Quad Port 802.3bz (2.5G/5G) NIC Recommendation?

[LabRat 891]

I need a 4-port 802.3bz compatible NIC for a 4U Windows-based VM host/media server. I've already purchased 2x X550-T2s (~$50 ea), but the GPU will cover up the slot for the 2nd NIC.
X550-T4 only exists as a Dell proprietary mezzanine card. -And, I cannot confirm the older Network Mezzanine to PCIe slot adapters are compatible with the X550-T4's interface.

From what I've gathered on my own, the 'best' option would be a X710-T4L but, $500+ is just too hard to swallow.

i226-based quad-port cards are attainable, but are 'generic import' cards.

i225-based quad-port cards are well-within my budget, and are available from IOcrest/Syba, StarTech, etc.

RTL8125-, RTL8125B-, and RTL8125BG-based quad-port cards are common, within my budget, and also carried by IOcrest/Syba and Star Tech, etc.

I cannot find RTL8126 or X550 in a 4-port PCIe Network Add-in Card format.

My concerns:
i225 and i226 have an especially troubled reputation, as an integral NIC chipset. I'm not sure if standalone NICs using those Ethernet Controllers are more reliable.
RTL8125(B(G)) has a better reputation as an integral NIC, but I've never had good experiences w/ Realtek NICs (when actually loading them up with traffic).


@TheLostSwede
I stumbled upon your replies about 2.5G NICs on SNBforums, last summer.

..

..

www.snbforums.com

Any further insight or experiences?


Under Consideration:
https://www.amazon.com/IO-CREST-Ethernet-Interface-SI-PEX24077/dp/B09SS8GVHC/

https://www.amazon.com/IO-CREST-Ethernet-Interface-SI-PEX24077/dp/B0BLX9SC9D/

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com...t-Interface-PR42GI-NETWORK-CARD/dp/B0C6FGQD9V

No need for 6-port but this might work, too.
https://www.amazon.com/IO-CREST-Ethernet-Interface-SI-PEX24077/dp/B0CHXF1YVX

 

[AleXXX666]

i225 is fn stable as rock, what's the fuzz?

 

[LabRat 891]

i225 is fn stable as rock, what's the fuzz?

The hardware reset bug is specific to the i225 (and seems now the 226 series), the i211, 217 and 218-V or -LM are completely fine.

The higher the data rate the higher are the chances the thing will completely crash. It's seemingly a controller design fault, as even after driver, firmware and hardware revisions the issue still seems to occur every now and then.

My general advice is if you have v1 or v2 hardware and need link stability limit it to Fast Ethernet (100 Mbps) mode and go no higher, gigabit is usually fine but will occasionally lock up on i225-V B2 from my experience. 2.5GbE will cause the earlier revision chips to crash quite often.



I'd argue most people don't complain much because they are unaware of the nature of the connection problem and will usually blame their router or something else, in addition to that it requires gigabit or 2.5GbE network (and mostly the latter) to truly manifest itself and that's still a very low amount of market share.

Routers that support only 100Mbps FE are still hilariously common and in widespread use for most places where residential internet access doesn't exceed 100Mb downstream which is most of the world really...

All of the i225 series have some problems, even the i226 (which is essentially an i225 v4) is a bit buggy. The -V and -LM are the same hardware, the -V is consumer-grade and the -LM is commercial-grade. I think there's a slight difference in driver functionality but they should otherwise be relatively identical.

PSA: Intel I226-V 2.5GbE on Raptor Lake Motherboards Has a Connection Drop Issue: No Fix Available

The Intel Ethernet i226-V onboard 2.5 GbE controller appears to have a design flaw that causes the Ethernet connection to drop at random times for a few seconds. The I226-V is the latest version of Intel's cost-effective 2.5 Gbps Ethernet networking chips meant for PC motherboards with chipsets...

www.techpowerup.com

I might not always 100% agree w/ Dr. Dro, but in this case, I trust their experience and insights.

