Intel 7260?

No. None at all. Intel 6230's issues never got fixed and don't expect 7260 to fare much better.
If you buy it to use it on 5GHz band as 802.11ac card, it's OK but 2.4GHz band usage is far from ideal and is most likely going to stay like that.

 

Thanks for the fast reply.

That is what I figured as well, was hoping someone would give me a different answer, ah well, guess better to wait for the next batch of wireless ac cards.

 

everybody is moving to 5ghz, 2.4ghz is pretty much saturated anyway, so i'd go for 802.11ac

i did that last year and never looked back.

 

Unfortunately I still need 2.4ghz to connect to some networks that I cant upgrade.

 

802.11ac routers are dual bands, 2.4 and 5ghz. you wouldn't loose 2.4ghz just for upgrading. and are of course N compatible as ac is N on steroids.

Connect this ac card to 5ghz and whatever else can connect to 5ghz, that will increase your bandwitdh 2 or 3 times as i bet your airspace is very congested with all 2.4ghz talking over each other. the rest can connect at 2.4

the Netgear R6250 is affordable but there are even cheaper alternatives like D-link and TP-link, Asus would be good too.

 

There are routers that I need to connect to often, and they do not support wireless-A, I have to deal with routers that support only G , and some support G and N.

In case I needed stability in the 2.4ghz frequency for routers that I can't upgrade, would it help to limit the 7260 card to wireless G (54mbps), and have a stable connection with fast ping, and no drops ? and ~20mbps throughput.

Is it even possible to do that limit ?

 

Well its not too long to wait for the new Intel AC cards:

2014 broadwell-skylake roadmap

I'm looking forward to 'Maple Peak' and then 'Douglas Peak'

 

why would you want to do that with this card? you'd still be in 2.4ghz.

this card is backwards compatible, so if your main house router is old, i say time to upgrade. nothing else needs to change.

 

Oddly limiting 7260 to 802.11g speeds fixes instability issues (even though it's still 2.4GHz band).
Card can be forced do work in 802.11g mode in advanced driver settings.

As for "time to upgrade". I don't buy that argument. I mean it probably is and I did just that but I can't run around airports and hotel lobbys screaming that they should upgrade their routers/APs because I bought a crappy card that doesn't work properly on 2.4GHz band. The whole point of notebook is that you can use it everywhere and 2.4GHz band is way more popular than 5GHz.

 

ok so he should get rid of this card ? fine with me. good luck with that.

i run in 5ghz and i don't have stability issues on this card.

 

Haven't bought anything yet, and i do not have the resources to by a good AC router soon anyway, so getting this for wireless G only is a bad option anyway.

 

I have a TP-Link single band N router, Windows 7 Pro x-64. The N-7260 in my new Dell Inspiron 5537 would only give around 20mbps speedtest.net downloads despite (reported) normal N connection to the router. Stable but way slower than it should be. Problem persisted even after Dell replaced the card thinking it might be defective. So I bought a new Intel Centrino N-6205 on eBay for $16, and immediately got 46mbps. Adjusted a few settings in the card properties, and now get 55-60mbps, which is what I should be getting. IDK, maybe they had a big batch of lemons with the 7260s? Different settings and drivers sure didn't make much of a difference...

 

Just wanted to share my experience with the intel ac7260 and 2.4 Ghz router (billion 7800NL).

I replaced in a HP Pavilion N (i7-4500u) the original card with the ac7260.
Did a fresh install of windows 8.1, ungraded the drivers to 17.02 from intel and started to have connectivity problems, every 10 mn internet would drop.
So I uninstalled the driver and replaced it with the 16.10 HP driver.
Connection has been stable for 4 days, no drop out any longer, speed varies in between 150 and 300 Mbps.

In the advanced setup just changed the preferred band to 2.4 Ghz.

