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NIC for 10Gbps sfp+

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sfsuphysics

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Was looking at Intel's offerings, and finding the reliably old (and inexpensive) x520 discontinued, although tons of offerings for "Intel x520-da1" type cards, but branded by something else. Which ones out there are worth getting? One last issue, I only have a x4 pcie lanes (4.0) which I would think would be plenty fast, but so many of the NICs out there seem to require x8.
 
Is your slot(s) physically x8 or at least open back? If so, dual sfp+ x520 are on ebay for like $10. I have heard that some cards have problems at x4, but it really should be fine... especially for a dual port at x8 if you only use one port; plenty of bandwidth. I kind of regret not getting one with a full height bracket, but pci-e slot friction is fine, right?

x520 might not be the most power efficient, but I used them at work for a long time and they're pretty rock solid, I did run into one or two that did need to be replaced, but stuff happens. Better than realtek! And I had some dell/broadmax 10g cards that wouldn't work in all my systems (need some kapton tape to block the SMBus, probably, I grabbed a intel card after that)
 
toast0 said:
Is your slot(s) physically x8 or at least open back? If so, dual sfp+ x520 are on ebay for like $10. I have heard that some cards have problems at x4, but it really should be fine... especially for a dual port at x8 if you only use one port; plenty of bandwidth. I kind of regret not getting one with a full height bracket, but pci-e slot friction is fine, right?

x520 might not be the most power efficient, but I used them at work for a long time and they're pretty rock solid, I did run into one or two that did need to be replaced, but stuff happens. Better than realtek! And I had some dell/broadmax 10g cards that wouldn't work in all my systems (need some kapton tape to block the SMBus, probably, I grabbed a intel card after that)
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Yeah the slot is full sized, it just only has 4 lanes to it, not sure if there are copper connects inside the entire length of the slot, but the piece of plastic is big.

Sounds good though, how much power could they possibly draw in the grand scheme of things? 6 or 7 watts? And that's for using two ports at the same time?

vxspiritxv said:
If you're on copper and want Intel, e610 are new and low power.
https://www.cdw.com/product/intel-e...network-adapter-pcie-4.0-x4-1/8545464?pfm=srh
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For the time being I'd like to stay away from needing to use a rj45 to sfp+ adapter if I can. Plus I really want to stay away from new pricing 😂
 
I found some lenovo broadcom ones that were rj45 and like $15. The sfp+ cards are even cheaper, and generally I would avoid the Intel branded ones because many, many, many are fake. You have a better chance finding a genuine one that's Dell or HP if it's used, but even that is flooded with fakes now, so you have to move to lesser known variants like Lenovo, Cisco, etc, to get a real one. Drawback of a fake is that generally there's something that won't work right like iscsi or some other edge use case function/feature--plus the fact that it's based on IP theft and bad faith.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Yeah the slot is full sized, it just only has 4 lanes to it, not sure if there are copper connects inside the entire length of the slot, but the piece of plastic is big.

Sounds good though, how much power could they possibly draw in the grand scheme of things? 6 or 7 watts? And that's for using two ports at the same time?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'd definitely just get a used x8 card first. I like the silicom ones that show up cheap, but maybe splurging a couple bucks for something with a full height bracket would have been smarter. Silicom does their own pcb engineering and i don't think the brackets for intel's reference designs work. Silicom does make some weird stuff like bypass NICs, but I think the sfp+ ones are all straight forward, will use Intel drivers no problem.

I think it could be up to like 15w with a high powered sfp+ transceivers. Not a big deal, but they all have heatsinks, and might need some airflow maybe. My broadcom 10g rj45 nics have little fans, too. But not the intel one.
 
How many ports are you using? At least in theory 2x PCI-e 3.0 is enough for one 10Gb port.

As far as SFP+ cards go NVidia/Mellanox Connect-X work well in desktops. That's what I mostly run. You need a bit of airflow since they're passively cooled, but I haven't had any trouble so far. They have official support for client Windows, or at least relatively recent slower ones do. They also offer stuff like 100Gbit+, but I'm just running 10Gb Connect-X4 cards. Linux support is good too, perhaps better than Windows support. Either way they work well with both. Older models are Mellanox, then NVidia bought them so newer ones are NVidia. Still Connect-X some number.

