Comparison: Intel i350-T4 Genuine vs Fake

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newabc

Active Member
Jan 20, 2019
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Lots of Chinese manufacturers use i350-am4 on their own brands' NICs with a price over $100 on Aliexpress.
If you look at a same brand, their quad port i350 NIC usually has a higher price than their dual port SFP+ card with 82599ES chip. There must be something wrong on the market.
 
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Spc

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May 16, 2020
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I have both, original with yotta mark and one that is fake.
Both of them work perfectly fine i see no difference in performance.

If you look here:

Chipsets are still being produced, T2 version is discounted.


However i still think that 311€ for new original intel card i350-T4V2 is a ripoff, it's a gigabit only card with 4 ports:


For this money i can get 10Gbit+ cards.

My fake card has MACOM LAN transcoders:


I got the FAKE one for 25€

Even if it dies 25€ is really like nothing.

ndis version for Windows Server 2022:
Code:
Name                         NdisVersion
----                         -----------
LAN2                         6.85
LAN - LACP
LAN1                         6.85
LAN3                         6.85
LAN4                         6.85
It works, no problems, i am using LACP 4Gbit/s to my main switch.
 
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Spc

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May 16, 2020
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What i do not get is why are those cards PCIe x4 is it because of backward compatibility to PCIe 1.x or maybe lower latency to i350 controller ?
PCIe x2 should be enough for 4x GbE ports.

Let's say we have 4 port i350.
This means 4Gbit up and 4Gbit down in total.

PCIe 1.x (4 lanes): 8Gbit/s (UP and DOWN)
PCIe 2.x (4 lanes): 16Gbit/s (UP and DOWN)

PCIe 1.x (1 lane): 2Gbit/s (UP and DOWN) - too SLOW
PCIe 2.x (1 lane): 4Gbit/s (UP and DOWN)

So for example even if someone puts this card into PCIe 2.1 (x1) slot, it should work at 500MB/s, which is exact 4000Mbit/s, due to some overhead you get arround 3,8Gbit/s even in 1x slot (PCIe 2.0).
 
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cdru

Member
Oct 27, 2018
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What i do not get is why are those cards PCIe x4 is it because of backward compatibility to PCIe 1.x or maybe lower latency to i350 controller ?
A x1 PCIe 2.x slot supports 4 gigabits per second of raw usable data. However that doesn't account for error correction, addressing, headers, etc. All the similar types of protocol overhead that apply to Ethernet, IP, and TCP or UDP you may be more familiar with also apply to PCIe. Depending on link specifics, overhead may be ~25%. That's dropping things significantly more than the 3.8gigabits per second you mentioned.

PCIe x2 should be enough for 4x GbE ports.
When was the last time you saw a PCIe x2 slot? I can't recall ever seeing one in person. Even if they made the card x2 for that unicorn of a mobo, for a huge number of machines it's going to go into either a 1x slot and potentially not living up to it's advertised abilities, or into a 4x slot and have much more bandwidth than it really needs. The chipset negotiates to use as many lanes as are available, so the only issue becomes does it fit into the slot.
 

Spc

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May 16, 2020
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A x1 PCIe 2.x slot supports 4 gigabits per second of raw usable data. However that doesn't account for error correction, addressing, headers, etc. All the similar types of protocol overhead that apply to Ethernet, IP, and TCP or UDP you may be more familiar with also apply to PCIe. Depending on link specifics, overhead may be ~25%. That's dropping things significantly more than the 3.8gigabits per second you mentioned.

When was the last time you saw a PCIe x2 slot? I can't recall ever seeing one in person. Even if they made the card x2 for that unicorn of a mobo, for a huge number of machines it's going to go into either a 1x slot and potentially not living up to it's advertised abilities, or into a 4x slot and have much more bandwidth than it really needs. The chipset negotiates to use as many lanes as are available, so the only issue becomes does it fit into the slot.
Yea that's true.
I've never seen PCIe x2 slot.

In official documentation x1 x2 and x4 slots are mentioned:
i350-pcie.png

I found a x2 slot:

1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (supports x2 mode)

It's physical 16 slot but it works in only x2 mode.
 
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Spc

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May 16, 2020
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I just saw new video Patrick put up on youtube about G242-P32 Gigabyte server.
One thing i noticed, it is still using i350 chipset for LAN.

LAN:
2 x 1GbE LAN ports (1 x Intel® I350-AM2)

Management:
1 x 10/100/1000 Mbps management LAN

So i guess i350 is still pretty much alive in end of 2022.



:)


Other models also use i350:
 
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snclawson

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Feb 7, 2013
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I know that this is an ancient thread, but I just waded through it because I'm upgrading my pfSense box and wanted to move from an i340-t4 to an i350-t4 due to SR-IOV support and have another option that I didn't see mentioned.