 

WHQL Intel Wireless ProSet 17.0.3.2

Intel PROSet/Wireless WiFi Software Version 17.0.3.2 WHQL

 

Why isn't this available for downloading at Intel's Website? And neither is Intel RST 13 WHQL...

 

@Marecki_clf

That has been the case for a while now. These drivers will hit Intel website within a week or so.
Station Drivers is a very reliable website so no worries here.

 

Very often an Intel driver that is WHQL and not Official Intel on station-drivers comes from a computer maker like MSI,Gigabyte,Lenovo etc

The 1st AC-7260 driver,way back when the AC-7260 was first released,was found on the Sager Notebooks site and not Intel downloads.

I suggest testing each WHQL one that comes along on your setup to see how it performs on the preferred band.Also test file transfers across devices connected to your home network.

There's a lot of variables in home networking.

 

I downloaded Intel Wireless ProSet 17.0.3.2 from the link. But they fail to show AC when I conduct "netsh wlan>show drivers".

But installing 17.0.2 from intel web site shows b,g,n,a and ac in the end.

Either way I am not getting the AC speeds from my asus rt-68u router.

My samsung S4 connects with ~70mbps compared to my intel 7260 which is connecting only 35mbps with my comcast 120mbps speed internet.

Very frustrating software issues with intel 7260.

Peter

 

If you're using Windows 7, netsh will never show the 802.11ac protocol since 7's netsh isn't updated unlike the 8/8.1's netsh.

A more important factor is to check your wireless network status and see if you get greater than 300 Mbps speed.

 

I forgot to mention I have windows 8.1. Only the official intel drivers 17.0.2 are showing AC.

Where do I check wireless network status on my Asus RT 68 router ?

Peter

 

Your WiFi status like on the screenshot

View attachment 112410

 

My wifi status only showing 144 Mbp/s.

Should I change any router settings?

 

Disable 2.4 GHz radio by going to your router's Wireless -> make sure the frequency is 2.4 GHz -> Professional -> select "No" under Enable Radio.

On 5 GHz, use WPA 2 Personal AES security, 80 MHz mode and enable WMM APSD

Check and see if you get 866 Mbps.

 

I did everything as described with no change in mbps.
Thank you for all your help.
I guess something is wrong with my router or the intel card.

Peter

 

I had the same problems you did until I factory reset my WiFi router.

Sent from my Z993 using Tapatalk

 

Agreed. And it's also funny that chips from broadcom, qualcomm and so on does not have this problem at all, but Intel, which in my opinion have been known for making quality products, fail hard with the AC7260.

 

I'm having similar problems on my new Lenovo Thinkpad E540 with the Intel Wireless N-7260. No internet connection after being idle for a while, fluctuating connection speeds, ugh! Man I wish I would have seen this topic before ordering this laptop...

For a few days I thought installing driver version 17.0.2.5 helped, but I still had fluctuating speeds and a dropped internet connection occasionally.

Turning off all bluetooth devices in Windows and Bluetooth AMP in the wireless adapter settings seems to have helped. I now have a seemingly stable 144 mbps connection, but let's wait a couple of days and see what happens...

Lenovo helpdesk was terribad. You say you have the latest drivers from Intel and the first advice you get is grabbing the latest Lenovo drivers...

/cry

 

+1 for internet dropping, speeds is good though since I force 5ghz 24/7....

 

The 5hz band is the best option if using an AC-7260 on your home network.

When out and about it's mostly 2.4ghz which is not great with the AC-7260

I use a Samsung Note Pro tablet when I'm traveling around.

 

WhatsThePoint, what channel are you running for your 5g band on the r7000 and which drivers you on from intel? Just picked that router up yesterday, brilliant bit of kit.

Edit*** read a little closer and saw the channel so disregard that question lol.

Sent from my SM-G900I using Tapatalk

 

I'm in Asia presently and channel 161 works best of the 149~161 range

In a different region with other providers channel 36 may be better.

I'm using driver 17.0.0.34 right now but also like 16.6.0.8

Don't forget to upgrade the firmware on the R7000.

 

I had awful problems connecting the 7260 to my Netgear router: couldn't move beyond 54 Mbps i.e. no wireless N.
Finally found this article 5 Ways To Fix Slow 802.11n Speed - SmallNetBuilder and it had the solution for me which is the QoS setting and ensuring that WMM is enabled in the adpater settings for the 7260 and also under the QoS setting for the router.
Kicked the connection up to 118 Mbps and my actual internet speed doubled -- still not wow, but also not 54 anymore.

Update:
Intel got back t me this morning buy email, both prompt and very helpful. Product support was very good.
Ended up doing a clean install and my speeds are up to 300 when close to the router, 120-170 when further away. More importantly, my internet speed is now 3 times faster.

 

I am having just awful problems with a new laptop (Dell M4800) that came with the Intel 7260ac. I had originally posted in the M4800 topic, but to recap, I would be able to connect to the internet automatically for one day, maybe two, and then I would get the balloon on the lower right saying I was not connected. I am using the Proset software, but after trying everything to get this to connect, I have also chosen to have Windows manage the wireless, but still with no luck. I am using a D-Link DIR-655 router with Windows 7 Professional 64.

I saw that Intel has a relatively new driver (5/8) so I installed that last night (although device manager shows driver date as 4/18, if I'm remembering that correctly). Internet was fine last night and throughout most of today. It just konked out again. I am beyond frustrated. I have all the various power options (to not shut off device when not in use) chosen correctly. This was a second machine Dell configured and sent to me a week ago for an unrelated problem. I'm about ready to beg Dell to send me yet another machine without this Intel card unless someone can give me some guidance. This is making me physically ill. If I can't get Dell to send me yet another machine, is there another wireless card that I could easily switch out on my own to replace this?

 

@grannygamer: what is your router plz?

have you tried fixing it from the other end of your connection? Your router might need a lil reset or even a factory reset.

it might over heat and slowdown to keep itself from crashing.

i've had my 7260ac in my laptop for 6 months and i don't remember experiencing these drops in normal usage if at all. My router is a Netgear R6250 802.11ac

However, and this is just going by memory since its been over 2 months since i used it, i think i remember that after intense uploading to my nas via wifi it does maybe konk out, take a bit to get back up to speed. i haven't played with the laptop in a while so i have no idea.

i wonder if the chip on the card might be overheating in some cases and the laptop might not have proper ventillation in that part of the casing compared to the cpu/gpu. it might be something intel should look into.

A heatsync for the wifi card, now that's something lol

But like i said , check the router, it might also get hot after big transfers and slowdown to prevent crashing. could be one theory. it is new tech after all.

 

@grannygamer
Your DIR-655(old router) should be updated to the newest firmware if you haven't already
When I had this router I had lots of issues with it
It's a single 2.4ghz band

Find best channel if in congested location using the free inSSIDer app

Reset router to default settings and see how it works,then tweak
Set router to WPA2 AES
Make sure you're only connecting to your SSID
WMM enabled in QoS

Try with Bluetooth turned off

As for your M4800:
Get the AC-7260 driver from Dell and try it.
Latitude Exx40 Series, Precision Mobile Mx800 series or OptiPlex 9020 AIO - Intermittent Wireless Disconnects with Intel 7260AC Card | Dell US

For the 2.4 ghz band you may want to try an older driver
http://downloadmirror.intel.com/23169/eng/wireless_16.1.5_e64.exe

Notebook bios up to date
Intel chipset driver software installed
ntFramework 4.5.1 installed
Wireless card setting to "turn off to save power"disabled

 

I have the same issue as you and unfortunately there has been no real fix from intel, which is rather disappointing. the AC card's 5ghz band usually drops, hence why you can't connect back. The quickest solution I found to getting back onto the network was to turn wireless radio's off and on using the FN key combination.

