News Gigabyte Unveils New 10GbE NIC: Marvell AQtion AQC113C Controller

[Admin]

Gigabyte launches 10GbE network card with Marvell's latest controller.

Gigabyte Unveils New 10GbE NIC: Marvell AQtion AQC113C Controller : Read more

 

[domih]

"...and there is no word about support for Linux..."

The drivers for Aquantia-based 10GbE cards have been part of the recent upstream kernels for quite some time (2+ years?). There is nothing to install, you get 10GbE "out of the box".

 

[hurnii]

The big question: how hot do they get?

As an owner of a few Aquantia based 10GE cards (and at least 2 motherboards with them, too), the largest problem with the card/chipset is heat.

Like some CNA cards, these things really needed active cooling, or at least large, hulking heat sinks and case fans moving enough air past.

Here's hoping that the new chips use a newer (smaller) process and have shaved a few watts off the power budget.

 

[domih]

As an owner of a few Aquantia based 10GE cards (and at least 2 motherboards with them, too), the largest problem with the card/chipset is heat.

What temps do you get? On my side I have one at 59C idle.

Note: which is OK by me, I rarely use it anyway, I instead use a Mellanox ConnectX3 for 40+ GbE.

Another thing we'd like to know: the price Given the models from INTEL, ASUS, 10GTeck, etc at $100 up to $300++, I don't expect Gigabyte to go much lower than $100. A joke, IMHO. Still in 2021, it's cheaper to go with SFP+ *&^%$#@! In addition SFP+ is not a winter heater like RJ-45.

 

[junglist724]

I feel weird about wasting a whole 4 lanes on a single 10Gb interface.

 

[Roman Shein]

I feel weird about wasting a whole 4 lanes on a single 10Gb interface.

+1. Why does it need 32Gb/s worth of lanes to deliver 10Gb /s of payload?

 

[domih]

+1. Why does it need 32Gb/s worth of lanes to deliver 10Gb /s of payload?

So that it still delivers 10GbE if plugged in a PCIe Gen 2 slot. At 5.0 GT/s 8b/10b, two lanes of PCIe Gen 2 would not be enough to tunnel 10 GbE, x3 slots do not exist, so x4.

 

[TJ Hooker]

PCIe x2 slots don't really exist, so even with PCIe gen 3 you end up needing x4 to get full bandwidth a 10 Gbps NIC.

 

[Roman Shein]

So that it still delivers 10GbE if plugged in a PCIe Gen 2 slot. At 5.0 GT/s 8b/10b, two lanes of PCIe Gen 2 would not be enough to tunnel 10 GbE, x3 slots do not exist, so x4.

Fair enough, makes sense.

 

[Roman Shein]

PCIe x2 slots don't really exist, so even with PCIe gen 3 you end up needing x4 to get full bandwidth a 10 Gbps NIC.

PCIE 3.0 is 8GT/s with a very small overhead ( encoding scheme to 128b/130b). x1 should be more than enough for any reasonable use case. Unless you are a sole user of a giant NAS w dozens of HDDs & huge write cache, or better an all-flash array ("as seen on Linus YT"). Anything less than that will not be able to read/write data fast enough to saturate NICs in a x3.0 slot (the limit should be around 7.5Gbps).

 

[Shonk.]

PCIE 3.0 is 8GT/s with a very small overhead ( encoding scheme to 128b/130b). x1 should be more than enough for any reasonable use case. Unless you are a sole user of a giant NAS w dozens of HDDs & huge write cache, or better an all-flash array ("as seen on Linus YT"). Anything less than that will not be able to read/write data fast enough to saturate NICs in a x3.0 slot (the limit should be around 7.5Gbps).

Umm
1GbE is 125 megabytes which is around 114 megabytes (1024 not 1000) after ethernet overheads of actual payload
10GbE is 1250 megabytes which is around 1140 megabytes (1024 not 1000) after ethernet overheads of actual payload
PCIe 3.0 x 1 is 985 megabytes which is 265 megabytes shy of being able to deliver the required bandwidth

Feel free to fit your card into an open ended 1x slot for a 7.9GbE card but dont expect a manufacturer to ship it that way

In the case of onboard devices my motherboard put it on a 2 x gen3 bus which is fine as they know its never going to be on a gen 2 bus