Intel has new network adapters, at least in some respects, with the Intel E830 200GbE and E610 10GbE NICs. These two new series are expected to roll-out over 2025 and be Intel’s new PCIe Gen4 NICs moving forward. This is a launch where it really paid to read into the details versus the headline features.
Intel E830 200GbE and E610 10GbE NICs Launched
Intel says that its new Intel Ethernet E830 controllers have precision timing and security features while offering up to 200GbE of throughput, up from 100GbE on current models. You will notice that the image is of a dual SFP28 25GbE adapter, and there is a good reason for that as we will see a bit later.
The Intel Ethernet E610 series is a 10Gbase-T series that supports multi-gigabit speeds and up to 50% lower power. That 50% lower is the TDP difference between the Intel E610-XAT2 and the Intel X550-AT2 dual port 10Gbase-T adapters. There are also single and quad-port options like the E610-XT4 which might actually be a dual E610-XAT2 under the hood since the spec table says it supports bifurcation and a PCIe Gen4 x8 link split into x4 and x4.
In terms of a network controller and adapter table, this is what Intel provided. There are single and dual 10Gbase-T controllers, as well as a dual 2.5GbE option. We have to give that 2.5GbE NIC a nod since we have The Ultimate Cheap Fanless 2.5GbE Switch Buyers Guide. In this the “PCIe 4.0 Ports” seems to actually mean lanes. Ports are something different in PCIe. Still, this is big since it would be the first multi-port 2.5GbE controller from Intel. Also, a single PCIe Gen4 lane should be enough to handle dual 2.5GbE as an example.
On the Intel E830, the first slide Intel showed said it was a 200GbE controller and much faster than the prvious generation. The actual first part is going to be the Intel E830-XXVDA2 which is a dual 25GbE part only. Intel says other models will follow, but at launch the E830 should only offer about half the bandwidth of the prior-generation Intel E810 not twice the bandwidth. Intel says additional configurations for the E830 will arrive later in 2025 so hopefully those bring 200GbE speeds.
Final Words
New 10GbE, 25GbE, and 2.5GbE adapters in 2025 are a bit surprising. Even launching a 200GbE adapter in 2025 feels a bit behind. The reason for this is quite interesting. In many servers, instead of onboard networking, there are OCP NIC 3.0 slots. So instead of a serer having dual 1GbE, dual 10Gbase-T or other options onboard, these lower-performance NICs are moving to an OCP NIC 3.0 slot. That seems to be the main push of the Xeon E610 and E830 right now. It does not seem to be going after the high-end of the market.
It is certainly not an understatement to say that after Intel lost its bid for Mellanox (we went into how Jensen and NVIDIA beat Bob Swan and Intel for the company in our Substack) Intel’s networking has never really recovered. NVIDIA has been shipping multiple 400GbE NICs while Intel is launching a 200GbE NIC (we covered Mellanox ConnectX-6 Dx at 200Gbps in 2019.)
