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Intel AC 7260 and drivers

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feelyat

Occasional Visitor
I recently swapped out my old laptop wifi card for an Intel AC-7260. In general, it has worked great -- no problems to speak of. I'm curious about one thing, though. I let Windows (8.1, 64bit) discover the device and find the drivers, and everything seems to be working fine, including Bluetooth (which this laptop never had before). Windows has installed driver version 16.5.3.6 and won't automatically install anything newer. Intel has newer drivers on their download site, but I'm not sure if I should install them, or if I should just leave well enough alone.

Can someone tell me definitively:

(a) If I should bother downloading newer drivers from Intel vs sticking with the ones found by Windows.
(b) If it's better to install "drivers only" or to use the Intel PROSet/Wireless software?
 
1) Download
2) Proset

I DID encounter an issue moving to newer drivers with mine and one of my APs. I had to disable U-ADSP in the driver settings to get it to work properly.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Out of curiosity, what's the advantage to using the PROSet software? Are there features missing from the driver only package?
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the reply.

Out of curiosity, what's the advantage to using the PROSet software? Are there features missing from the driver only package?

Proset has more reporting features that are relevant to enterprise - and for folks that like to get a little bit deeper into the stack - ProSet also replaces the Windows native management tools, which can be a plus for some folks.

For most folks, the driver only download, if ProSet is not already installed is sufficient.
 
I personally prefer driver-only, as the features in Proset are not things that I ever need or want.

And frankly, I don't think a driver should take over the OS's management UI. Especially when that driver UI comes from Intel, which... let's say I've had way too many bad experiences with Intel's software and driver quality. :p Their hardware is great, but software is obviously not their forte.

As for what version to use, in my personal experience, the new 17.1.0.19 suffers from a modest (but consistent) performance penalty compared to 17.0.6.

And their Bluetooth drivers newer than 17.0.1401.x have issues with device reconnection.
 
I personally prefer driver-only, as the features in Proset are not things that I ever need or want.
I think I'm coming to that conclusion myself. I prefer to use the connection UI in Windows, in part so that my Windows experiences can remain consistent across different machines.
As for what version to use, in my personal experience, the new 17.1.0.19 suffers from a modest (but consistent) performance penalty compared to 17.0.6.
Are there any documents (changelog, etc) that explain the difference between the two versions? It'd be nice to know what they changed that might explain the performance penalty.
 
Are there any documents (changelog, etc) that explain the difference between the two versions? It'd be nice to know what they changed that might explain the performance penalty.

No. There is a new (optional, disabled by default) "throughput booster" option, but the release notes make no mention of it, much less offer an explanation for what it is. In fact, the release notes still speak of support for 6200, 6230, and 6250 cards in the legacy branch even though the legacy branch drivers in this driver package stripped support for those cards. The inaccuracy/outdatedness of Intel's driver release notes is nothing new.

See this thread:
http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=19009
 
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