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  • maglito - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Article is missing references to XeonD with integrated 10Gbps networking in a much lower power envelope (Supermicro and ASRock Rack have great solutions). Also switches from Mikrotik ( CRS226-24G-2S+RM ) and Ubiquiti ( EdgeSwitch ES‑16‑XG ).
  • dsumanik - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Fair enough, but one thing this article is NOT missing is better multi GPU testing, thank you Ian.

    In this day and age It is important to test every aspect of the board, not take the mfg's word for it or you wind up being a part of thier beta test.

    Then when the bugs occur and sales slow, the bios team gets allocated to the more popular boards And you wait in limbo -sometimes permanently- for fixes
  • Gadgety - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    I agree.
  • prisonerX - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    The XeonD has 10G MACs, which are not the particularly power hungry part of 10G ethernet, it's the PHY block, and in particular 10GBase-T which is the power hog. XeonD doesn't implement those.
  • BillR - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Correct, the PHY is where the bulk of the power is used. I would expect the performance between the XeonD and the X550 to be similar since they use the same basic Ethernet MAC block logic. I would be a bit leery of using another LAN solution though, the Intel solution has been pretty rock solid. A problem I rarely have to think about is the best problem of all.
  • ltcommanderdata - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    You mentioned PCIe switches add a little bit of overhead which isn't a problem for graphics cards, but is the small added latency likely to be a concern for more sensitive applications like audio cards? Or is it better to use PCIe slots that are not on the PCIe switch for those?

    Also is there any sense yet on a time-to-market schedule for 2.5G/5G ethernet controllers and when motherboards and routers will start showing up with them?
  • TheinsanegamerN - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    My guess is never. Outside of a very specific niche, nobody needs more then 1Gbps.
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    >My guess is never, nobody needs HD. The human eye can't see past 640x480 interlaced.
  • Eden-K121D - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    nah 320X240 is the max
  • prisonerX - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    640K should be enough for anyone.
  • karakarga - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    If you connect a new modem or access point, having 5GHz or newest 60GHz, you need more than 150 megabytes, thus you need faster than 1Gigabit ethernet transfer speed....
  • eek2121 - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    Speak for yourself. Anyone in the photography or content creator will benefit from the faster speeds. Hell, even at my level I could use good 10 Gig hardware for the generation, transferring, storage, and streaming of 4K content across the network to/from a NAS, all while streaming my Blu-ray library to multiple locations in the house and playing a game at the same time.
  • firefoxx04 - Tuesday, November 22, 2016 - link

    Are you kidding me? Nobody? Not even someone buying a workstation board with 8+ core support and 16/16/16/16 PCIe support?

    I just added a 10Gbit fiber card to my desktop and my file server (raid5 with 4 drives) and im getting over twice as much throughput as I was before with no tuning to the driver. 112Mb/s network transfers feel slow now when my desktop is capable of 250-300Mb/s sustained. Hell, I even installed my entire steam library onto my network share because its simply fast enough (with no latency thanks to fiber optics).

    But yeah, nobody could possibly benefit from 10G.
  • eSyr - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    PCIe switch adds about 100—300ns to RTT, I don't think it would be critical for audio applications.
  • nirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Actually, there is a rather major shift towards 2.5G and 5G happening these days. It is driven primarily by:
    + The recent ratification of the IEEE 802.3bz standard
    + Higher than 1G bandwidth demand of Wave2 11.ac WiFi APs coming up with 2.5G and 5G LAN ports
    + Availability of low cost and low power solutions from Tehuti Networks with PHYs from Marvell and Aquantia
  • BillR - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    The rumor I heard is that extending a 1G PHY to work at 2.5G didn't add a lot to the price and power (about 30-50% in extra logic/power). Running at 5G my require a lot of the same logic used in a 10G PHY so a 5G solution would not offer huge power/cost advantages over 10G.
  • nirsever - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    I agree with your observation that cost wise, 5G and 10G are the same. However, from our experience, 5G power consumption is significantly lower than 10G. In addition, investing in 5G/2.5G capable NIC gives you the benefit of extending the life of your existing Cat5e/Cat6 cabling beyond 1G which is not possible with "classic" 10GBase-T
  • BillR - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    I agree.
  • BrokenCrayons - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Just a thought...for a motherboard review, the feature image doesn't really show the motherboard or have a lot to do with the headline discussing networking.
  • alamilla - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    For an updated board it seems strange that they removed the Thunderbolt header with no options for Thunderbolt 3 expansion.
    Disappointing... :(
  • dsumanik - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Agreed, but there is a lot of PCI lane juggling on this board as is. With the amount of modern external and internal interfaces being pushed currently the days of 'one board to do it all' may be gone forever, sadly.

