Are there any 4x4 802.11ac miniPCIe cards available?

[mrQQ]

Hi,

Are there any? I know that most laptops don't even have 4x4 antennas to begin with, but still?

Second question: the dells I have seem to have 3x3 antennas, so are there good 3x3 cards readily available?

Thanks.

 

[ktriebol]

I don't think you are going to find a 4 X 4 mini PCIe card. Development seems to have stopped a while back on Mini PCIe cards in favor of M.2.

 

[thiggins]

Are there any? I know that most laptops don't even have 4x4 antennas to begin with, but still?

None I know of.

Second question: the dells I have seem to have 3x3 antennas, so are there good 3x3 cards readily available?

Only 3x3 AC card I know if is from Broadcom (for MacBook Pro). You may be able to find it on eBay, but good luck getting drivers.

Be aware that many notebooks have a WLAN card whitelist. Anything else won't be recognized.

 

[sfx2000]

Only 3x3 AC card I know if is from Broadcom (for MacBook Pro). You may be able to find it on eBay, but good luck getting drivers.

One can find drivers - as the MacBook Pro 11ac card is BCM4360, similar to some other PCI-E cards, but the quality of those drivers is somewhat iffy if one is following the whole thread on Windows 10 vs. the Asus PCI-e ac68 card...

There are some QC-Atheros cards out there - but again, like Tim mentioned, driver availability and quality can be a problem.

Challenge here is that most of the 3*3:3 and 4*4:4 802.11ac chipsets are intended for AP's, not client side... and even then, under Linux, they tend to be NDA only, so it's a real problem...

 

[mrQQ]

Hm, so basically, any laptop is mostly limited to 2:2 256QAM 400/1733 link rates for 2,45Ghz and 5Ghz? Everything else is just a theory, because, I guess, the 1024QAM clients are unavailable aswell?

 

[Razor512]

The lack of good WiFi adapters are a real issue, especially at a time when many companies making laptops, are forgetting to include an Ethernet adapter. I like being able to easily connect my laptop to my router via Ethernet, and then start a backup, and have it go at 90+ MB/s, without having to worry about getting a USB 3 Ethernet adapter (which can cost over $20 for a good one).

Hopefully this will improve when 802.11ad becomes more affordable for laptops.

 

[pege63]

Or you can tru out the USB adapters like Asus USB-AC68, D-Link DWA-192

 

[mrQQ]

ad isn't going to solve around the house speeds

 

[mrQQ]

Seems Dell DW1830 is a 3:3 adapter and possible to obtain aswell.

 

[sfx2000]

The lack of good WiFi adapters are a real issue, especially at a time when many companies making laptops, are forgetting to include an Ethernet adapter.

Meh - there's a lot of good laptops, and there, there are a lot of 2*2:2 based adapters...

My old Thinkpad from work was 2-stream 11ac, and the HP Z-Book 15 mobile workstation is also AC867 - what I'm getting at is that they are both enterprise level machines, and this is what they have...

If both Consumer and Enterprise lap-tops, and not just entry level, are focused on AC867, this is likely where the market is for late 2016, and I suggest this will be were things are in 1H-2017 as well...

 

[aSmallWorld]

we're almost 2 years later and we're still stuck with 2:2 256QAM 400/1733 on laptops meanwhile mobile phones supports 4x4 ...

 

[thiggins]

we're almost 2 years later and we're still stuck with 2:2 256QAM 400/1733 on laptops meanwhile mobile phones supports 4x4 ...

Please tell us which phones have four stream radios.

 

[Internet Man]

we're almost 2 years later and we're still stuck with 2:2 256QAM 400/1733 on laptops meanwhile mobile phones supports 4x4 ...

Please tell us which phones have four stream radios.

Some phones support 4x4 MIMO for LTE networks but not for Wi-Fi. It's probably easier to implement four spatial streams in a mobile phone form factor for lower frequency cellular signals than it is for Wi-Fi.

 

[aSmallWorld]

Please tell us which phones have four stream radios.

I was told the samsung galaxy S9/S9+ was 4x4 mimo LTE AND wifi, with 1024QAM modulation. But Internet Man might be right after all.

 

[Internet Man]

I was told the samsung galaxy S9/S9+ was 4x4 mimo LTE AND wifi, with 1024QAM modulation. But Internet Man might be right after all.

The S9/S9+ only supports two spatial streams for Wi-Fi since only two antennas (ANT1, ANT2) are mentioned in the UNII Test Report FCC certification document. Also, speeds of up to 866.7Mbps are claimed for 256-QAM 802.11ac with 80MHz channels which matches a two-stream implementation.