Comment by anaphor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anaphor | Hacker News Reader

I've heard about lots of people having issues with the new Killer WiFi chipsets (on both Windows and Linux). I have a Dell XPS 13 (9350) which had the Broadcom chipset in it. Eventually, I also started having issues with it under Linux (see: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201853).

It wasn't until I bought an Intel AC 8265 on ebay and replaced it myself that the WiFI actually started working perfectly.

I can't understand why they don't just ship it with Intel WiFi chips instead of these flaky Broadcom and Killer ones. Is it because they have some sort of OEM agreement with Broadcom or Killer? I don't get it. It's a fantastic machine in every other way, but if the wireless is flaky then it's a showstopper.

Also with regard to this new machine, I would rather have good battery life and decent performance than a really fast CPU that drains my battery quickly and heats up my machine.

I've got a bunch of fanless mini-pc's (fit-pc4's). They come with Intel WiFi modules. I intended to turn them info WiFi hot spots, so I tested them out at a company conference. It was a mess - PC's kept dropping off the WiFi network left right and centre. In the end I tracked it down to the Intel modules not supporting more than 13 clients. And they had a bunch of other limitations as well, all of which like the 13 clients weren't documented.

In the end I ordered a bunch (10 or so) different WiFi AC modules off EBay (including newer Intel modules), PXE booted 100 laptops with an image that created a suitable amount of traffic, and powered them on one by one until something failed.

The Intel modules were both the worst and most expensive. They best by far were the atheros wifi modules - and they were also the cheapest.

Now that I think about it, I don't recall seeing an Intel WiFi module in a router, so that outcome was not as surprising now as it was then. And of course now I've seen Intel fail to deliver the 5G modems Apple was waiting on.

The reason you don't see Intel chipsets in routers is because they don't have as cheap and plentiful integrated offerings like Broadcom and Atheros (ARM based SoCs).

The "killer" WiFi in my 9380 is just an ath10k:

  02:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 32)
  Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Killer 1435 Wireless-AC
  Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci

No issues in Linux so far, though YMMV.

I have a 9350 and have had to deal with a LOT of flaky wifi problems too.

I wish they went with Intel chips too :(

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