In the distant past I put together a few low-cost packet generator systems for testing networking equipment and back then Silicom adapters were one of the cheapest ways to get multi-port ethernet cards (especially the `bypass' adapters, I think because they look weird and freak people out). If someone wants a cheap `most likely not fake' i350-AM4 card, these are currently cheaper than other options I've seen, generally between $20 and $30 each on eBay:

Silicom PE2G4BPI35LA (low profile quad port i350-AM4 bypass adapter)


Silicom PE2G4BPI35A (full height quad port i350-AM4 bypass adapter)


Silicom PE2G4I35L (low profile quad port i350-AM4)


Silicom PE2G4I35 (full height quad port i350-AM4)



I haven't used any of these newer cards myself yet, but with the old bypass adapters if they were set to `bypass mode' (electrically connecting each adjacent ethernet port together using relays on the card, to bypass the card completely) you just needed to install the bypass driver to set it to normal mode and the card would remember it, then from there on out it could be treated just like a normal intel ethernet card. Interestingly, the datasheet for the bypass version of the low profile card claims that it only uses 4.68W in 1G normal mode, whereas the regular card uses 5.04W. I'm not sure just how that is the case, but for $19 I figure I'll check it out!

They also have different versions with either SFP cages or built-in optics, but I imagine that if you were going to do that you'd probably just get a cheap 10G card!
 

SCHUNTER1969

New Member
Nov 8, 2023
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Can someone confirm if this is legit? Also, manufacture sticker says 2019, if this is legit can I assume this is the V2?
s-l1600 (1).jpg
s-l1600.jpg

s-l1600 (2).jpg

s-l1600 (3).jpg
 
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tinfoil3d

QSFP28
May 11, 2020
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This looks exactly like my dell-branded dual-port 0XP0NY card(just 2 vs 4 ports), gotta be legit. Giving it away in my freebies thread. How much did you pay for this one?
 
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SCHUNTER1969

New Member
Nov 8, 2023
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This looks exactly like my dell-branded dual-port 0XP0NY card(just 2 vs 4 ports), gotta be legit. Giving it away in my freebies thread. How much did you pay for this one?
I have not purchased yet, these are pictures from an ebay listing. You are giving away a 2 port network card?
 
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kwijibo

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Aug 19, 2023
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Cross posted from https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...070-thin-client-mini-server.29242/post-400625

Can anyone confirm that these are real or fake?
  1. Mfg Date 08/2014 - Cisco UCSC-PCIE-IRJ45 4-Port Ethernet Server Adapter 74-10521-01 A0 (B762) | eBay
  2. Mfg Date 7/2017 -- Cisco UCSC-PCIE-IRJ45 74-10521-01 4P PCIe NIC Full Height | eBay
  3. Mfg Date 08/2015 - 74-10521-01 CISCO GIGABIT QUAD 4 PORT PCI-E NETWORK ADAPTER UCSC-PCIE-IRJ45 | eBay
The first is before the 2/2015 cutoff for the v2, so the other two should be v2?

Any reason a half height bracket wouldn't work on these cards?

Thanks.
 
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Fritz

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Apr 6, 2015
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Just my 2 cents worth, I don't really care if a Intel NIC is a forgery or not as long as it works as advertised and it lasts forever. Over the years I've bought quite a few of them and never had the first failure or other problems. Was I lucky enough to have bought all genuine Intel NIC's? I doubt it.
 

Zyborg231

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Sep 5, 2023
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There's a saying "If you think education is expensive try ignorance." The reason why people buy counterfeit stuff is because of this ignorance. It causes many problems. For example, this thread.
 
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Fritz

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There's a saying "If you think education is expensive try ignorance." The reason why people buy counterfeit stuff is because of this ignorance. It causes many problems. For example, this thread.
Welcome to my ignore list. The only ignorance in this thread is your post.
 
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Zyborg231

New Member
Sep 5, 2023
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My card came with YottaMark which passed the Intel look up test. None of the components matched the fake, all looked as per real card. However the MAC address doesn't quite match. The YottaMark ended with X1. My ipconfig shows X2, X3 and X4 and the fourth port is totally different to the other 3. Anyone know what might be happening? The fact that the first three are really close to the one on the YottaMark surely means something?
Nothing rang my alarm bells while examining the packaging, the card itself. Everything looks legit otherwise as per this thread.
 
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Samir

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My card came with YottaMark which passed the Intel look up test. None of the components matched the fake, all looked as per real card. However the MAC address doesn't quite match. The YottaMark ended with X1. My ipconfig shows X2, X3 and X4 and the fourth port is totally different to the other 3. Anyone know what might be happening? The fact that the first three are really close to the one on the YottaMark surely means something?
Nothing rang my alarm bells while examining the packaging, the card itself. Everything looks legit otherwise as per this thread.
Hmmm...the fakes I got many years ago when I found this thread had similar serial/mac address problems, but they were obvious. The fakers have gotten much better over the years, and it seems the only way you would find out about this particular card is if you ever sent it in for warranty repair as even Intel couldn't tell much over the phone from my experience with them.

If I was in your shoes, if it came from a reputable vendor, have them swap it just for good measure. And if the next one also has a discrepancy, let the vendor know you need a refund as they may have a batch of fakes in their inventory since 2x cards were suspect.