    Ultimately this board is going to appeal to users who want to use PCI Slots taken up by 10g rider cards in thier current rigs.

    IMO the idle power is a bit of a concern, over the life of the board it is going to add up, especially if used for server duties.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    Yes I noticed that too - hence I just picked up a new ASRock ws-e/10G which has the Thunderbolt header (TB2 I think it is - but that is fine with me). But what I didn't expect, was that I'd need to BUY the pcie card to actually present the interface. I must admit, I expected something like that to be in the box. More expense.

    Just waiting for my E5-2690v4 Broadwell-EP 14-Core 135W 35M CPU to clear customs to check it all out...
  • sorten - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    what is the use case for 10G in the home?
  • jkhoward - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    People who render using multiple workstations want a super fast network. You can chain multiple systems together to render something faster. Think... home graphic designed/video editor.
  • timbotim - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    My primary use case is 30sec transfer of VMs around a network at 10Gbs-1 rather than 5mins at 1Gbs-1
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Thats a niche use case and you will need a PCIe SSD to write that much data in such a short time. A 20 GB VM would require a write speed of about 680Mb/s.
  • sorten - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    I see, so the average consumer running a render farm in their home office ;-)
  • philehidiot - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Personally, I tend to render farts in my home office.

    I do not require quite so many PCIe lanes for this.
  • slyphnier - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    that not cost efficient for home graphic designer/video editor, because u end up spend like more than $15k(depends on many ws) for multiple ws including the switch/router... even say your system/rig will last you like 3-4 years, that will be much cheaper go with rental rendering server/office route

    i believe this board is limited, with shop that have this & available quantity
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    They ARE limited, I cannot find waterblocks for mine... But, I can live with that.

    At least having your own hardware, its a KNOWN cost, and some provider doesn't contact you to notify you that you own $7k usd this month in network over-usage due to some redirection error you made...
  • maglito - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    faster large file copies to/from NAS.

    1Gbps is a real limitation here.
  • prisonerX - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Who needs a "use case"?
  • BrokenCrayons - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    Someone who has a lot of stray use laying around and needs a container in which to store them.
  • Breit - Thursday, November 10, 2016 - link

    Thanks, made my day! :D
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    Hilarious!
  • beginner99 - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    My thought as well. The average user doesn't need it that's why it's not marketed in this space. The average user is content with crappy WiFi that can't even fully use a fast internet connection. 1GBit Ethernet is usually fast enough to saturate your average hdd even for large file transfers
  • bcronce - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    40Gb network cards are becoming popular in datacenters. My use case is a simple one. My ISP is so good, they pass these 40Gb micro-busts through their network right to my connection, giving me transient latency spikes that can last tens of milliseconds before TCP's congestion control starts doing its magic.

    My 1Gb link can't handle 40Gb hitting it and TCP takes too long to respond. TCP takes tens of milliseconds because they're tens of milliseconds away, latency wise. This is a speed of light issue and Latency vs throughput issue.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    I bought the ASrock version of this board, and by day actually test / implement 10G & higher networks. So given I'm one who is building a rig for the next 3-5yrs (as the article refers too), I thought I'd jump on 10G to futureproof myself. I also have 2x1G ports on the board too, so I can disable the 10G in the meantime.
  • zodiacfml - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Thunderbolt 3 has more value.
    It will get popular soon but price and power consumption has to go down now. The tipping point will be when enterprise Wi-Fi APs start wielding this interface.
  • pixelstuff - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Thunderbolt 3 is harder to run through your walls and put an end on wherever needed. Also not convenient for having multiple users connected at the same time.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    TB3 IS great! - but not for the use case you describe, I think.
  • r3loaded - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    So why exactly IS 10G so expensive? Is there some inherent technical reason, or is it just Intel doing what Intel does best with a captive market over which they have a near monopoly?
  • jhh - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    Volume. There is a certain amount of engineering involved in making the NIC, and if you expect to sell 100,000, you recoup that engineering expense differently than if you expect to sell 10,000,000. I'm sure the volume is somewhere between those two targets. Volume will be limited if for no other reason that most devices connect via WiFi, and that until WiFi routers come with something other than a 1G port, it's hard to drive the market for 10G. The server environment is different, but fewer servers are sold than laptop/tablet/phone. No one is selling > 1G Internet to the residential market, so even that option isn't driving the market. One is then limited to people with the need to transfer at more than 1G speeds within a residence, and that market is small. Servers tend to use fiber, as the signal processing to support 10G over copper was historically adding significant latency compared to fiber. Fiber is also more forward compatible to 25G than copper, as every speed transition has always required different cables. Unless you are installing Cat 7a wire and proprietary connectors, but they aren't directly compatible with 1G wiring.
  • Communism - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    http://ark.intel.com/products/84329/Intel-Ethernet...