A Great many more complaints of i225 and i226 mobo-integral NICs crashing, disconnecting, etc. can be found, here on TPU alone.

HOWEVER... I've read anecdotal reports that the standalone Add-in card variants of i225/i226 may be more reliable.
Which, makes some sense to me...
Especially, looking @ the StarTech.com PR42G, each of the i225 chips are extremely well-separated from each other.

Were the issues with i225 Ethernet Controllers from Thermals or Signal-Integrity/Interference? The StarTech PR42G looks like it's doing a lot to mitigate those concerns.

 

[R-T-B]

If you can determine the revision of the i225v chips, revision 3 or newer seem good. I use a revision 3 i225v from a third party board manufacturer as my WAN port to my 2.0gbps service and it works fine. If I had to guess its early mobo chips that were the main issue.

Also, I doubt they make a four port but still... looked at Marvell/Aquantia?

Were the issues with i225 Ethernet Controllers from Thermals or Signal-Integrity/Interference?

IIRC it was a problem with the hardware offloads, hence the 2 respinnings.

 

[LabRat 891]

If you can determine the revision of the i225v chips, revision 3 or newer seem good. I use a revision 3 i225v from a third party board manufacturer as my WAN port to my 2.0gbps service and it works fine.

That's been my primary reason to avoid the 'generic import' Intel-based 2.5G NICs. I have no way to tell what revision Ethernet Controller they have.
IIRC, i226 are i225s, but 'revised'? Could an i226-equipped 'generic' NIC be trusted?

This IO Crest (SYBA?) SY-PEX24086 uses i225s, and is less than $100

Much more attractive price vs. the $200+ StarTech PR42GI


Yes, I did look into Marvell and Aquantia. Single port cards are attainable, dual port less so, and I couldn't find any quad port NICs with either.

 

[R-T-B]

Unfortunately, I have heard they screwed up i226v again, and I have no knowledge if they fixed it, or what revision.

Could be wrong of course, rumor is all I got.

 

[LabRat 891]

Unfortunately, I have heard they screwed up i226v again, and I have no knowledge if they fixed it, or what revision.

Could be wrong of course, rumor is all I got.

That's consistent with what I've gathered, too.
The part that's news to me, is that there are some reliable i225s out there.

Will I just have to keep buying NICs until I find a Rev3 i225 equipped one?

 

[Dr. Dro]

i225 is fn stable as rock, what's the fuzz?

The i225 has been known to have stability problems, especially operating in 2.5Gb mode. Sometimes it completely vanishes from device manager, sometimes it starts dropping packets after prolonged sessions (day+ of use), known mitigations such as disabling the power management have been known to help, but are not a permanent solution. There are no permanent fixes available, and Intel has continued to manufacture and sell them, presumably undercutting other NIC vendors because so many motherboards use these faulty chips it's not even funny.

The i225 B3 (3rd revision) and i226 (4th revision) are the most stable, with the earlier i225's being the worst when it comes to dropouts, speed degradation and hardware resets. i225 is common on AMD B550/X570 and Intel Z690 platforms, with the i226 being used on Z790, Z890 and socket AM5 chipsets more often. The earlier i225's found in Z490/Z590 boards are the absolute worst, keep this bookmarked if you have to deal with them someday

Intel i225-V and Z490 Chipset - Network Connection Issues

Intel has a problem with it's I225 ethernet controller introduced at the end of 2019. As Windows updates trickle through, a number of users are reporting connectivity problems on certain hardware.

www.pugetsystems.com

I would give it a wide berth if it's to be used for anything mission critical, if you must get something with this NIC, opt for something with the i226 if at all possible.

View attachment 398716
Were the issues with i225 Ethernet Controllers from Thermals or Signal-Integrity/Interference? The StarTech PR42G looks like it's doing a lot to mitigate those concerns.

