2.5Gb PCIe Network Card with Intel I226-V Chip, 2.5GBase-T Network Adapter NIC, PCIe 3.1 X1, PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Card for Windows 10/11, Linux Kernel 5.16.18/RHEL8.6, VMware ESXi8.0

I have an older PC that has been repurposed to be my NAS using Unraid. I purchased this to replace an intel based 2x1Gbps card that was running as an aggregated LACP bond. It took a little bit to learn how to get Unraid to make this the primary NIC, but that's not the card's fault (it wasn't really that hard, I am just not familiar with Unraid just yet). After installing the card and getting it connected to my Ubiquiti Unifi Cloud Gateway Max, I ran In iperf3 test to another Unraid system on the network. I am no network engineer, but I'm getting "close enough" to the advertised maximum bandwidth to make me very happy. My iperf3 results are below: iperf3 -c 10.0.20.21 Connecting to host <targetIP>, port 5201 [ 5] local <sourceIP> port 58840 connected to <targetIP> port 5201 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 282 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec 0 311 KBytes [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 308 KBytes [ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 311 KBytes [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 305 KBytes [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec 0 308 KBytes [ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.33 Gbits/sec 0 305 KBytes [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec 0 308 KBytes [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.33 Gbits/sec 0 311 KBytes [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 308 KBytes [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 278 MBytes 2.33 Gbits/sec 0 5.66 KBytes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 2.72 GBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec 0 sender [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 2.72 GBytes 2.34 Gbits/sec receiver I may try to set up jumbo frames (I don't know if that' still a good way to increase throughput, but I seem to remember 'back in tha day' it being one way to improve performance) but I'm not sure. For now, it gave me what I wanted: a very affordable and fast speed boost on my small home network.

This card reports the connection speed as 2.5Gbps, but it performs close to 100 Mbps. See the iperf3 results: [ 5] 0.00-1.01 sec 7.50 MBytes 62.6 Mbits/sec [ 5] 1.01-2.01 sec 11.5 MBytes 96.5 Mbits/sec [ 5] 2.01-3.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.7 Mbits/sec [ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.3 Mbits/sec [ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 11.4 MBytes 95.2 Mbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.01 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.3 Mbits/sec [ 5] 6.01-7.00 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.4 Mbits/sec [ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.5 Mbits/sec [ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.5 Mbits/sec [ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.3 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 109 MBytes 91.4 Mbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-10.05 sec 109 MBytes 90.6 Mbits/sec receiver A different card on the same computer and the same switch perform as expected. [ 7] 0.00-1.00 sec 283 MBytes 2.36 Gbits/sec [ 7] 1.00-2.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 2.01-3.01 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 3.01-4.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 4.01-5.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 5.01-6.00 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 6.00-7.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 7.01-8.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 8.00-9.01 sec 282 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 7] 9.01-10.01 sec 280 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 7] 0.00-10.01 sec 2.74 GBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec sender [ 7] 0.00-10.01 sec 2.74 GBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec receiver

Detected fine in an Asus AMD x570 motherboard. No windows 10 drivers automatically found. Unfortunately Intel's website makes it a bit harder than it should be to find drivers. Search for "Intel Network Adapter Driver for Windows 10". Version 29.1 installed without issue. I ordered a second one and will update review if there are any problems. Edit: Also working fine on another ASUS AMD x570 motherboard on windows 11, a Gigabyte A520 board on windows 10, and an ASUS Intel H770 board running Debian Linux. 2.5 GB link throughput: [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 284 MBytes 2.38 Gbits/sec [ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 283 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 2.00-3.01 sec 284 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 3.01-4.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 5] 4.01-5.01 sec 284 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 5.01-6.00 sec 279 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 283 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 7.00-8.01 sec 284 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec [ 5] 8.01-9.01 sec 281 MBytes 2.35 Gbits/sec [ 5] 9.01-10.01 sec 284 MBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 2.76 GBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-10.02 sec 2.76 GBytes 2.37 Gbits/sec receiver 1GB link throughput: [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-1.01 sec 115 MBytes 962 Mbits/sec [ 5] 1.01-2.01 sec 107 MBytes 893 Mbits/sec [ 5] 2.01-3.01 sec 113 MBytes 943 Mbits/sec [ 5] 3.01-4.01 sec 113 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec [ 5] 4.01-5.00 sec 111 MBytes 944 Mbits/sec [ 5] 5.00-6.01 sec 112 MBytes 940 Mbits/sec [ 5] 6.01-7.01 sec 111 MBytes 929 Mbits/sec [ 5] 7.01-8.01 sec 112 MBytes 941 Mbits/sec [ 5] 8.01-9.01 sec 112 MBytes 941 Mbits/sec [ 5] 9.01-10.00 sec 111 MBytes 944 Mbits/sec - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - [ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate [ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.09 GBytes 938 Mbits/sec sender [ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 1.09 GBytes 936 Mbits/sec receiver

Noticeable improvement in throughput even with the rest of the network on 1GB infrastructure (e.g. 1GB hubs and 1GB ethernet on client systems). Installed without issue. Immediately recognized by BSD Linux installation it's running under.

As multigig internet connections are becoming more common, the tinkerers among us are gonna wanna outfit our custom firewall appliances with a NIC that supports those speeds and we don't wanna break the bank doing it. This NIC will do that job nicely! I'm running my pfsense firewall in a small form factor Dell optiplex. I'm running pfsense CE 2.7.2 and it does support ALTQ traffic shaping schedulers. Another user pointed out that they couldn't get it to run on theirs. Maybe they're running an older version of pfsense? Maybe their other NICs don't support it? I already use an i225 NIC in my firewall, but I'm looking to deploy more so I bought these to test. I like what I see so far! Even includes a screwdriver making the full height and half height bracket swaps easy. My test setup connected this NIC as the WAN port to a Hitron CODA56 cable modem. I'm able to get 1.4gbps download speeds and...because it's only cable, 230mbps upload.

Warning 2 of these cards do not appear in the Windows 11 Device Manager on my two Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro Wifi motherboards. I contacted support which tried helping, but none of the bios changes they suggested fixed my problem. I then installed the 2nd card with the same results. They then suggested another PC. I installed a fresh copy Windows 11, updated it with all Windows updates and installed all the current drivers. Made the bios changes tech support suggested. Same results, the card never appears in the Device Manager. Life is too short. Requested replacement cards or refund. Contacted Amazon, they refunded my money.

I achieve >gigabit speeds with it. Its installed in a NAS and my file transfers are now faster on my 2.5GbE LAN than they were with the 1GbE onboard nic. I don't really have a way to test the full 2.5Gb (my drives top out somewhere between 1Gb and 2Gb) but i kinda trust that it does. Maybe if you are a heavy user more heatsink would be needed, the included one is pretty small compared to others i've seen. the activity LEDs are incredibly bright. I don't sleep with my NAS though so this is not something that bothers me. Buyers might want to be aware though. Seems to have Intel chipset. At least insofar as it works flawlessly plug-n-play on TrueNAS Scale. I am told non-Intel chipsets are not always compatible w/Linux.

Bought twice. Working great on both now. If your card is not getting full speed. Old tuning software had tweaked my nic settings. To fix: Run cmd as admin netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal