Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E card disappoints with slower than expected speeds (Solved)

[Tech Junky]

@L&LD

That's interesting. I've got one in my laptop in addition to the TB4 enclosure along with the SN850 in the same laptop. It all depends on a few different characteristics of the system. RAM plays more into the performance of the SN770 since it doesn't have DRAM. It's kind of like comparing the WIFI AX210 to the AX411 and the CNVI debate we're having here.

While the 770 tops out Gen4 / 5GB/s the SN850 tops out at 7GB/s but is ~50% more in price due to the DRAM. (marketing speeds)

However in the TB4 the 770 hits 3.1/2.8GB/s while the 850 only hits 2.8/1.2GB/s. (IRL speed / actual use)
The 850 though internally hits 5.3/3.9GB/s.
Internally the 770 on a Gen3 3.5/3.5GB/s and on a gen4 5.2/5GB/s.

 

[L&LD]

Yes, the specifics do matter, a lot.

I don't care too much about the advertised speeds. The system felt slower (with 32GB RAM) and the battery life was worse. What it's supposed to get at this point isn't interesting to me anymore.

On a desktop, that same SN770 performed much closer to what I would expect (and with much less RAM too).

 

[Tech Junky]

In my case both systems are virtually identical with 12700's in both and 32GB in the laptop / 16GB in the server.

Everything on the same tier makes comparisons easier and marketing is just an indicator of where it could go for speeds in reality. I never expect the package stats to actually occur. Trust but verify is the name of the game. A lot of this comes into play across the tech spectrum though.

Unless you're testing and logging things it's all subjective on the performance side. I've tested and logged performance and if the 770 was available when I picked up the 850's I would have went with the 770's based on the performance for the price. There's not much of a difference between the two when considering the premium you pay for the 850.

There's not much to debate when it comes to the numbers. The numbers will be different in different systems. When comparing several drives in a single system though it's apples to apples and the specs observed don't lie. Moving them to another system and testing with the same parameters with slightly different results due to the whole system being slightly different is expected as well. Consistency within margin between the two though is pretty tight for comparison. RAM doesn't play much into the speeds of the drives though as the server is running 3600mhz and the laptop 3200mhz.

Now, the difference comes to the DRAM or HMB... I would expect the 770 to consume more RAM due to not having a DRAM on the card but, it's imperceptible. Though with testing of the TB4 enclosure I noticed that multithreading to the drive increased the throughput vs just bulk moving data in a single operation. If it leveled out to 600MB/s adding another stream bumped it up to the max in the enclosure of 2.8GB/s.

There are some nuances in how the data is handled between the different types of drives out there. This is what makes the prices vary by $100+ for a 1TB drive. It all comes down to how your system wants to use the drive and which will provide better performance for your typical use. Then there's the whole OS issue of Linux / Mac / Windows which plays a bigger role in how data is handled.

 

[rmiller1959]

So you want to spend more money?

SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal SSD

(I would buy this drive today even for a PCIe 3.0 system. The drive can always be reused in a future laptop purchase).

I haven't thought about future-proofing, but your point is very well taken!

 

[avtella]

On a laptop, I installed a 1TB SN770 and promptly removed it. The performance and battery life were worse than the stock SSD (don't recall the brand/model, but it may have been an OEM SK Hynix version at 512GB).

WD SSDs not sure if it’s fixed recently, but they had issues dropping to lower power states, well at least the SN750 did, which would result in lower laptop battery life. I’d probably go for an Sk Hynix excellent battery life and performance, hard to beat the price value for what you get. I’d also still recommend Samsung if discounted, they do well even as the drives fill up. Lot of good options though really. Just avoid Silicon Motion 2262 based drives. Problem is a lot of times people pay attention to empty drive tests and ignore more real world performance like when the drive is significantly filled. Lastly I’d pay more attention to random 4K at Que Depth of 1 performance that’s what more important in day to day usage/snappiness. Sequential ie those massive 3-7 Gbs numbers aren’t as important unless your workload involves a ton of just large file transfers or something, which isn’t what the average person is doing a lot.

I personally would avoid DRAM less drives, they are going to have significantly worse life. Okay if just surfing the web or doing routine things but if you are a user having workloads with lots of writes I’d avoid those. Sometimes the price difference isn’t even worth considering them versus standard models from maybe a different brand.

 

[rmiller1959]

So you want to spend more money?

SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal SSD

(I would buy this drive today even for a PCIe 3.0 system. The drive can always be reused in a future laptop purchase).

So I bought the exact NVMe SSD you recommended, and an SK Hynix SATA SSD for the secondary drive bay, replacing two WD drives. I also bought the Intel AX411 Wi-Fi card. I will report back here with the results of my upgrades!

 

[L&LD]

Looking forward to your report!

And, wow, you're fast.

 

[RMerlin]

I personally would avoid DRAM less drives, they are going to have significantly worse life. Okay if just surfing the web or doing routine things but if you are a user having workloads with lots of writes I’d avoid those. Sometimes the price difference isn’t even worth considering them versus standard models from maybe a different brand.

