ASUS has published a product listing for what seems to be the last thing you would assume could be an ROG product: network cables. The ROG CAT7 network cable is rated for 600Mhz at up 10GB of transfer bandwidth. The ROG CAT7 product page shows us how far the ASUS Design Center can go in making things as basic as a network cable seems like a gaming necessity.
If you had to ask, a network cable is the cable you connect from your networking device such as an ROG router and your client device such as a PC. Both devices would have network speed ratings, for example, it is common to see Gigabit LAN which is rated for 1 Gigabit and also more modern motherboards and network devices will have 2.5GbE, 5GbE or even 10GbE. Not all cables will work with these growing speeds. A CAT7 cable though cover everything here and more that should come out in the future.
An ASUS ROG router should serve more as a novelty product and ASUS isn’t making any bold claims regarding performance. In most gaming situations, a high-speed connection would very beneficial and not even the current fastest WIFI standard would match the pure dependability of a wired cable. In gaming, there’s factors to consider and the main influencing metric we heavily lean on in actual games is network latency. Network latency is introduced in various aspect of the connection pipeline and anything in that chain can introduce its own potential issue. Starting from the server all the way to client, which is your PC there myriads of possibilities that can occur that can cause lag. In most cases, game servers are made to serve games at the highest possible standard so connecting you to those servers is your ISP and connecting you to your ISP is your home network. Now these are two things are not usually made to the best of standards. For example you may be connected to your router via an older WIFI standard like 802.11n and your home network very congested. In these cases, you might want to consider upgrading to a more robust router as well as some fixed wiring to really get the most out of your gaming experience. Better latency is equally more important when playing competitive games like esports titles especially FPS games like Warzone or Valorant. Lastly, your ISP can loop around various routes in the WWW instead of just connecting to the fastest logical path. Let’s say ISP X goes through 18 destinations (hops) before landing on the server. This may be influenced by various geopolitical and infrastructure reasons but is by no means the most effective. You really can’t do anything about it much BUT there is a way to improve latency somehow.
Using a virtual private network or VPN, you can hop to a quicker network and while it does add latency in regular speed tests, actual usage have shown that reliable VPNs can improve gaming latency. I personally use a VPN in daily use for all the benefits it gives like security, regional content bypass as well as improved latency. In most cases, gaming is not the primary marketing behind these services but you can check some resources and get feedback for gaming VPNs before you decide.
So why go for an ROG CAT7 cable? I have no idea. It looks cool though, maybe something they can include in motherboards and routers in the future but alas, for now its is available as a separate purchase. ASUS is asking for around $20 for a 5-foot cable (1.5m) and around $37 for 10-ft cable (3m).