    The price per thousand is down to 80 USD for the controller (Which provides 2x 10G base-t ports), meaning one could theoretically integrate it into an x99 (or the boards coming out for Skylake-E/X) for around that much if you could get enough traction to be able to put them in a board with a significant portion of sales.

    This sounds entirely feasible, unfortunately, they seem to be stuck on boards that are made purely for manufacturer advertising with hilarious prices like 700 USD.

    Integrating such a controller is simple, as it's just a PCIe 3.0 x4 device.

    Hopefully at least 1 of the major board manufacturers starts making reasonable integrations with the X550-AT2 controller in the Skylake-E/X generation boards.
  • bronan - Friday, November 11, 2016 - link

    Intel sold their 10G cards for under 100 dollar each, when companies jumped onto them they slowly upped the prices to the max. These cards can be sold for under 50 dollar each but the hunger for huge profits will not allow that
  • BillR - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Terrific answer. 1G is everywhere and cost for those ports shows the power of huge volumes on prices. However, 10G is mostly limited to servers and there is a lot of competition for server connections (25G, 40G, 50G, 100G, Infiniband, etc.). Unfortunately fragmentation means higher prices.
  • Ranger1065 - Monday, November 7, 2016 - link

    zzzZZzzz.....
  • bronan - Friday, November 11, 2016 - link

    These chips cost really nothing for the gaints, the real prices of these chips are absolute below 10 dollar each. Again intel sold full fledged pci cards if i remember well around 77 dollar thats consumer price. See what happened after the companies started adopted them. I can't believe everbody makes it look like it so expenssive to make chips.... They cost them a few bucks to make thats it not 50 dollar+ my company makes chips for certain installations they costs 0.04 cents each and are sold to companies for 11 cents each ... talking about making profit. Thats the real prices you as consumer pay for that same 11 cents .... 10 dollar+ yes thats how the market works these days enormous profit is all what counts
  • nirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    In fact, the footprint of the Tehuti Networks based solutions with PHYs from either Marvell or Aquantia are way smaller than the Intel X550 and since they don't require a heat sink, consuming ~5W max (for both MAC and PHY), they are much easier to integrate. The Tehuti Networks solutions are already supporting 2.5G and 5G in addition to standard 10GBase-T. You can find Tehuti Networks based 5-speed NIC cards already selling today for ~$200 while this figure is expected to drop significantly once new Marvell 802.3bz PHYs will start shipping in volumes early next year
  • nirsever - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Please take a look at what you can expect from Tehuti Networks and Marvell new PHY:
    http://www.tehutinetworks.net/?t=LV&L1=3&L...
  • kgardas - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    Looks really nice, ~6W for 10Gbit is good and very low on todays standard. The only drawback in comparison with Intel is PCIe 2.0 support only, so for 10Gbit you need 4 PCIe lanes. Otherwise I'm looking forward to see this card here...
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    @ kgardas: You should have seen our 10G DWDM telecom equipment, back in late 1998... more than 6W I can tell you :) , in fact we couldn't get it to work without forced air, each transceiver taking up a whole rack shelf, and we could only fit three shelves / rack space. The electrical complexity / number of boards to make it work was astounding.

    Incredible to see it done on a single card now, and more often now, even multiples of, on a single card.

    So yes, tech moves on...
  • Lolimaster - Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - link

    I think you should dive the PSU's used.

