What are the options for 10GbE on Mac Pros?

[overshoot]

I am running my MacPro with this chipset under Catalina and it works just fine.

 

[TECK]

Can anyone compile a list of 10GB SFP+ cards that work out of the box with Catalina+ into a Mac Pro 5,1?

 

[TECK]

You can add "HP 560SFP+" to the list.... (intel 82559ES)
Just converted a couple for use on a mac pro... 5.1

Seeing about 820MB/s (RD) with synology 1817+

Interestingly, the one i shoved in the synology did not require any changes, but the kernal bitches about the card being throttled due to lack of PCI bandwidth. from the synology side

Is the card working out of the box in a Mac Pro?

 

[Vvglyy Wzxit]

I just installed a 10Gtek 10GbE PCIe (Intel X520-DA1/ Ship 85299EN) + a passive 10Gtek 10G SFP+ (copper twinax) direct attach cable direct from my 10G router, just to test.

10G vs Mac Pro 2012 Network card bandwidth tests attached.
My ISP announced 10G EPON technology.
I use latest OCLP and I added smalltree8529x.kext in kext folder.

Is there a better way to have around 8000 Mbps, like other users of my ISP (Free-France here)

 

[razorfsh]

Is the card working out of the box in a Mac Pro?

No idea.... card has been around for years, ay or may not have been modded.

 Bus:    PCI
  Vendor ID:    0x8086
  Device ID:    0x10fb
  Subsystem Vendor ID:    0x8086
  Subsystem ID:    0x000a
  Revision ID:    0x0001
  PCIe Link Speed:    5.0 GT/s

plus it nees a 3rd party driver from smalltrees..

 

[albert-e]

Fast forward to 2023. I am sharing a successful install of an Aquantia AN-107 10Gb NIC in a mac5,1 in macOS Ventura 13.5, OCLP 0.6.8; just set this entry in the config.plist "<key>ForceAquantiaEthernet</key><true/>". This entry default is</key><false/>

 

[pnerd]

Fast forward to 2023. I am sharing a successful install of an Aquantia AN-107 10Gb NIC in a mac5,1 in macOS Ventura 13.5, OCLP 0.6.8; just set this entry in the config.plist "<key>ForceAquantiaEthernet</key><true/>". This entry default is</key><false/>

Newbie question: where is the config.plist file you referenced? I have an AQC107 card that worked fine up till macOS 11.2 and stopped working in 11.3 with the Apple driver not loading.

 

[yeti]

Hi everyone,

I've purchased a STLab N-540 from eBay which is a AQC107 chipset.
It shows up like this under LSPCI:
1D6A(vendor ID), D107(Device ID), 1D6A, 0001, Aquantia Corp., AQC107 NBase-T/IEEE 802.3bz Ethernet Controller [AQtion]

Under Mojave I am getting 2 drivers to load up but it won't see the cable connected:

- AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtion
- AppleEthernetAquantiaAqtionFirmware

On TonyMac they're talking about using the Clover Kext patcher to patch the Kext.
Is there anything that can be done on a real Mac to make that card compatible?

I have an EEPROM programmer so if necessary I can flash a firmware directly to the card if there is a detachable EEPROM.

Thanks!

The problem with cards with the Aquantia AQC107 chipset is that there two versions of the chip: the standard AQC107 and a "secure" AQC107S version. Apple's integrated driver only works out of the box with cards that have the AQC107S version. The only straightforward solution that I know of for those buying the non compatible AQC107 version is to use OpenCore Legacy Patcher and force the Aquantia chipset in the config.plist as it has been described here.

 

[yeti]

Following this thread's initial question I suggest buying Sonnet's Solo10G 10GBASE-T PCIe Card (product number G10E-1X-E3 for those looking for it in Amazon or eBay). It is not the cheapest option but they do have the Aquantia AQC107S chipset (now Marvell) and work out of the box under macOS with the integrated drivers (10.13.x and up) and they also work under Windows and Linux downloading the driver. They are coming down in price (1 port versions) and I recently bought several at $89 per card.