I also have a Solarflare Flareon Ultra 8522+ in one of my rigs. Works in Win 11 but it's a pain in the ass to get going (have fun installing the drivers intended for Windows server using Powershell) and doesn't wake up from sleep. Much less hassle under Linux. I wouldn't buy a Solarflare unless you know why you want it, even if you run Linux. I had a reason. It had nothing to do with gaming or home use, more like professional continuing education. I wanted to play with some of their fancy proprietary APIs.
 
Nothing wrong with older x520.

Person, if buying used I avoid intel due to all the fakes, you can get Chelsio T520's or the next version now for like $40 US SFP+

As noted, put a small fan near them if you can to assure air flow, even SFP+ can get a little warm as they were designed to be in servers normally with good air flow

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/356713709231
 
zandor said:
How many ports are you using? At least in theory 2x PCI-e 3.0 is enough for one 10Gb port.
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Just 1, although I'll probably get a dual card since those seem more available than single port cards.
MrGuvernment said:
Nothing wrong with older x520.
Click to expand...
How about a used x710? See a few server pulls of these for similar prices to some of these x520s that are being shown up here.
 
zandor said:
ow many ports are you using? At least in theory 2x PCI-e 3.0 is enough for one 10Gb port.
Click to expand...

x520 is pci-e 2.0, so you need x4 to hit 10G

sfsuphysics said:
How about a used x710? See a few server pulls of these for similar prices to some of these x520s that are being shown up here.
Click to expand...

x710 should be good too, I think I did have some of these at work, because it used a different driver (ixl) than the x500 series (ix/ixgbe) and I noticed that; I don't remember having any trouble with them, but we didn't have that many or for very long, like the x520/x540. There are some rants if you look around, though.

x710 is much more capable than x520, but x520 can saturate a 10G link, so do you need more? If it comes with firmware complexity, maybe it's not worth it? Unless you have a real need, I don't see paying $30 for an x710, when $10 gers you an x520, but maybe you're finding different listings.

I've never used the ConnectX or Chelsio cards... Other than homelab stuff, I've mostly heard of them being used for advanced acceleration (NIC TLS, etc) but I don't know how easy that is to get running.
 
I use 2x x520 currently (before i got down the rabbit hole with fakes) and I can max them out doing iperfs in my desktop and my pfsense box has the other, 710 will work fine also. Most of the main difference is more offload options for heavier workloads and newer PCIe spec.
 
toast0 said:
x710 is much more capable than x520, but x520 can saturate a 10G link, so do you need more? If it comes with firmware complexity, maybe it's not worth it? Unless you have a real need, I don't see paying $30 for an x710, when $10 gers you an x520, but maybe you're finding different listings.

I've never used the ConnectX or Chelsio cards... Other than homelab stuff, I've mostly heard of them being used for advanced acceleration (NIC TLS, etc) but I don't know how easy that is to get running.
Click to expand...
It's not hard to saturate a 10Gb link these days. My i3-10100 does it no problem with a Connect-X4 as long as whatever protocol is in use isn't too CPU heavy. SMB aka Windows file sharing is no problem, goes over 1.1GB/s copying files between M.2 drives over the network.

Connect-X is often used in clusters for the RDMA protocol, aka remote direct memory access. With software that's set up for it machines can read and write to each other's system memory over the network. It's fast and has very little CPU overhead. The software just has to set up memory regions the remote system is allowed to read and write. Other than that there are file sharing setups that can use it. 10+ years ago I messed aroung with NFS over RDMA on a couple of Infiniband cards. Then a newer Linux kernel release broke it. SMB Direct can also use it, but I haven't bothered even trying to mess around with that. I'm only running 10Gb, and one CPU core is enought to saturate it.

At any rate if you just want a regular 10Gb NIC Connect-X is worth a buy if you happen to get a deal on one for less than an Intel NIC or one of the other usual suspects goes for. I have 3 of them and they've never given me any trouble.
 
For those using an Intel x520 on Windows 11 and/or Windows Server 2025, which Intel driver version are you using? Seems like many are saying that Intel has dropped support for these older cards, but that older Windows 10-era drivers still work. I'm just finding conflicting info on exactly how far back I have to go to find an Intel driver pack that still includes the x520 driver.
 