I believe some of them were related to signal integrity indeed, but my experience is limited to integrated versions, maybe this card will do better? Unfortunately most high speed quad port cards are already SFP today, so something with the traditional ethernet ports is hard to come by, quite a bit of affordable server 1 Gb cards, though

 

[LabRat 891]

The i225 has been known to have stability problems, especially operating in 2.5Gb mode. Sometimes it completely vanishes from device manager, sometimes it starts dropping packets after prolonged sessions (day+ of use), known mitigations such as disabling the power management have been known to help, but are not a permanent solution. There are no permanent fixes available, and Intel has continued to manufacture and sell them, presumably undercutting other NIC vendors because so many motherboards use these faulty chips it's not even funny.

The i225 B3 (3rd revision) and i226 (4th revision) are the most stable, with the earlier i225's being the worst when it comes to dropouts, speed degradation and hardware resets. i225 is common on AMD B550/X570 and Intel Z690 platforms, with the i226 being used on Z790, Z890 and socket AM5 chipsets more often.

I would give it a wide berth if it's to be used for anything mission critical, if you must get something with this NIC, opt for something with the i226 if at all possible.



I believe some of them were related to signal integrity indeed, but my experience is limited to integrated versions, maybe this card will do better? Unfortunately most high speed quad port cards are already SFP today, so something with the traditional ethernet ports is hard to come by, quite a bit of affordable server 1 Gb cards, though

Thanks for the input.

Yes, this is pretty critical. Not life/limb, but it is the media host for more than one home, and sees intermittent *heavy* network load over LAN.
Reliability is important.

Sadly, 10Gbps isn't an option (costs in switches, etc.), and 1Gbps is absolutely too slow.
We've (it's a shared rack) already tried bonding/teaming 1gbps, and it was unreliable.

The 2.5G 'kit' is already purchased and in-hand, just the GPU change made the dual X550-T2 solution invalid.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Sweet! I hope it works well for you

 

[TheLostSwede]

Remember that Intel has three different variants of the i225 and i226. The -V is the one used with motherboards normally and it's the "value" part, the -LM is the one normally found on add-in cards and the -IT is an extended operating temperature part. They might not all suffer from the same issues.

I attached a firmware that is meant to solve the disconnect issues for the i225, but use it on your own risk. It's said to be from MSI.

Were the issues with i225 Ethernet Controllers from Thermals or Signal-Integrity/Interference? The StarTech PR42G looks like it's doing a lot to mitigate those concerns.

I think you are missing which parts are the i225 chips, as they're the four little squares that are kind of randomly placed on that card. The large heatsink at the rear is for the PCIe switch/bridge. The Ethernet chips don't really get hot and as such, don't need heatsinks and thus the issues where not related to that.
Can't really see anything wrong with this otherwise, each i225 seems to have its own SPI flash for an individual firmware as well. Not familiar with the company that makes the Ethernet transformers though, but they're at least from Taiwan and not xina.

 

[PowerBuilder]

It's simple, but I can't confirm whether it works.
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M.2 to 5Gbps RTL8126 X 4 card
M.2 4slot interface card (ASM2824 PCI-e 3.0 X8 switch chipset -> PCI-e 3.0 x4 lane quad slot)

 

[Wirko]

but the GPU will cover up the slot for the 2nd NIC

Can't you somehow get around (very much literally) that obstacle by using a riser/extension cable? Cables with very low profile connector exist for that purpose, supposedly (I think I saw them mentioned in the forums here).

 

[LabRat 891]

Remember that Intel has three different variants of the i225 and i226. The -V is the one used with motherboards normally and it's the "value" part, the -LM is the one normally found on add-in cards and the -IT is an extended operating temperature part. They might not all suffer from the same issues.
View attachment 398818View attachment 398819

I attached a firmware that is meant to solve the disconnect issues for the i225, but use it on your own risk. It's said to be from MSI.

