The Best PCI-E Adapter to Match R7800?

[hlhs]

I'm going to buy the R7800 and I need a matching PCI-E wifi card as well.

Is Asus PCE-AC68 already good enough or do I need PCE-AC88? Thanks

 

[pege63]

USB 3 ASUS USB-AC68, D-link DWA-192

PCI-E ASUS PCE-AC88, PCE-AC68, PCE-AC66 in this order

 

[hlhs]

USB 3 ASUS USB-AC68, D-link DWA-192

PCI-E ASUS PCE-AC88, PCE-AC68, PCE-AC66 in this order

Which of USB 3 or PCI-E uses less CPU resources?

 

[psychopomp1]

Definitely the Asus PCE-AC88 as its the only 4x4 Mimo PCI wifi card around so is a good match for the 4x4 R7800. The PCE-AC68 is a 3x3 card so won't perform as well when paired with a 4x4 router.

And forget about using a USB wifi adaptor on a desktop pc, a decent PCI wifi card will give you far better performance.

 

[hlhs]

Thank you all!

 

[ben805]

Definitely the Asus PCE-AC88 as its the only 4x4 Mimo PCI wifi card around so is a good match for the 4x4 R7800. The PCE-AC68 is a 3x3 card so won't perform as well when paired with a 4x4 router.

And forget about using a USB wifi adaptor on a desktop pc, a decent PCI wifi card will give you far better performance.

I have FIOS gigabit connection and also have both PCE-AC88 and PCE-AC68, connecting to Asus RT-AC5300 and Netgear R7000 about 12ft away. The PCE-AC88 looks better on paper, connected at slightly higher link rate to the RT-AC5300 (1.5Gbps vs 1.3Gbps) but in reality it has not and does not perform any better than the older PCE-AC68. I have tried them both on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 (1607 and 1703 build). As a matter of fact the PCE-AC68 has more consistent throughput of 600~mbps than the PCE-AC88(usually between 200~400mbps) regardless of driver version. Higher link rate does not equal higher throughput.

 

[ulaganath]

Does it habve anything to do with antenaa gains

i seen with 88 a youtuber reached lan max speed of 940+ mbps which is what we are demanding now

 

[ben805]

on paper the 88 have higher gain and it does show higher connected link rate due to the extra antenna, but in the real world it made zero improvement over the 68 when it comes to throughput via my gigabit WAN and LAN. Tested them on multiple routers, including the Asus RT-AC5300, Netgear R7800, R7000, TPlink C3150 V2, and AC-HD Unify AP.

 

[ulaganath]

may be the stock antenna is not that powerfull. When i saw the video it was a 3rd party antenna with high gain of say 9dbi instead of 5 or 7 dbi. May be even 12dbi.

And yes it was 4x4 connection and for sure it has to be 88 instead of 68 and it was clear on lan test by the same software he was able to reach the lan speed of 940mbps which is practical maximum. But i have one query on this

Lan speed is not 940Mbps . It is bridge between the lan to WAN .

As for Lan speed it can go upto 988Mbps . I was able to hit local NAS transfer of 113MB/s equalent to 988Mbps

so bottleneck is the wireless tech its the bridge and fault tolerant loss

 

[ben805]

I bought the 9dBi high gain antenna from Amazon for $18, these behemoths are almost 3x longer than the stock antenna came with the 68 and 88 and they made practically zero difference so don't waste your money on them, i'll be returning them back to Amazon for sure. i have also tried the one from Asus RT-AC5300 on both 68 and 88 and didn't notice any improvement, the stock antenna from both adapters seems to work just fine since i'm getting -35dB on 2.4G channel and -40dB on 5Ghz about 12 to 15ft away separated by a wall.

 

[ulaganath]

netgear launched a wifi adaptor 1900 i believe a7000

 

[psychopomp1]

netgear launched a wifi adaptor 1900 i believe a7000

The Netgear A7000 is a USB wifi adaptor....uuurggghhhh

 

[ulaganath]

I'm going to buy the R7800 and I need a matching PCI-E wifi card as well.

Is Asus PCE-AC68 already good enough or do I need PCE-AC88? Thanks

if you already have ac68 try it and see if the speed is good. Unless dont go for ac88 . Yes ac88 take full advantage of router. But see if you really needed that high bandwidth. for now ac68 should handle things well.

