LF> Intel dual-port 2.5 GbE PCi-E card

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As the title implies, I am looking for recommendations on a card with 2x 2.5Gbps NICs with Intel Controllers. Either x1 or x4 should be fine.

I cannot find anything at a decent price, or that doesn’t look like a scam. I mostly looked for Intel i225 cards and all I could find decent was a QNAP 2 port card… for $100! That is crazy to me. A single port i225 is about $30, so the price sure is jacked up for having the privilege to have 2 ports. Not even Amazon had anything like this. Newegg didn’t have anything, MicroCenter did not even have a search option for PCI-E network cards, only for junk like serial and USB controllers.

Looking at other stuff online, I can only find Intel x540 and x550 controllers, which are 10-BaseT, meaning they do not support NBase-T, so no2.5 Gbps and 5Gbps modes. Technically they can lower their throughput if they detect something is wrong, but it’s not in the protocol.

And x710 chipsets dual-ports are $500. For 2x 10GbE NBase-T. That is insane. If Dell thinks I am going to buy that, they must be crazy. Well, they are 10GbE, so I can somewhat understand charging about $300 for them, but that much… I do not need 10G anyway, I want to use the SFP+ ports on my switch as a trunk with another switch when I get one.

Anyone has any recommendations for what I am looking for?

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1x isn’t possible without additional hardware (PCIe switch which you for sure don’t want) as these controllers use 1x. Current Intel doesn’t offer anything else in terms of controllers and you probably want to go for i226 series by now. Products formerly Foxville

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X550 does support NBASE-T / 802.3bz at both 2.5 and 5 gigabit.

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