Thanks! Even a 'generic' multi-i225-controller NIC, should still use the Intel/MSI firmware on ea. individual Controller, correct?

I think you are missing which parts are the i225 chips, as they're the four little squares that are kind of randomly placed on that card. The large heatsink at the rear is for the PCIe switch/bridge. The Ethernet chips don't really get hot and as such, don't need heatsinks and thus the issues where not related to that.

I noticed the StarTech card was longer and spread-out the I225 chips more than most of the others I'd looked at,.
I figured StarTech/their ODM did this for a reason, and wondered if it was in mitigation for known-issues w/ i225.
I am and was aware there's an ASMedia PCIe switch under the heatsink.

Can't really see anything wrong with this otherwise, each i225 seems to have its own SPI flash for an individual firmware as well. Not familiar with the company that makes the Ethernet transformers though, but they're at least from Taiwan and not xina.
View attachment 398823

The StarTech is most-attractive so far, but is more than double the cost of the IO Crest (SYBA?) SY-PEX24086.

It's simple, but I can't confirm whether it works.
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View attachment 398828

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View attachment 398830------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M.2 to 5Gbps RTL8126 X 4 card
M.2 4slot interface card (ASM2824 PCI-e 3.0 X8 switch chipset -> PCI-e 3.0 x4 lane quad slot)

I love it! but, not the right solution, here. Same reason I'm not using Risers: limited expansion slots (in chassis).

Can't you somehow get around (very much literally) that obstacle by using a riser/extension cable? Cables with very low profile connector exist for that purpose, supposedly (I think I saw them mentioned in the forums here).

I've considered this, and keep re-considering this. I keep running into issues with where to physically mount cards.

I have limited expansion slots, and the necessity of the GPU and NICs being securely mounted and easily accessible.
Easiest fix would be to mount the GPU elsewhere, since it won't need a display connected to it. But, there's no other place to mount the 3+slot GPU (even w/ zip ties).

6 PCIe slots, 1-6 (slot 0, is taken up by RAM slots and CPU socket clearance.)

The top x8 slot, is very limited in card length. (probably will end up limited to a single NVMe card)
GPU eats the x16 and 2x x8.
The second to last slot is planned to be an NVMe expander card
The last slot is where the NIC can go.

I could put a low-profile riser UNDER the GPU, but where would the associated card mount?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Thanks! Even a 'generic' multi-i225-controller NIC, should still use the Intel/MSI firmware on ea. individual Controller, correct?

Correct, it shouldn't matter who makes the device, as the firmware is from Intel.

I noticed the StarTech card was noticeably longer than some of the others I'd looked at, and has seemingly better-spread out the I225 chips.
I figured StarTech/their ODM did this for a reason, and wondered if it was in mitigation for known-issues w/ i225.
I am and was aware there's an ASMedia PCIe switch under the heatsink.

I believe the odd design is to do with it fitting a half height slot and nothing else. However, I see other cards with a more "normal" layout that are still half height compatible, so no idea why they did it like that.

The StarTech is most-attractive so far, but is more than double the cost of the IO Crest (SYBA?) SY-PEX24086.

I doubt it'll be worth the extra cost.
QNAP makes one as well, at a stupid price point.

As for the RTL8126, considering there are no 5 Gbps switches that aren't also 10 Gbps... Although there are a few routers that have 5 Gbps ports...
That said, I found a quad port card based on it, but I think it'll cost a small fortune as well.

ioi 4-CH 5G/2.5G/1G PoE+ Ethernet Card - LUCID Vision Labs

4-Channel (4 port) ioi GE5PX4-PCIE4XG301 5G/2.5G/1000M/100/10 Ethernet (POE+) to PCI Express x4 network interface card

thinklucid.com

There's the Marvell AQC114/115 for 5 and 2.5 Gbps, but no-one seems to sell cards based on anything but their AQC113 10 Gbps chip.