First boards with 5.0Gb/s Realtek will not be released this year due to adapter issues
In June, Computex 2023 brought news of 5.0Gb/s Ethernet adapters coming soon to motherboards courtesy of Realtek-developed RTL8126 low-cost NIC chip. It would follow in the footsteps of the previous RTL8125, which enabled mass adoption of 2.5Gb/s Ethernet networking on motherboards. Unfortunately, it looks like the advent of 5,0Gb/s networking will be delayed as the RTL8126 suffers from flaws and the rollout was cancelled.
In June, there was information that these network adapters could appear on the boards as soon as later this year. RTL8126 NICs were supposed to be integrated on some of the LGA 1700 platform models with the Z790 chipset that are supposed to be available this autumn to accompany the newly released Raptor Lake Refresh processors (Intel Core 14th generation).
However, the Dutch website Tweakers.net has published a report stating that the plan has changed and this year’s batch of new boards will not introduce the RTL8126 adapter. Unfortunately, this new 5.0Gb/s NIC is still suffering from flaws or stability issues that make it impossible to launch at the moment. Realtek is working to resolve these, however the fixes will not be available in time. It is not clear from the report whether these issues are hardware-based and will be addressed by a revision of the chip, or if they can be fixed at the driver or firmware level.
In any case, this has led to a delay in the launch of these integrated network adapters, as Tweakers.net found out from several board manufacturers during Gamescom. For example, MSI and ASRock were planning new Z790 boards equipped with the RTL8126 adapter. However, all motherboards that were being displayed with 5,0Gb/s NIC functionality at Computex, were now shown to with just the older 2.5Gb/s Realtek RTL8125-BG NICs at Gamescom, which shows that the manufacturers redesigned them due to the reported issues.
The Realtek RTL8126-CG could have a similar price and form factor to the Realtek RTL8125 that is currently in use widely, so it won’t increase the price of the boards much and there are good chances it could lead to a quick spread of this faster Ethernet connectivity. The NIC has a PCIe 3.0×1 interface, uses an 8×8 mm package, and should only reach maximum power draw of 1.7 W. The price for board manufacturers could be under 5 USD. Tweakers reports that current alternatives, which are mainly Marvell adapters (Aquantia AQtion), cost four to six times more. They also have larger packages and power consumption (possibly requiring cooling), far from being “low-cost” solutions.
Arrival in 2024
Realtek’s RTL8126 issues could hopefully be resolved by the time the next generation of boards arrives next year. According to Tweakers, it’s now expected the 5,0Gb/s NICs will appear on LGA 1851 socket boards for Intel’s upcoming next-generation processor, Arrow Lake-S, in the second half of 2024. They should also be used on new AM5 boards for AMD Ryzen processors with Zen 5 architecture, that are also coming in 2024.
Source: Tweakers
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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