Intel fumbled hard with some of their recent NICs including the I225-V,[1][2] which took them multiple hardware revisions in addition to software updates to fix.
AMD also had to be dragged kicking and screaming to support earlier AM4 motherboard buyers to upgrade to Ryzen 5000 chips,[3][4] and basically lied to buyers about support for sTRX4, requiring an upgrade from the earlier TR4 to support third-gen Threadripper but at least committing to “long-term” longevity in return.[5][6] They then turned around and released no new CPUs for the chipset platform, leaving people stranded on it despite the earlier promises.[7]
I know it’s appealing to blindly trust one company’s products (or specific lineup of products) because it simplifies buying decisions, but no company or person is infallible (and companies in particular are generally going to profit-max even at your expense). Blindly trusting one unfortunately does not reliably lead to good outcomes for end-users.
edit: “chipset” (incorrectly implying TRX40) changed to “platform” (correctly implying sTRX4); added explicit mention of “AM4” in the context of the early motherboard buyers.
I only used ax200 and it worked much better than the integrated realtek solution using the same antennas. Driver support was the main difference, I believe.
Yes, never buy a product based on the company making it, buy based on reviews. I picked up the Ryzen 1700 because it had really good price to performance, and while I was frustrated when they tried to prevent my X370 from upgrading, my vendor (ASRock) was one of the first to support it when AMD relented. If AMD blocked my upgrade, I probably would’ve gone with Intel because they were a little cheaper and lower power at the time, but I ended up upgrading to a 5000 series CPU instead.
So all things being equal, ASRock and AMD is my preference, but I’m not loyal to either (my wife has a Gigabyte board due to cost and features, and my old NAS used Gigabyte as well). Just like in stocks, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it is a useful indicator when everything else is equal.
I used to think so too, but I’ve got an Intel box where I have to turn hardware offload off in order to not have networking ‘crashes’ (complete with kernel dump data) that take out my networking for 5-15sec. Chip is i218-LM r05.
I’ve never had an issue with my i210 and x550 chips, but this 218 is super frustrating.
IDK, I’m having a lot of trouble with my Intel Wi-Fi NIC: 3168NGW. I’m getting like 16mbps on Linux (I hear Windows works better), when I have an AC network. My USB dongle gets full speed though, so it works, but the PCI card just sucks.
It seems it’s downgrading to A/B speeds instead of AC, which is weird. This is a new motherboard, and it seems I’m not alone. It apparently works fine, and there seems to be drivers available that fix it, but they’re not part of the standard driver. I had to set a driver flag to disable wireless N to get any form of WiFi working on it, so the whole thing is messed up.
So this is only true for the higher end Intel NICs, the crap that comes with budget boards can absolutely suck. My NAS has the same chip and doesn’t have the issue (much older kernel), so it seems to be a common, but not universal problem.
AMD for platform, Intel for NIC (and optane SSD)
Best combo IMO.
Intel fumbled hard with some of their recent NICs including the I225-V,[1][2] which took them multiple hardware revisions in addition to software updates to fix.
AMD also had to be dragged kicking and screaming to support earlier AM4 motherboard buyers to upgrade to Ryzen 5000 chips,[3][4] and basically lied to buyers about support for sTRX4, requiring an upgrade from the earlier TR4 to support third-gen Threadripper but at least committing to “long-term” longevity in return.[5][6] They then turned around and released no new CPUs for the
chipsetplatform, leaving people stranded on it despite the earlier promises.[7]I know it’s appealing to blindly trust one company’s products (or specific lineup of products) because it simplifies buying decisions, but no company or person is infallible (and companies in particular are generally going to profit-max even at your expense). Blindly trusting one unfortunately does not reliably lead to good outcomes for end-users.
edit: “chipset” (incorrectly implying TRX40) changed to “platform” (correctly implying sTRX4); added explicit mention of “AM4” in the context of the early motherboard buyers.
I only used ax200 and it worked much better than the integrated realtek solution using the same antennas. Driver support was the main difference, I believe.
Yes, never buy a product based on the company making it, buy based on reviews. I picked up the Ryzen 1700 because it had really good price to performance, and while I was frustrated when they tried to prevent my X370 from upgrading, my vendor (ASRock) was one of the first to support it when AMD relented. If AMD blocked my upgrade, I probably would’ve gone with Intel because they were a little cheaper and lower power at the time, but I ended up upgrading to a 5000 series CPU instead.
So all things being equal, ASRock and AMD is my preference, but I’m not loyal to either (my wife has a Gigabyte board due to cost and features, and my old NAS used Gigabyte as well). Just like in stocks, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but it is a useful indicator when everything else is equal.
I used to think so too, but I’ve got an Intel box where I have to turn hardware offload off in order to not have networking ‘crashes’ (complete with kernel dump data) that take out my networking for 5-15sec. Chip is i218-LM r05.
I’ve never had an issue with my i210 and x550 chips, but this 218 is super frustrating.
I had to put my Intel NIC in a 1gb duplex due to it crashing at anything higher :)
IDK, I’m having a lot of trouble with my Intel Wi-Fi NIC: 3168NGW. I’m getting like 16mbps on Linux (I hear Windows works better), when I have an AC network. My USB dongle gets full speed though, so it works, but the PCI card just sucks.
It seems it’s downgrading to A/B speeds instead of AC, which is weird. This is a new motherboard, and it seems I’m not alone. It apparently works fine, and there seems to be drivers available that fix it, but they’re not part of the standard driver. I had to set a driver flag to disable wireless N to get any form of WiFi working on it, so the whole thing is messed up.
So this is only true for the higher end Intel NICs, the crap that comes with budget boards can absolutely suck. My NAS has the same chip and doesn’t have the issue (much older kernel), so it seems to be a common, but not universal problem.