After seeing that my wireless speeds were much faster than the speeds I was getting over Ethernet, I decided to invest in some new cables. I didn’t know it before, but I saw while I was changing them out that my current cables were Cat 5e. While putting my network together, I had just been grabbing whatever cables I could find in my scrap drawers. Now I have Cat 8 cables and my speeds jumped from 7MB/s to an average of over 40MB/s. It’s a much bigger improvement than I expected, especially for such a small investment.
Copper core versus copper clad aluminum is going to matter here too. Both will claim to hit the spec, but you’re more likely to get there with the expensive copper only.
Yeah and don’t forget good terminations. I’ve seen a lot of people not getting the speeds they could get just because they used cheap plugs/connectors.