Does Windows update not auto install a driver for it?

[EDIT] Ya seems Intel are the ones who removed the drivers from packages for Windows 11, so download Win 10 version and install.
 
yup. id almost bet that the 7/8/10 driver is the same anyways.
 
MrGuvernment said:
download Win 10 version and install.
Click to expand...

That's the general idea, but it's actually more complicated. There isn't simply a "Windows 10 version". Intel releases their drivers in packs, and gradually over time, support for older cards are dropped from the newer driver packs.

This is similar to how Nvidia does their drivers. For example, if you wanted to use a Fermi card (GTX 400/500) on Windows 11, you would use the 391.35 Nvidia driver from 2018. It's a Windows 10 driver, but there were a lot of Windows 10 drivers... and that is the most recent.

Similarly, I want to know which is the most recent Intel driver pack that still has support for the x520. I'm sure that most older drivers will work, but, for example, I don't necessarily want to use a driver from 2016 if there is a driver from 2022 that will work.

The amount of conflicting information I've found has been agonizing. I found some info that was quite confident that 25.1.1 was the last driver pack that had support, but then found another user who got 26.7 working. I'm not sure if some of this info is wrong, or if some of this info is just old and things changed over time.

Since it seems like there are numerous people on here that are still using this card, I was curious what *specific* driver pack is your go-to driver pack or what your experience has been with this journey.
 
pendragon1 said:
the last driver:
https://blog.lattemacchiato.dev/how-to-get-10gtek-nics-to-work-on-windows-11/
Click to expand...

I appreciate that you are trying to help, but I don't need help using google.

The link you posted is for the 25.1.1 drivers. But these 26.7 drivers strongly imply that they support the x520 also:
https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/N...work-Adapter-Driver-26-7-for-Windows-10.shtml

Which makes me wonder if there are even newer drivers that still support the card. 26.7 is from December 2021. I've seen x520 cards with manufacturing dates as new as 2022 listed on the card. I doubt that they would still be releasing cards after they discontinued driver support (or it's possible that the cards I saw that said 2022 were fakes).
 
GotNoRice said:
I appreciate that you are trying to help, but I don't need help using google.

The link you posted is for the 25.1.1 drivers. But these 26.7 drivers strongly imply that they support the x520 also:
https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/N...work-Adapter-Driver-26-7-for-Windows-10.shtml

Which makes me wonder if there are even newer drivers that still support the card. 26.7 is from December 2021. I've seen x520 cards with manufacturing dates as new as 2022 listed on the card. I doubt that they would still be releasing cards after they discontinued driver support (or it's possible that the cards I saw that said 2022 were fakes).
Click to expand...
use your google and look then :p
 
pendragon1 said:
use your google and look then :p
Click to expand...

I am...

I'm not really understanding the push-back regarding wanting to know which drivers others on this forum are using with this card. I know that we are headed toward a future where people don't actually convey information directly to each other, and are 100% reliant on search and AI, but I guess I'm just old-school...
 
GotNoRice said:
I am...

I'm not really understanding the push-back regarding wanting to know which drivers others on this forum are using with this card. I know that we are headed toward a future where people don't actually convey information directly to each other, and are 100% reliant on search and AI, but I guess I'm just old-school...
Click to expand...
idk, if it works it works to me when it comes to nics. only thing i ever really worry about being "up to date" are gpu and chipset.
 
Honestly for such a dated card, a version or 2 of drivers are likely going to make zero difference in performance or usage. or features that are available. You could read the release notes to see what changed and go from there?
 
MrGuvernment said:
You could read the release notes to see what changed and go from there?
Click to expand...

You would think, but the Intel website is a total dumpster fire as far as drivers are concerned. The release notes for each driver pack only usually list a handful of newer network adapters even if that driver actually supports older network adapters also. They even completely purge all drivers that are older than a handful of years old, which is why so many older drivers are hosted on 3rd party websites. I went through this same thing not too long ago trying to find a driver for the i218-V Gigabit adapter on my older X99-UD4 motherboard. Support for certain adapters are dropped, seemingly at random with no warning, meanwhile even older adapters like the Pro/1000 PT adapter (released in 2005) still have built-in Windows drivers.
 
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