Question Intel I226-V 2.5GbE on Raptor Lake Motherboards Has a Connection Drop Issue: No Fix Available

[lopri]

It is apparently rebadged to I226-V (from I225-V), and the problem still remains. It's now over 3 years (at least since Z490, iirc) and I am puzzled as to why Intel is unable to fix this. Are they totally incompetent?

PSA: Intel I226-V 2.5GbE on Raptor Lake Motherboards Has a Connection Drop Issue: No Fix Available

The Intel Ethernet i226-V onboard 2.5 GbE controller appears to have a design flaw that causes the Ethernet connection to drop at random times for a few seconds. The I226-V is the latest version of Intel's cost-effective 2.5 Gbps Ethernet networking chips meant for PC motherboards with chipsets...

www.techpowerup.com

TechPowerUp reports dropping signals, but symptoms are not limited to that. Some might lose the speed to 10~100 Mb/s, or adapter not show up in Windows and/or BIOS, and others might see a bunch of error messages in Windows Event Viewer. This is a NIC problem, not an Intel platform problem, so even AMD motherboards are not immune if they come equipped with I225/226-V.

Apparently it does not happen to every board, so it has to be a hardware issue, stemming from defective network chipsets. It is particularly nasty if you have to install Windows 11, which requires internet connection for completing installation. Personally it is one of the reasons I ditched my Raptor Lake build. I suggest everyone who buys a board with Intel NIC check its functionality and if there is a problem, return/replace it.

 

[Shmee]

Ah, well that sucks. It sounds like not every NIC is affected, but sounds like it is a fairly common problem or defect in the line? Should be covered by warranty of the board, but still good to look out for this.

 

[BoomerD]

Well...crap. That's the chipset my new Z690 Tomahawk DDR4 has. <fingers crossed>

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, not too surprising. I've been avoiding boards with "Intel 2.5 gbe" chipsets. I look for RealTek.

 

[lopri]

As an aside, I am pleasantly surprised at how good Mediatek's WiFi and BT are. It's what AMD calls AMD Wi-Fi 6E (RZ616) and it is allegedly co-developed with Mediatek. I think it's just Mediatek MT7922.

 

[Tech Junky]

A lot of options besides Aquantia in the 2.5/5gbps realm have issues. 802.11bz / NBASE-T is a niche bridging for mostly business applications to keep using their old cabling for higher speeds w/o upgrading to full 10gbps.

I look at the built in ports on boards as a backup and put in a NIC that will work with multiple ports.

My board has the RTL8125 on it and only works with certain driver / kernel versions. It had issues under 22.04 but 22.10 seems to work w/o the blacklisting of the module to make it work.

For the longest time though Intel has been the gold standard of things just working when it comes to network / PCIE / USB adapters but, seems they dropped the ball here or coders missed the release of the drivers to be invoked. Either way it will work you just might have to DL to your phone, copy to a USB, and install on the PC to get it to work the first time.

 

[lopri]

What I do not understand is the seeming inability to fix. Network is perhaps Intel's 2nd best (after x86) expertise, or so I thought. There has been 2 revision to I225, and I226 has to be the 3rd revision. It's the 4th. Still not fixed. What gives?

For those wondering, if you check your Network Adapter you will see the revision numbers.

Intel Ethernet Controller I225-V
Intel Ethernet Controller (2) I225-V
Intel Ethernet Controller (3) I225-V
Intel Ethernet Controller I226-V (revision #4)

Revision #3 so far seems least problematic.

 

[lopri]