The speed of your network affects nearly every device on your home network, whether it be a home-theater PC, an external storage device, or a gaming console. For most networks, the transfer rate of a faster ethernet connection (roughly 12.5 megabytes per second) is the typical speed limit. That may be okay for transferring ordinary files, but it's painfully slow if you're trying to back up a PC to a network device, for example, or to stream a high-definition movie to your living room.

Move up to a gigabit network. Switching over to gigabit (1000-Mbps) speeds increases your potential throughput tenfold, minimizing your transfer times and greatly enhancing your ability to stream high-bandwidth files to connected devices without interference. 

Network Card 1Gb

The 1gb network card allows you to connect a desktop computer to a high-speed wired network. It is a highly integrated and cost-effective Gigabit Ethernet Adapter, and a good choice to upgrade your network.

The 10/100/1000Mbps Gigabit PCIe Network Adapter is a highly integrated and cost-effective 32-bit Gigabit PCIe Ethernet Adapter that is fully compliant with IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u and IEEE 802.3ab specifications.

The 1Gb PCIe Gigabit Network Adapter is a high performance adapter designed for high-speed PCI Express Bus Architecture. Designed to support 10/100/1000Mbps network speed Auto-Negotiation, 802.3x flow control, and Wake-on-LAN technology. The 1Gb Gigabit PCIe Network Adapter is a highly integrated and cost-effective Gigabit Ethernet Adapter which is a great choice to upgrade your network.

Ethernet Card Definition

An Ethernet card is one kind of network adapter. These adapters support the Ethernet standard for high-speed network connections via cables. Ethernet cards are sometimes known as network interface cards (NICs).

Ethernet cards may operate at different network speeds depending on the protocol standard they support. Old Ethernet cards were capable only of the 10 Mbps maximum speed offered by Ethernet originally. Modern Ethernet adapters all support the 100 Mbps Fast Ethernet standard and an increasing number now also offer Gigabit Ethernet support at 1 Gbps (1000 Mbps).

Summary

Gigabit networking is now a sufficiently common feature of modern networking devices that it shouldn't carry too great a cost premium. As for your motherboards, the odds are good that they already have gigabit functionality built in, whether you know it or not. Before we go any further, I should note that this guide does not apply to wireless networks; the factors that constrain speeds on wireless networks are entirely different from those that limit speeds on wired networks.