AX411 - $18.75

[Tech Junky]

Mighty Gadget Blog: UK Technology News and Reviews

Mighty Gadget is the UK’s leading gadget blog covering everything new in gadgets, phones, gaming, TVs and other consumer electronics.

mightygadget.co.uk

Picked up a couple of these to play with at 50% less than the Amazon listings for the same cards.

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/AX411.NGWG.NV?qs=pBJMDPsKWf20x9LnYd7Bqw%3D%3D

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/AX411.NGWG.NVX?qs=pBJMDPsKWf30aMbUoqH5Mg%3D%3D

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09YQN5T2C/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[avtella]

Not a drop in replacement card, likely need an Alderlake based machine for it to work, it’s cnvio2.

 

[Tech Junky]

cnvio2

Yup. And it won't work in AMD either. I have two ADL devices though to test with. Other boards may work though depending on specs.

 

[follower]

The only difference is Double Connect. I have both AX210 and AX411. But I don't feel any difference between AX210 and AX411. They are same except Double Connect. Also I don't feel any benefit of Double Connect at all. It's like MIMO but nothing different. Intel killer? I don't understand why they put it in. It's terrible for gaming.

 

[avtella]

Let us know how double connect goes Techjunky. Try to get us some benchmarks if you can.

 

[Tech Junky]

@follower - Killer is just a markup scheme IMO and doesn't do anything but cause issues when something isn't working right.

@avtella - That's the plan. I have to reconfig my AP to put the SSID on both radios to see what kind of difference there is. Then again I've been playing with the AP settings quite a bit recently to test hostapd configs using internal M2's but, the MT7921K pretty much failed spectacularly for this type of use. I sent them back. I'm debating using Qualcomm based options though but, I'm a bit leery since hostapd is complaining about adding anything AX related to the config though @sfx2000 mentioned that it's a driver based error not the program. Not sure I feel like paying up $60/adapter to mess with it if it's just doomed before it even gets ordered. There's no real info posted anywhere of people using them in this manner since they're still fairly new. I've used the QCA based option before though with a QNAP PCIE card and it worked great other than having issues getting 160mhz enabled / working consistently. The reason for the swap on both server / client is the AX210 on the server side requires me to disable the AX function to get the DL/UL to sync at 866mbps otherwise it either goes up to 1200mbps or sits at 6mbps for some reason. Hopefully the 411 is a bit more consistent and allows for a backup connection when I want to move my 5G gateway around to seek better speeds. Right now the 210 is bundled with 2 wired connections in bonding for redundancy and works well.

 

[Tech Junky]

I could have sworn I gave an update but, maybe that was another thread. So, UPS royally F'd up this delivery. Was supposed to show up Saturday and said it was out for delivery. Needless to say that came and went and then they said it was supposed to show up Yesterday and failed yet again. Turns out instead of putting it on the truck for Saturday they put it in a container and shipped it to San Diego instead. I opened cases / sent emails / etc. and finally got a response days later which just reenforces my hatred for UPS when it comes to deliveries. They botched an Amazon delivery a week or so ago as well and bumped it from Saturday to Monday for no reason as well so, I kind of expected them to mess this up as well.

Now, it's a bit of a fight to see if they'll put it on a plane and get it here tomorrow or Friday instead of the proposed Monday date the tracking system is showing now. Seems if it's not one thing with shipping and logistics it's another lately. I've been dinging Amazon on every delivery they've been missing and it's adding up to a year or Prime at this point and that's just in the past few weeks. Definitely not a Mouser problem here as they have no control over UPS and their antics but, it would be nice if they had other options besides UPS to choose from during checkout. Of course now that I go look at options... there's more options if you click a link on the summary page. DOH!

Even FedEX at the same price would've been better, but, USPS tends to be the best option heading into a weekend for delivery. Lesson learned to dig a bit deeper on shipping with Mouser in the future to opt for something not as disappointing as UPS/FX/

 

[Tech Junky]

So, Mouser got back to me this morning after a couple of days of sending them an e-mail letting them know there was a shipping issue with UPS. They sent me a 2nd set of AX411's complimentary and should show up tomorrow. Of course being UPS who knows what will actually happen at this point after sending the original batch to CA for a tour of the west coast for no apparent reason.

Now, this was totally unexpected on their part and they said to keep both orders when they eventually show up and not worry about making a return of either. Now, if Amazon took this approach I probably wouldn't raise hell with them weekly about missed deliveries or lost packages.

 

[follower]

So, Mouser got back to me this morning after a couple of days of sending them an e-mail letting them know there was a shipping issue with UPS. They sent me a 2nd set of AX411's complimentary and should show up tomorrow. Of course being UPS who knows what will actually happen at this point after sending the original batch to CA for a tour of the west coast for no apparent reason.

View attachment 43492

View attachment 43493

Now, this was totally unexpected on their part and they said to keep both orders when they eventually show up and not worry about making a return of either. Now, if Amazon took this approach I probably wouldn't raise hell with them weekly about missed deliveries or lost packages.

