ConnectX-2 and Win 11

[LIGISTX]

I’ll be upgrading my rig soon, and I currently run connectX-2’s in both my PC and Truenas VM for fast 10 gig network between them. 
 

 

Reading up on it a bit, it looks like there isn’t a connectX-2 driver for Win 11 and looks like folks have had issues getting them to work.

 

Does anyone have any feedback, or recommend a simple solution? Looks like I could potentially upgrade to X-4’s as they are supported, but I am not sure if I would also then need different transceivers. I currently am using Finisar FTLX8571D3BCL SFP+SR/SW 10Gb/s 850nm Multimode SFP+. 

[Needfuldoer]

Are Intel or Broadcom 10gbe cards not an option?

[LIGISTX]

3 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Are Intel or Broadcom 10gbe cards not an option?

Technically, anything is an option I suppose. 
 

But ideally I’d like to keep using the fiber I have ran, and if possible reuse the transceiver(s). I am not very familiar with sfp+ and anything over gigabit rj45 networking, but I fairly easily got these two X-2’s to work happy, but it’s looking like that will not be possible on windows 11, so ideally I would like to leave the X-2 in my TrueNAS box (it works fine…) and replace the one in my windows box with a backwards compatible unit (idea being, would I be able to use an X-4 with same tranceiver, and it’ll talk to the X-2 in TrueNAS fine?) so I can just save some money. 
 

TLDR, looks like either my mobo or CPU took a dump on my main rig (warranty is over ;( ), so 13700k build is incoming. Would rather not ALSO have to redo my networking setup, so I am trying to keep costs down as much as possible. 13700k + 4080 + water blocks = I hate computers sometimes. But I am open to understanding all of my options. 

[AbydosOne]

1 hour ago, LIGISTX said:

Reading up on it a bit, it looks like there isn’t a connectX-2 driver for Win 11 and looks like folks have had issues getting them to work.

I can't speak to Windows 11, but in Win10, I just installed the Win8.1 driver package and that worked fine.

 

36 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

Technically, anything is an option I suppose. 

Failing that working, ConnectX3s have available Win10 (though for 1903, I think) that also work fine in current Win10 (what I'm writing this on).

 

Failing that, I would suggest an Intel X710-DA2, which (I'm pretty sure) runs the standard Intel network driver package that all their recent chips use (my X540-T2 used the same drivers as the dual i225-v on my motherboard). That should take most of the guesswork out of continued driver support out of the equation. Just make sure you have some airflow over the card, as they're intended to be server cards.

[LIGISTX]

9 minutes ago, AbydosOne said:

I can't speak to Windows 11, but in Win10, I just installed the Win8.1 driver package and that worked fine.

 

Failing that working, ConnectX3s have available Win10 (though for 1903, I think) that also work fine in current Win10 (what I'm writing this on).

 

Failing that, I would suggest an Intel X710-DA2, which (I'm pretty sure) runs the standard Intel network driver package that all their recent chips use (my X540-T2 used the same drivers as the dual i225-v on my motherboard). That should take most of the guesswork out of continued driver support out of the equation. Just make sure you have some airflow over the card, as they're intended to be server cards.

From the research I have done, anything prior to x4 doesn’t work on Win 11. Why… I don’t know. But it seems like the prevailing answer is they wouldn’t work. 
 

I will look into the Intel option, are they SFP+? I am learning more about SFP+/SFP28 then I honestly cared to learn, but I am still a bit confused. Serve the home makes it sound like you can usually use sfp+ transceivers in sfp28 ports, but let’s say that doesn’t work, would I be able to do a point to point link between a sfp28 transceiver and a sfp+? I assume as long as the 28 can link at 10 gig, it’ll work?