INTRODUCTION

   10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE/10GbE) connectivity may have yet to hit the mainstream market but thanks to the somewhat recent appearance of many low-cost 10GbE cards and switches and the availability of some 10GbE ready mainboards things are now looking better than ever before for people out to upgrade their local office and/or home networks. Still even though prices for 10GbE peripherals/equipment have taken a dive the most important issue is what to pick and there are many options in the market for potential buyers with cards using the first generation X540 and second generation X550 single-chip ethernet controllers by Intel in the lead. Such cards are not the lowest cost ones in the market but thanks to their features and performance (also driver support by Intel) they are the number one choice of professionals and since some of you asked we decided to get a couple of 10GbE cards based on the X550 controller to check out and compare to our very own X540 based models. 10Gtek may not be among the most popular network peripherals/equipment manufacturers in the world but they have a very large product catalogue and today we'll be taking a look at their X550-T1 card.

   10Gtek Transceivers Co., Ltd is a leading high speed cable and transceiver supplier in China, who designs, manufactures and sells direct attach copper cables and optical transceivers (10G/40G/100G). We focus on the development of high reliability and cost efficient interconnect solution, providing the best-of-breed copper or optical modules for customers in areas such as cloud computing, data centers, data communication, long-distance transmission, wireless access, etc. Our valued proposition is our leading-edge optical component and packaging technology, high speed cable design know-how and unique low-cost testing capability.10Gtek is an ISO14001 & ISO9001 certified manufacturer founded in 2008, the headquarter is located in Shenzhen, China. We offer total solution of high speed interconnect link, supplying compatible 10G SFP+, 10G XFP 40~56G QSFP+, 100G QSFP28 Copper & AOC cables and Optical Modules. Our customers can benefit from the real value-added portfolio of products and service. We keep expanding the product line, redefining new features of the products or market new discovery while entering a new market for each product. All 10Gtek’s products comply with RoHS, CE and FCC certificates.

   Both the X540 and the X550 are 10GBASE-T controllers (backwards compatible with 1000BASE-T) that allow for use of regular CAT6/6e RJ45 cables to achieve 10G performance (up to 100 meters in length for CAT6e and 55 meters in length for CAT6) thus reducing deployment costs. They are both also available in single (T1) and dual (T2) RJ45 port models the latter of which can achieve up to 20G speeds (theoretically anyways - in theory you should also be able to use two dual-port 10G cards to achieve 40G speeds) via network bonding/link aggregation (as long as it's supported by your switch and/or OS). However, these controllers are also quite different so whereas the X540 is an x8 lane PCIe V2.1 controller with a maximum theoretical bandwidth of 5.0GT/s the X550 is a x4 lane PCIe V3.0 solution that has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 8.0GT/s. To be completely honest with all of you this somewhat large difference in bandwidth was also an incentive for us to do this comparison since we were looking of ways to further upgrade our local 10GbE area network (although even 5GT/s is more than enough for 10/20G speeds).

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

10Gtek packs their X550-T1 inside a small cardboard box that has a sticker at the top on which you can see the controller model and number of ports.

The card is placed inside a clamshell plastic package.

A low profile PCI bracket and the OS driver CD are placed inside the box alongside the X550-T1 card (you should however use the latest drivers by Intel).

ΤΗΕ Χ550-Τ1

The 10Gtek X550-T1 card has a black medium sized heatsink right over the Intel chip and measures 131mm in length and 68mm in height.

As already mentioned, the X550-T1 is a single RJ45 port card.

The product serial number and barcode are placed on two stickers located at the rear of the PCB.

Unfortunately, 10Gtek was unable to provide us with two X550-T1 cards so we had to pair it with one of the X550-T2 cards we have here.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Testing 10G network cards (or faster) is pretty much the same thing as testing a new switch so we’ll be using roughly the same testing methodology here as well. So aside the usual networking benchmark by Passmark (updated to v9.0) we'll also be using ATTO (v4.00.0f2), Crystal Disk Mark (v6.0.2) and Sisoftware Sandra Pro (v2016SP2). To test network cards, we'll be using our top two desktop systems (details above) located 15m away (connected with CAT7 cables) from our Netgear Prosafe XJ712T 10G switch. Each of the tests is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average scores are recorded into our charts. Our systems have Windows 10 Pro installed complete with all updates up until the 5th of February 2019. * For this test we used v23.5.1 of the Intel Ethernet Adapter Complete Driver Pack.

TEST RESULTS

CONCLUSION

    Initially when the first X550 cards started to arrive in our lab back in mid 2018 we actually were expecting a good performance bump (we didn’t actually test them until late last year) compared to the X540 models we’ve been using since 2015 and although as you can certainly tell from our charts in some tests they do offer exactly that for the most part these two generations are just trading blows with each other. Of course, that doesn’t mean the new X550 controller is not better compared to its predecessor since it does come with a slightly improved feature set (along with a good bandwidth boost although we don’t see how it could ever use that) but if you already own X540 cards we see very little reason to move to the X550. On the other hand, if you are just now building your local 10G network we do recommend getting X550 based cards since they will be getting longer driver and general support from Intel (X540: 2023 / X550: 2029 - always according to their product pages).

   The X540 and X550 single-chip ethernet controllers by Intel are their “low-cost” solutions so currently you can find the 10Gtek X550-T1 model for USD218.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 209Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de). Of course, the dual RJ45 port solutions cost quite a bit more (justifiably since via network bonding you can achieve up to 20G speeds) but in most cases (especially for home use) we think that the single RJ45 model will be more than enough. At the end of the day if you plan on upgrading your local network to 10G speeds the X550 ethernet controller by Intel could be the way to go and since the X550-T1 by 10Gtek delivers as advertised it deserves our Golden Award.

PROS

- Intel X550 Single Chip Ethernet Controller
- 10G Performance
- 10GBASET RJ45 Model (CAT6/6e Compatible)
- Single (T1) & Dual Port (T2) Models Available
- Price (Compared To Similar Models)

CONS

- No RJ45 Cables Included