In a conversation with our ISP today, I decided to upgrade our 50mbps connection to 150mbps. However, the ISP representative warned me that the age of our motherboards may limit our service to 100mbps - "the speed of the motherboard will determine the speeds your PC can actually attain from an ethernet connection," was his words. That strikes me as a bit suspect, and I haven't been able to find anything about the relation between motherboards and internet speed elsewhere online. Is there any truth to this?
21 Answer
There are multiple reasons the motherboard could impact the effective speed of your internet.
But, it appears your ISP is referring to the speed of the integrated network port. If you are hardwiring your computer to the router/modem it may be limited to 100Mbps if the Ethernet port on your computer is only capable of 100Mbps.
Luckily for you, you would probably have to have a very old computer. I'm talking Windows XP or earlier, to find a 100Mbps Ethernet port.
Other reasons the motherboard could impact speed would be processing power. So, even if you have a fast internet connection, if your computer is too slow to render the webpages and respond to input efficiently you will experience a "slow" connection.
Keep in mind, wireless has a whole host of potential issues that will be much more likely to affect your speed than concerns over the Ethernet port speeds when hard wired.
