AMD partners launch their B550 chipset motherboards

[DanceswithUnix]

The 2.5GbE option is broken on current Intel motherboards - check the link I put in this thread!

Indeed, and dropped packets are very bad if you are impacted by that. From reading Intel's errata, it does work with some switches/routers (including talking to other I225-V1 chips) and will sense if there is a problem and automatically drop the link speed to 1GbE to give reliable networking.

It isn't Intel's first erratum, won't be their last, and given the erratum dated 27th March mentions that revised silicon was already on its way it won't be long at all before fixed silicon hits the factories.

Yeah we expect better from Intel, partly because their networking chips are damned good. If users were paying through the nose for this 2.5GbE upgrade then I could see some reason for getting the pitchforks out, but these days I would hope that 2.5GbE would be no more expensive to produce than 1GbE. The Aquantia chips that the likes of Asus were putting on their top end boards were way more capable and seemed to raise the cost by about £50 (vs you can buy a stand alone card on Amazon for £88 delivered). So this is probably costing less than all that RGB junk, and actually has a chance of being useful and productive and at worst is a top end 1GbE port.

Edit: Perhaps they should have labelled this as 1GbE port, and let users discover a hack to enable higher speed.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Indeed, and dropped packets are very bad if you are impacted by that. From reading Intel's errata, it does work with some switches/routers (including talking to other I225-V1 chips) and will sense if there is a problem and automatically drop the link speed to 1GbE to give reliable networking.

It isn't Intel's first erratum, won't be their last, and given the erratum dated 27th March mentions that revised silicon was already on its way it won't be long at all before fixed silicon hits the factories.

Yeah we expect better from Intel, partly because their networking chips are damned good. If users were paying through the nose for this 2.5GbE upgrade then I could see some reason for getting the pitchforks out, but these days I would hope that 2.5GbE would be no more expensive to produce than 1GbE. The Aquantia chips that the likes of Asus were putting on their top end boards were way more capable and seemed to raise the cost by about £50 (vs you can buy a stand alone card on Amazon for £88 delivered). So this is probably costing less than all that RGB junk, and actually has a chance of being useful and productive and at worst is a top end 1GbE port.

Edit: Perhaps they should have labelled this as 1GbE port, and let users discover a hack to enable higher speed.

It does make me wonder whether the current Z490 motherboards will be short lived though! Maybe we we will get a Z495 in a few months time?!

[edmundhonda]

The 2.5GbE option is broken on current Intel motherboards - check the link I put in this thread!

"Intel is committed to delivering the highest levels of product quality and has already corrected the issue in the latest production version of the silicon. I225 v2 is already in production. We identified an IEEE spec variance in the Intel Ethernet Controller I225 that results in performance degradation when paired with some 2.5GbE switches and routers. Consumers experiencing this issue should ensure they have the latest software driver and associated firmware installed and can refer to https://www.intel.com/i225v1 for compatible switches and routers to ensure 2.5Gb/s connectivity."

Great news! They've fixed the issue in silicon!

Don't think too hard about what this means for all the motherboards already out there; it's fine now because they've already fixed it.

Intel are great, aren't they?

[kompukare]

Yeah we expect better from Intel, partly because their networking chips are damned good.

Hm, for their Wifi cards their drivers aren't though. Or more precisely, their support is poor.
Think it was the N7260 on my Thinkpad T540p where they didn't work* with Windows10 and I was forced to buy the Realtek RTL8192 card on ebay.
Since the T540p only pre-dates Win10 by one year I was not impressed, but I certainly wouldn't pay extra for Intel networking over Realtek based on this.
Guess poor drivers is not unusual for Intel. Intel graphic drivers are notorious for never being updated although they are at least usually stable.
*don't remember the full details now but AFAIR Intel did have Win10 drivers but they kept disconnecting and the consensus was the bug wasn't going to be fixed. Lenovo now have a newer driver dated May 2020 but I can't be bother to swap the card back in the off-chance that Intel fixed it.

[DanceswithUnix]

Hm, for their Wifi cards their drivers aren't though. Or more precisely, their support is poor.

That could well be. Sorry, I'm old, I don't consider WiFi to be reliable or frankly even proper networking. A glance at the WiFi Analyzer app on my phone shows the airwaves around here are saturated with WiFi making it a bit of a signal strength arms race where only the vendors of mesh network and commercial grade access points win I certainly hear you on the graphic driver front.

Many many years ago Intel bought up the old DEC networking team responsible for the best wired network cards of the time and it seems to be one of the few cases where these things work.

Rather contrasts with the DEC Alpha CPU team who seemed to defect Intel en-masse to help create the Athlon