1GbE Comparison

The Charts Database has a handful of NASes based on dual-core general-purpose processors to compare. But since they were tested on a different testbed, I have to include the caution that the results aren't directly comparable. That said, I filtered the NAS Ranker to show only products based on dual-core general purpose CPUs and got seven products, with the Thecus N6850 and N8850 TopTowers tied at the top and the N7710-G at the bottom of the rank. But before you dismiss the N7710-G, note the #12 rank among all 70 NASes ranked.

NAS Ranking - Dual-core CPU NASes

Putting the N6850 and N7710-G Ranker Performance details side by side, we see the N7710-G's main weaknesses are in the Directory Copy tests. The other largest difference was the N7710-G's 99 MB/s Video Playback vs. 113 MB/s for the N6850. Its 39 MB/s same-as-USB 2.0 NTFS format backup result vs. the N6850's 84 MB/s didn't help either. Keep in mind that the NAS Ranker doesn't include 10GbE results in the ranking—not that it would have made a difference with no other 10GbE results to rank against!

Thecus N7710-G, N6850 Performance Summary Comparison

Use the NAS Charts to further explore performance.

Closing Thoughts

With its odd number of drive bays (pun intended) and bundled 10GbE interface, the N7710-G doesn't really have any direct competitors at the moment. QNAP has plenty of "10GbE Ready" desktop and rackmount NASes with empty PCIe slots ready to accept Emulex, Intel and QNAP-branded NICs, but no models with 10GbE built in.

NETGEAR's six-bay RN716 is the only other 10GbE-equipped NAS that comes to mind. But its two 10GbE ports, quad-core Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge E3-1225v2 processor, 16 GB of ECC RAM and $2700+ street price (diskless) put it in a substantially different class.

So if you're itching to get a 10GbE NAS on your LAN and willing to put up with Thecus' OS quirks, the N7710-G at $1300 could be a good way to dip your toes into the rising 10GbE tide.