    Only a high wattage for multigpu test (850w+)
    500-650w Titanium for any cpu + single gpu / APU-intel IGP powered systems
  • ads295 - Wednesday, November 9, 2016 - link

    You know how those clickbait websites show cleavage or a$$?
    The thumbnail for this article led me to open it in the same vein. :O
  • Breit - Thursday, November 10, 2016 - link

    Thanks for this review Ian, very informative.

    While reading the comments here, the single feature that seems to attract the most attention is the inclusion of 10G Ethernet. As it seems rather hard to implement a good performing 10G network compared to 1G, maybe an AnandTech-style in-depth article about 10G networking in general would be appreciated by the readers of this site. Just a suggestion.
    At least I would appreciate it... ;)
  • JlHADJOE - Friday, November 11, 2016 - link

    Didn't think I'd see the day when an ASUS motherboard is both cheaper and has more features than it's ASRock counterpart.
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    More features?

    I don't see a SATA DOM port.

    It is missing 2x 1GB Ethernet ports.

    It is missing 2 SATA ports (12 vs 10)

    It has only 10-phase power solution, vs 12 phase.

    It has no USB 2.0 ports did I read correctly?

    It has no fan on the 10G heatsink also, which allows the case temp to equalize with outside temps for some time after shutdown, to avoid condonsation building up in the case.

    Can you mount the same range of M.2 SSDs in this? I see only two mounting holes, mine has four...

    Board-mounted USB port, for DRM-related stick, or whatever you need connecting / secured on the INSIDE of a case.

    I also believe I have LAN LED headers to put network activity on the front panel, as one does with their hard disks.

    So tell me if I'm wrong, please.

    One thing I'll say, I do find the 6-pin board power connector much more elegant than my 4-pin Molex connector. And I cannot STAND my anodized blue... the black on the ASUS is also more elegant.

    Anybody who needs their pcie slots lit, to choose the right combo shouldn't be allowed to buy it..
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    also @ Jihadjoe

    Mine has TB header too. Almost forgot about that...
  • Hixbot - Tuesday, November 22, 2016 - link

    Don't understand the move to 10G copper. We should be transitioning towards 10G fiber. Copper can't carry 10G a practical distance. 55 meters for unshielded Cat 6 cable. That't not very far. 100 meters for shielded Cat 6, thats more reasonable. but has anyone priced Cat 6 shielded cable? It's very expensive, and good luck terminating the shielded RJ45 yourself to Cat 6 standards. In my workplace, we've had to order pre-terminated lengths of shielded Cat 6. Whenever we use fiber it's easier to terminate, costs are much cheaper, and distance is practically unlimited.

    So what is with the move to 10G copper?
  • Notmyusualid - Friday, December 2, 2016 - link

    As an owner of the asrock, I too would have preferred SFP sockets.

    But SMBs CAN afford $700 for a switch, and many of them have little fiber. My 2c.
  • SnowleopardPC - Sunday, November 27, 2016 - link

    The whole 10G Copper is interesting. I have already started wiring my home with Cat 8 1200mhz ethernet cables. I skipped Cat 7 because Cat 7 is running into licensing issues like blu-ray. There are 2 companies fighting over the Cat 7 standard.

    Cat 8 supports 10G up to 100 meters/300 feet and potentially 25G/40 or 50G at shorter distances.

    It is important for me because I am shooting with a Phase One XF and a 100mp digital back for still photography and then Red Dragons at 4 and 6k video resolutions. One of the rooms in the house has been converted to a server room with racks, switches and enterprise grade NAS appliances.

    The NAS Supports 40G through 4 10G copper ports,
  • Hixbot - Monday, November 28, 2016 - link

    Would think that fiber with SFP+ equipped gear would be more affordable and easier to work with. I have never worked with CAT8 but my thought is it must be heavy and rigid and terminating those RJ45s to Cat 8 standard must be a chore. I admit my experience in this is limited and perhaps your experience has shown that copper remains the best product for your needs.
    My experience working in enterprise networking has shown that fiber is the most affordable medium for multi 10G backbones between switch/server rooms, but if you want 10G to the desks/cubicle the options are limited and the market is still pushing copper to the desktop.
  • Me777 - Monday, May 29, 2017 - link

    Compute task? What's a compute task?

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