Back in the day you needed a modified cable for this with RX/TX swapped on one end but nowadays probably all nic chips have auto-detect so you can take a normal patch cable and do it.
Haven't had any issues with them ever in regular use... So pointless even back then...
(, except if you lack an additional power slot or have no switch available)
Look at you with your fancy red Cat5 ;-)
But GigE uses all four pairs, so the hardware has transceivers behind all four pairs, which means even when they're running at 10 or 100, the chipset can choose which pairs to transmit and receive on. Thus all GigE adapters are Auto-MDIX, and it meant I no longer needed to carry a crossover cable, no matter what other device I was talking to.
It's funny how 10/100 cards with Auto-MDIX capability were exotic and expensive, but once GigE had it by default, it became ubiquitous, cheap, and quickly forgotten.