View attachment 43494

That's much better than me.

I got an email from Rockport a couple of days ago.

Order Update
Due to high demand some of your items are no longer available.
Our apologies for the inconvenience.
The good news is that we’ll be shipping the rest of your order below!

You know what? It's in stock.

 

[Tech Junky]

Yeah I ran into something like that with another company for my Qualcomm based m2's I wanted to play with for AP hosting. I had used them before for something else and finally emailed them to see why it hadn't shipped and got an immediate refund even though the site says they're in stock. The idea was to make an AP using them for 6E at a fraction of the cost. I still might but the program threw ared flag regarding AX options being involved that has me second guessing the viability.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, the 2nd order showed up on time as scheduled surprisingly.

The packaging is nice to see they aren't cheap like Amazon and just throwing things in a plastic bag and heat sealing it. They used a decent size box so it doesn't disappear into the mix with sorting which makes me question how UPS managed to F up the first delivery so badly and send it to CA. I half expected to have this show up in some odd sized packaging that would allow it to be diverted easily w/o noticing it around another package but, that's not the case here.

UPS is still dragging their ass though on the original shipment with a planned delivery for 8/16 making it two weeks for what should have shown up the next day like the reorder if they had not managed to do whatever they did with it to make it onto a container instead of the truck for delivery.

 

[Tech Junky]

Well, preliminary testing shows it to be the same as the AX210/211 so far. No better or worse though if you have an Intel system it's about 1/2 the price of the the full PCIE based options. It will take a few days to see if there's anything noticeable though as far as DCT or stability is concerned.

It did require setting the WIFI again on Windows for the profile / settings. Linux didn't blink an eye other than needing to update the WIFI IF ID in my various .conf files and the interfaces file.

 

[avtella]

I wouldn’t expect differences in a straight up speed test as the AX200/210/411 are relatively the same chips aside from latter two having 6 GHz.

You’d need to have like simultaneous transfers/tests to see a difference. Try like a simultaneous upload and download test.

 

[Tech Junky]

@avtella

The testing needs some time to figure out if there's a noticeable difference as I don't have anything specific I'm targeting at this point. As normal activity goes on there might be an instance of something sticking out as either a benefit or drawback. I have automated processes that kick off throughout the day that may show some sign of difference between the models.

In the past though the push to AX210 was issues with AX200 being unreliable. We've had this discussion on the now dead board we used to frequent. From the sounds of DCT though it would seem like there's some driver QOS trigger that would push lesser priority traffic to 2.4ghz and keep higher marked data on 5ghz.

 

[avtella]

Do keep us updated if can you get some additional data at some point. I can’t use the AX411 for tests as I have no Alderlake machines sadly.


As with the other board (sadly missed) I still think you got a bad/unit batch or simply drivers matured by the time the 210 was out. At least from my experience with the AX200, having used at least 4-5 in various Dell models, before upgrades to AX210s for 6Ghz

 

[Tech Junky]

@avtella

Could have been one or the other with the 200 but, the 210 was an immediate improvement.

I've been kind of wary about diving into the CNVIO realm as it's locking me to not swapping to AMD at a later date or potential for them being less performant than the full cards. I don't really get the whole offloading of functions to the CPU instead of them being on the card itself. Then again with my testing of different M2 drives recently that opened my eyes a little bit as the SN770 w/o DRAM on it and single sidedness performed just as good as my SN850 but blew it away in the TB4 enclosure for R/W speeds.

Things are definitely changing in the tech realm with how things interoperate for better efficiencies and cost reductions. Overall though I'm impressed with Mouser and their response to UPS messing up the delivery. They've now moved to the top of the list for tech related purchases if this is their normal response. I still have a bone to pick with Amazon over some of their practices in which they owe me a refund on some credits I used on purchases I returned after they didn't work as expected or desired. It's only $25 in credits but, that's a quarter of Prime fees and they add up as I did manage to get back $27.50 in credits from them on another return. It's a numbers game with who you get and how good of a mood they're in. So, I'm 1/2 to paying for the Prime membership due to them missing their delivery dates alone.

 

[Tech Junky]

Just noticed that I didn't have 2.4 enabled on my primary SSID and then when I added it to the profile it kicked me and said I had a bad PW for some reason and ended up rebooting the AP as I didn't feel like figuring out the issue. Now that the SSID profile spans both frequencies DCT should kick in and enable more BW.

 

[Tech Junky]

Ok... so there's a significant improvement in speeds. UL to my server hit 178MB/s where as it usually hovers at ~125MB/s. DL from the server though seems to be a bit slower at ~80MB/s.

Just noticed it's saying it's connected to 802.11g instead of ax..... maybe some tweaking of the details will bump it even further.

 

[Tech Junky]

Yup, adjusted the preferred bands to include a/b/g from a/g and it popped up to 1.2gbps / DL from the server.

 

[Tech Junky]

I tried to capture some more info on how DCT works but, the 2nd band when in use isn't providing much info.