What happens with an HMB SSD in case of a power outage? With DRAM caches, a good SSD will have capacitors allowing it time to flush its buffers before running out of power. But if your block allocation tables and your data buffers are on the host that just went down?

 

[rmiller1959]

Looking forward to your report!

And, wow, you're fast.

Well, I can report that the AX411 does NOT work with the Intel Core i5-1035G1 mobile processor. Device Manager shows a Network Processor with a yellow exclamation point next to it, and installing the Intel drivers doesn't seem to correct it. Rebooting the system didn't do anything, nor did resetting the networks.

I would have immediately put back the AX210 card except one of the wireless antenna connectors on the card came off with the wire! Lesson learned there and a new AX210 card arrives tomorrow. Tonight I upgrade the M.2 and SATA SSDs, which I hope will be an uneventful process.

 

[Tech Junky]

@rmiller1959

I suspected that was the case but, now it's documented here that it doesn't work with 500 series systems. The AX210 though works with any system since it's a full card and not cnvio based. Replacement antennas are cheap just a bit of a pain to route the cable through the hinge. Just takes more time and patience. I had to route a new EDP cable to upgrade to a 4k panel on one laptop and it went fine but,, it's a bit precarious to do balancing things.

I can suggest new antennas if you need links.

 

[rmiller1959]

@rmiller1959

I suspected that was the case but, now it's documented here that it doesn't work with 500 series systems. The AX210 though works with any system since it's a full card and not cnvio based. Replacement antennas are cheap just a bit of a pain to route the cable through the hinge. Just takes more time and patience. I had to route a new EDP cable to upgrade to a 4k panel on one laptop and it went fine but,, it's a bit precarious to do balancing things.

I can suggest new antennas if you need links.

As far as I can tell, the antennas are OK. I had to remove the connector that broke off the AX210 card from one of the antenna terminals, but I was then able to attach both antennas successfully to the AX411. In the end, I'm out $25 for the cost of a new card. I'm going to try and not break the AX411 since I've already processed it for return (!), but if I damage the antenna in the process, I'd welcome any links you can provide. Thanks!

 

[Tech Junky]

The mhf4 connector on the card came off? Wow! I had the end of a cable come off but never the connector on the card. I would think that might have more to do with the connection issue Now, here's a secret order one of the ones you broke and when it comes send the broken one back and then you're not $25 short.

 

[rmiller1959]

Thought I'd provide a picture of what broke off of the AX210 wireless card when I tried to disconnect the antenna wires (see connector #2). I'm assuming the card still works, so if anyone out there can repair the connector, I'll be happy to mail the card to you!

 

[avtella]

Yeah that can happen, happened to me once if you yank it with an especially tight antenna cable connected. Shouldn’t be too hard to re-solder, regardless I wouldn’t return it at this point.

 

[rmiller1959]

So you want to spend more money?

SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB PCIe NVMe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal SSD

(I would buy this drive today even for a PCIe 3.0 system. The drive can always be reused in a future laptop purchase).

My Wi-Fi 6E upgrade saga has a happy ending! Since I decided to do a major upgrade of my drives as well as my Wi-Fi capabilities, I bought the SK Hynix Platinum P41 2 TB NVMe drive as my OS/apps drive, and the Sk Hynix Gold P31 1 TB SATA 6GB/s SSD for my data files. I also received the new AX210 Wi-FI 6E card yesterday after breaking the original one.

Since I did a Windows reset on my main drive before cloning it to the P41, I had a clean drive to work with, and I quickly added my main apps to get it to a usable state. With both new drives installed and the AX210 in place, my laptop's performance is snappy and responsive. It's a real pleasure to use!

Moreover, my Wi-Fi speeds are more along the lines of what I expected when I upgraded:

With the only casualty being the original AX210 I purchased, all's well that ends well!

 

[Clark Griswald]

@rmiller1959
Good to read your setup is working well.
Perhaps a "solved" in the thread title will assist others

 

[Tech9]

if anyone out there can repair the connector

If you have the connector, almost any computer/cellphone repair shop can do it for you. It's 2min time fix.

 

[rmiller1959]

@rmiller1959
Good to read your setup is working well.
Perhaps a "solved" in the thread title will assist others

Done!

I have one postscript to my story. After the upgrades, I had an issue where the Wi-Fi adapter could not connect to the internet coming out of sleep mode. I had to reset the adapter to get things back to normal. On a whim, I went into the adapter properties and unchecked the box next to "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." The problem immediately disappeared, and I now connect instantly to the Internet coming out of sleep mode. I didn't realize that an innocuous setting like that could cause issues. This is just a warning for anyone encountering a similar problem.

 

[rmiller1959]

If you have the connector, almost any computer/cellphone repair shop can do it for you. It's 2min time fix.

I appreciate the suggestion! I thought the same thing, but when I extracted the broken connector from the wireless antenna terminal, it looked too damaged to be reused. I am still unsure what I did to it because I was trying my best to be deliberate and delicate in disconnecting the wires. As I said, a lesson learned!

 

[Tech9]

No big loss, the module is not that expensive anyway. Have a good weekend!