Aquantia’s Gamer Edition AQtion AQN-107 10 GbE NIC Available
by Anton Shilov on July 12, 2018 2:00 PM EST
On Wednesday, Aquantia started to sell the gamer edition of its AQtion AQN-107 multi-gig network card. As the name implies, the 10 GbE NIC is aimed at demanding gamers as well as enthusiasts who are after the best network performance.
Aquantia’s gamer edition AQtion AQN-107 card is based on the company’s AQC107 (10 GbE) network controller that supports various BASE-T standards, including 100M, 1G, 2.5G, 5G, and 10G over an RJ45 connector using Cat5e/Cat6 cabling. The card uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface and comes on a black reference design PCB featuring an aluminum heat spreader that 'emphasizes' its gaming nature.
The key feature that differentiates gamer edition AQtion AQN-107 card from regular multi-gig network adapters from Aquantia is the company’s in-house developed gaming prioritization software. This will seem similar to the software tools offered by the Rivet Networks Killer network controllers, however both solutions approach the issue differently internally. Right now, Aquantia has three levels of prioritization supported by its software, but the company continues to work on this product.
Aquantia demonstrated a gaming rig outfitted with its AQtion AQN-107 card as well as the software at Computex. After trying the setup out, we can confirm that the software works and manages to reduce latency when priority modes are enabled and network traffic is being directed at mulitple sources.
The Aquantia Gamer Edition AQtion AQN-107 10 GbE network card is currently available from Amazon for $89.99.
The market of gaming PCs is not the most important one for Aquantia, especially in the light of the fact that there are virtually no affordable consumer-grade multi-gig switches. This partly explains why the card is currently available only from Amazon and why Aquantia is selling it under its own brand. In the meantime, it is evident that the company needs to address the market of demanding consumers with its 10 GbE offerings in a bid to establish itself a name among gamers to ensure successful competition against other multi-gig players in the future.
Related Reading
- Aquantia Multi-Gig: Single Chip USB 3.0 to 5G/2.5G Dongles Coming Soon
- Aquantia to Sell Its 5G and 10G Network Cards for $59 and $69 on Black Friday
- GIGABYTE’s GC-AQC107 10G Ethernet PCIe Card Launched and Listed
- ASUS Launches XG-C100C 10 GBase-T Adapter: Aquantia AQC107, $99
- Lower Cost 10GBase-T Switches Coming: 4, 5 and 8-port Aquantia Solutions at ~$30/Port
- Aquantia Launches New 2.5G/5G Multi-Gigabit Network Controllers for PCs
- Aquantia Launch AQtion 5G/2.5G/1G Multi-Gigabit Ethernet Cards (NICs) for PCIe
Source: Aquantia
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a351must2 - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
Screw teaming, look into SMB3.0 ... Windows 10 supports it by default. I was using 3 X 1GB links to copy from Windows 10 to Server 2016 and regularly saw above 300MB/sec transfer speeds without configuring anything more than unique IP addresses on the same subnet for each connection. I've since switched to 10GBe with a Buffalo switch and Ebay Intel cards and only bumped up to ~360MB/sec due to other limitations (it'll hit 10GB speeds if I use ram drives on both sides).piroroadkill - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
The only one I know of that's relatively inexpensive (I have one) is the Netgear MS510TX. It has multi-gigabit ports, so it'll work with these cards at 10, 5 or 2.5Gbit/s depending on which port you use. It has two 10Gbit ports, but only one of those uses a standard 8P8C connector.piroroadkill - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Oh, I should just add a caveat: I've had massively unstable operation with this switch + Aquantia AQN108s. In the end, I gave up, and went back to onboard gigabit, which works flawlessly.I have a feeling it is because of crappy drivers, but who knows.
lightningz71 - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
You want inexpensive? That's relative. The best I've seen is around $200 for a 10 port switch with 2 X 3.5/5/10GbE and 8 X 1GbE, unmanaged. Want management? That'll be an extra hundred. Want routing and advanced features? That'll be another hundred plus.edzieba - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
If price/port is more than this card's $90, then it would make sense to build your own Software Defined Router instead. They don't need to be large: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylgV5TUdErUcolinstu - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
THIS. Please a $200-340 8 port 10GbE switch please. Not asking for much.Preferably fanless too. and stable. lol
chaos215bar2 - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
Make sure it's multigigabit (i.e. supporting 802.3bz). Don't really want to be stuck with a lovely new <something> that tops out at 5GBASE-T, but stuck with a switch that only supports 1000BASE-T and 10GBASE-T.This, of course, adds a lovely extra layer of complexity when trying to search for just the right 10G switch.
rahvin - Thursday, July 12, 2018 - link
Most of the newer switched designed in the last year or so are multi-gigabit. Buffalo in particular has a couple that are almost a reasonable price, with an 8 port that's about $500. If they could get the price down another $1-200 they would fly off the shelves.ewilliams28 - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
10 port netgear with 2 10GIG ports is 199.00 The more interesting one for me though has 4 1GIG ports 2 2.5GIG, 2 5GIG and 2 10GIG for a little over $300. (netgear MS510TX) not cheap but coming down for sure.ComputerGuy2006 - Saturday, July 21, 2018 - link
I don't like the idea of spending +$200 on a switch with only two 10Gbit ports tho. That means only one PC in the house can only connect to one NAS at 10Gbit.... At that point id rather just have a direct connect from my PC to the NAS and hope a cheap 10Gb switch will be released in the future.