If you have a 1gig internet i believe ac68 might not push to the limit. but ac88 can push closer to reality speed. As loss is every where. So having close to double bandwidth can sometimes comes in handy. So it yourself

 

[kyzhk]

In general if you need a usb/pci wifi adapter, it is usually a desktop computer. In such case I would recommend getting another r7800 and put it in client mode for three good reasons:

1) You get matching number of spatial streams thus getting as close to the advertised PHY rate as possible. Note, in application layer due to overhead in the TCP, Ethernet frames, wifi control and management traffic, you can expect about 50% of the PHY rate as your real application maximum throughput under optimal condition.
2) You can repurpose this "adapter" later very easily. A usb/pci wifi adapter is only good as a client for the most part.
3) Much easier installation compared to pci-e wifi adapter. You don't need to open your case at all.

 

[ben805]

In general if you need a usb/pci wifi adapter, it is usually a desktop computer. In such case I would recommend getting another r7800 and put it in client mode for three good reasons:

1) You get matching number of spatial streams thus getting as close to the advertised PHY rate as possible. Note, in application layer due to overhead in the TCP, Ethernet frames, wifi control and management traffic, you can expect about 50% of the PHY rate as your real application maximum throughput under optimal condition.
2) You can repurpose this "adapter" later very easily. A usb/pci wifi adapter is only good as a client for the most part.
3) Much easier installation compared to pci-e wifi adapter. You don't need to open your case at all.

Good call, i have actually disable the AC88 and been using my old R7000 in media bridge (client) mode hard wired to my PC, which I found to be far more reliable and consistent throughput than any wifi adapters.

 

[psychopomp1]

In general if you need a usb/pci wifi adapter, it is usually a desktop computer. In such case I would recommend getting another r7800 and put it in client mode for three good reasons:

1) You get matching number of spatial streams thus getting as close to the advertised PHY rate as possible. Note, in application layer due to overhead in the TCP, Ethernet frames, wifi control and management traffic, you can expect about 50% of the PHY rate as your real application maximum throughput under optimal condition.
2) You can repurpose this "adapter" later very easily. A usb/pci wifi adapter is only good as a client for the most part.
3) Much easier installation compared to pci-e wifi adapter. You don't need to open your case at all.

Using a 4x4 router instead of a 4x4 PCI card (eg Asus PCE-AC88) for a desktop PC is waaaaaaay overkill. I have the Asus PCE-AC88 installed in my desktop and paired with the Netgear R9000, it gives me download speeds of 40 MB/s on my 330 Mbps FTTP service - very identical to a wired connection. Now why on earth would i want to use a router instead?

 

[kyzhk]

Using a 4x4 router instead of a 4x4 PCI card (eg Asus PCE-AC88) for a desktop PC is waaaaaaay overkill. I have the Asus PCE-AC88 installed in my desktop and paired with the Netgear R9000, it gives me download speeds of 40 MB/s on my 330 Mbps FTTP service - very identical to a wired connection. Now why on earth would i want to use a router instead?

From one famous deal share website the historical low for pce-ac88 was $93, and r7800 was $140.

the benefit of using a router in client mode is that you are very flexible with what you want it to do. You can use it as a dedicated sqm device, you can use it in client mode on 5ghz and rebroadcast in 2.4ghz in AP mode(well, you could rebroadcast on 5ghz, but then you put double the work on it with halved throughput), you can have some extra Ethernet ports to share around with other wired devices nearby, you can offload openvpn on it etc. On the other hand a pcie wifi adapter is quite limited with what you can do with it.

 

[Belle Bowler]

I am using EDUP WiFi PCIe Network Adapter Card. EDUP PCI-E wireless dual band card has one of the fastest next-generation. It supports the latest IEEE 802.11AC wireless standards and is backwardly compatible with the other 802.11 a/b/g/n protocols. It gives you the great speed of 867Mbps on 5Ghz and 400Mbps on 2.4Ghz frequencies. he WPA/WPA2 security standards will make you have a safe network and protects against the threat of intruders.

 

[ulaganath]

No for you to get best wireless speed upto 900+Mbps get A7000 from Netgear it works if you have right spec to support it. Drive's at time glitchy but once started working it works well i have internal Realtek card gives me 77MB/s and this a7000 have reached upto 108MB/s ie 964Mbps apx