add a fan but otherwise works great on an ITX build. Expensive, but thats the ITX tax. 

[AlwaysFSX]

1 hour ago, madsci1016 said:

You get me. I did just try one of those m.2 10G NICs after Linus showed one on video. I had to add a fan but otherwise works great on an ITX build. Expensive, but thats the ITX tax. 

Yo I need a link to this

 

[madsci1016]

2 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

Yo I need a link to this

 

Sure. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWSLSK78?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

31 minutes ago, madsci1016 said:

Sure. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BWSLSK78?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details&th=1

 

Wow, that cable doesn't even look twisted pair!

I thought it was bad the 2.5Gbit one I have didn't twist the pairs but at 10Gbit its even more dodgy.

[Thaldor]

18 hours ago, madsci1016 said:

I didn't say that, i said why did it take so long to become more mainstream? It was ratified in 2016, chips started coming out in 2018, and motherboards (even low end ones like the above) could be found in 2020 (but were VERY far and few between), but even today there are mainstream expensive boards that don't have it. Which is just silly. And proves there wasn't any real reason why it COULDN'T haven been mainstream other than business suits deciding against it.

Because putting it in would have costed surprisingly much compared to the possible usage most of the users will get out of it. Putting it in even today is kind of "why?"-thing because what are you going to do with it? Unless you are jumping into server and business stuff with the price showing it, you don't do anything with 2.5Gbit LAN-port unless you're going to configure and use it directly from PC to PC. This is because even finding a consumer router with over 1Gbit ports (often even more than one 1Gbit port) is a job since consumers don't have internet connections to even surpass that for another decade easily.

 

Also just the ANSI standard for the Star Spangled Ding Dongs was ratified in 2016... For the rest of the world that would be IEEE 802.3an standard from the 2006 defining 10GBASE-T connection with the difference that the people over the big water thought that their consumers might be confused by 10 folding the standard speed all at once.

This is also pretty much why the 2.5Gbit and 5Gbit connections will probably be just a shortlived gimmick, no one is really working on trying to make anything with them since it has been and still is more profitable to work with 10Gbit where the companies are moving currently than make the 2.5/5 things for the consumers who will eitherway in few years start to move into the 10Gbit when the development costs have been paid off and the prices start to fall. We will probably see couple overpriced ASUS routers with 2.5Gbit or 5Gbit ports (which actually will be 10Gbit ports because no one seems to be currently developing anything else than 10Gbit devices) but the next and probably the last copper-cable routers will be with 10Gbit ports.

[madsci1016]

9 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Because putting it in would have costed surprisingly much compared

I guessed you missed the specific example i provided to disprove that argument. Surprising, because it was the sentence before your quote. 

[thrasher_565]

crap isp's...

the further said we all have fiber... (but you have to pay for it....and only some ips have it... and palce that will never get it....

 

its kinda like do we need pcie 4.0 when 3.0 was no were taped out... but its a " selling featcher"

[Kisai]

On 8/30/2023 at 6:57 PM, madsci1016 said:

How have we had onboard Gigabit LAN from the IDE, DDR1, PCI(non-e still) days and are *just now* getting something slightly better? Like you could pick (literally, though not confirmed) any other bus/connector/spec on this board and show we are 5x-10x better/faster (or more) almost 20 years later, but not onboard wired networking? 

 

The reason is because there are distance limitations for Wired Ethernet.

 

What you should be asking is why doesn't the motherboard come with a SFP transceiver port so you can put in a wired 10/100, gigabit, fiber, or wireless network in.

 

Because the hugest bloody annoyance in current motherboards is how "cheap" the built in ethernet is, and how you're basically stuck with Intel or Realtek not screwing this up, and recently Intel has been screwing this up. If I could just yoink it and replace it with a fiber unit, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

 

But then I'd need a router with SFP's as well. That leads into an amazingly annoying situation where I might want to run 1.6TB connections for lulz, but the underlying hardware is too weak for it.

 

If you want to know why you aren't seeing anything higher than 1Gb, you can put that blame on the hardware vendors manufacturing consumer routers. Until ISP's start offering >1Gbps, pretty much consumer routers that support 2.5Gbit or 10Gbit are going to be rare. Apple is the ONLY OEM putting 10Gbit on their consumer hardware. But 10Gbase-T consumer hardware has severe distance limitations where Cat6A is even more pickier than 5e (1Gbit). There is also an incredible counterfeit industry surrounding fake Cat6/6A cables not being made of copper. So you can't trust consumers to actually buy proper cables, nor not hurt themselves with laser-fiber (which has to be treated like hazardous waste, like asbestos, glass fragments can't be hap-hazadardly handled.)

 

So we're basically stuck in a situation where you won't see 10Gbit in a lot of consumer equipment because of the potential for bad user experiences.