After using cards with the Tehuti driver for a long time I had to switch to Sonnet Solo10G because Tehuti closed shop and now it is difficult to find cards with that chipset (only second hand or surplus offerings) or the ones I find are very expensive (they used to be really cheap). I had a very good experience with the ST-Labs N-480 model that uses the Tehuti TN4010 chipset and I still use a couple of them in cMPs, because it is supported from 10.10.x to 11.x (driver version 1.55) and possibly later because the driver is 64bit (I haven't tried it past BigSur but it should work) on cMPs. The original Tehuti web page is gone (although you can still find some of its pages in the Internet Archive) but if any of you needs any of the drivers I have archived all of them just in case.

And finally OWC's 10G Ethernet PCIe card. This card works really well and it is wonderful as most OWC products, but they only work if you are running 12.x Monterey and up, as they use the newer Marvell AQC113CS chipset (previously Aquantia) and that chipset is not recognized by the integrated macOS drivers previous to Monterey and there is no driver for prior versions of macOS. They are also coming down in price, recently $99, and if you are running OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install Monterey they are a solid option on cMPs.

 

[OWC_TAL]

Following this thread's initial question I suggest buying Sonnet's Solo10G 10GBASE-T PCIe Card (product number G10E-1X-E3 for those looking for it in Amazon or eBay). It is not the cheapest option but they do have the Aquantia AQC107S chipset (now Marvell) and work out of the box under macOS with the integrated drivers (10.13.x and up) and they also work under Windows and Linux downloading the driver. They are coming down in price (1 port versions) and I recently bought several at $89 per card.

After using cards with the Tehuti driver for a long time I had to switch to Sonnet Solo10G because Tehuti closed shop and now it is difficult to find cards with that chipset (only second hand or surplus offerings) or the ones I find are very expensive (they used to be really cheap). I had a very good experience with the ST-Labs N-480 model that uses the Tehuti TN4010 chipset and I still use a couple of them in cMPs, because it is supported from 10.10.x to 11.x (driver version 1.55) and possibly later because the driver is 64bit (I haven't tried it past BigSur but it should work) on cMPs. The original Tehuti web page is gone (although you can still find some of its pages in the Internet Archive) but if any of you needs any of the drivers I have archived all of them just in case.

And finally OWC's 10G Ethernet PCIe card. This card works really well and it is wonderful as most OWC products, but they only work if you are running 12.x Monterey and up, as they use the newer Marvell AQC113CS chipset (previously Aquantia) and that chipset is not recognized by the integrated macOS drivers previous to Monterey and there is no driver for prior versions of macOS. They are also coming down in price, recently $99, and if you are running OpenCore Legacy Patcher to install Monterey they are a solid option on cMPs.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/AKiTiO/PCIE10GB/ Here is one more with the 107S if you need older MacOS support.

 

[yeti]

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/AKiTiO/PCIE10GB/ Here is one more with the 107S if you need older MacOS support.

Hey, thanks for chipping in @OWC_TAL… sorry if my information was not accurate about your products but I went to your site and under PCIe networks adapters it was not listed https://www.owc.com/solutions/pcie-expansion?expansion-type=network-adapters

It is great that you still keep this product. If you prefer I can edit my post and change it to include your information.

 

[OWC_TAL]

Ah likely the AKiTiO card wasn't added since it is not a branded OWC card. Not your fault not finding it. Here is the link for all cards sold right now: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/expansion-cards/pcie/10g-ethernet

The AQC107S is no longer in production from my understanding. So I'm not sure how long these cards will be around, but there are still a fair amount in stock for now. There is also a dual NIC 113cs as you may have seen, but would require the newer drives in MacOS 12+

 

[overshoot]

Newbie question: where is the config.plist file you referenced? I have an AQC107 card that worked fine up till macOS 11.2 and stopped working in 11.3 with the Apple driver not loading.

It's the opencore config.plist found on your EFI partition at /EFI/EFI/OC