What to look for when buying 2.5 Gbit/s PCI-based network card?

King Mustard · 17 Sep 2022 at 12:08

The cheapest ones according to skinflint.co.uk are currently:

£26 Syba SD-PEX24065 (Realtek RTL8125)
£28 Icy Box IB-LAN300-PCI (Realtek RTL8125B)
£28 Akasa AK-PCCE25-01 (Realtek RTL8125)
£30 Trendnet TEG-25GECTX (Realtek RTL8125)
£35 QNAP QXG-2G1T-I225 (Intel I225-LM)
£35 DeLOCK 89564 (Realtek RTL8125)
£49 StarTech ST2GPEX (Realtek RTL8125)

For example, I presume all the RTL8125 cards will be the same, so would go for the cheapest? - or is there more to look for than just the chipset?

Rabtech · 17 Sep 2022 at 13:48

Intel > Realtek, get the QNAP one.

Jim99 · 17 Sep 2022 at 13:52

Yeah, if I was buying for performance (and why else go 2.5) I'd be buying Intel

Caged · 17 Sep 2022 at 16:20

Isn't the big caveat that it needs to be version 3 of the Intel silicon or it will never work

Avalon · 25 Sep 2022 at 15:39

Caged said:
Isn't the big caveat that it needs to be version 3 of the Intel silicon or it will never work

Exactly this - the i225 was an absolute s*** show in the first and second iterations, it's one of several recent examples of Intel destroying it's reputation for solid reliable network products and literally millions of them are in the market on modern boards that frankly are unfit for purpose and non of the OEM's seem to care. Linus put them on blast a while back over the linux driver fiasco too. Normally RTL is awful, less so under Win/Linux, but so far when it comes to 2.5Gb, it's been surprisingly good, heck even the last few years BSD drivers have been stable, and that wasn't something that could be said for many, many years previously.