Right now the most stable set of drivers I've found is 16.6.0.8 - unlike the latest set these do not drop for me under heavy load and rarely get drops, perhaps once every 3 days or so. Otherwise another card that I would move to, would be the intel 6300, especially if you're not planning on moving to AC anytime soon.

Another thing that may help is just to install the drivers only, get rid of intel proset all together and disable power saving for the wireless card.

 

I did try to upgrade the firmware but was unable to. It keeps saying my browser is too old (IE 11); while I am able to log in to the router, I can't select anything. My firmware is 1.34 and I see D-Link has an upgrade to 1.37.

I've not reset the router to default, which I guess is a good thing since I am unable to change anything in the router's setup. I have unplugged both the router and the modem and brought them back up. I do have WPA2 AES set up and am connecting to the SSID (when it connects). I don't understand the MME enabled in QoS. When I check the Advanced tab, I only see an Ad Hoc QoS Mode, which says WMM disabled. Again, I'm sorry to say I don't know what that even means.

I don't use any Bluetooth device with this, and while I haven't specifically turned it on or off, there's a red X by the Bluetooth Network Connection in the Manage Wireless Connections, and it says "Not Connected."

I've tried so many drivers but didn't make note of which ones. There was an old one that came with the laptop, and I updated to what was on Dell's site. When that didn't help, I updated to the newest Intel driver (5/8).

The bios is up to date. Chipset driver software I just kinda assumed Dell would have done that; it's a brand new machine. Wireless card setting "turn off to save power" has been disabled. I don't know what ntframework is?

Just uninstalled Proset and now Windows is managing. It banged right in. Until it doesn't. That's the thing. We have lost all trust in this as it's been quite a merry-go-round this last week. My husband uses this for writing and researching and is on and off the internet all day as he writes. You can't imagine the frustration this has caused as the connectivity is not there when it should be.

I've seen so many posts here and on the Intel forum about problems with this card and I'm wondering if getting an ac router would solve my problems or not. I'm feeling leery about the card. I'm getting the feeling that the disconnects are caused by the card's (or router's) inability to maintain the faster speed, for whatever reason, so the card is having trouble picking up the slower speed? Is that it in a nutshell?

I appreciate everyone's thoughts. I do feel hobbled by not having a firm understanding of all the wireless settings and just blindly accept Windows getting me on the internet (my main desktop computer is wired). I just find it hard to grasp how/why this should be so difficult unless the card is faulty.

Like I said, it's working now so I don't quite feel like throwing up. Tomorrow is a new day, though....

 

Regarding AC wifi, you don't have to have it but it's what the 7260 is made for. 5 GHz band is a must for 7260 for optimum stability. However you'll get annoyed with 7260 once you start going to public places with a lot of clients (e.g. over 20 clients connected) @ 2.4 GHz band. It has a hard time establishing a WiFi connection at those environments due to drivers. But if those places have 5 GHz band, you'll love the 7260's stability, performance and signal strength on either N or AC.

 

Ohgawd, another reason I hadn't thought of to change out the card! I love new technology, I really do. I love electronics and gadgets. But my husband just wants things to work without hassle. And when we travel, I'm sure there will be a number of places where we will indeed encounter problems connecting. I may have to drop my Dell rep a note tonight and see if we can downgrade the card. This laptop in particular has to be stable and reliable; speed is not as important.

Thank you all for your comments. I don't feel quite as sick and lost as I did earlier.

 

Do you stream VOD from Netflex or other sites?

It uses a lot of bandwidth and may not release it after the streaming

Are any older G,B or A devices connected to the N router?

They may slow the network down.

I think you should reset the router to factory defaults and then try to update the firmware.

If still unable to update the firmware the router,your computer or both may have issues preventing the update.

 

This is a situation that may be hard to diagnose properly since 7260's performance is not exactly stellar on 2.4GHz band for most users whereas DIR-655 is literally one of the worst routers ever made (please don't get me started on why).

I would be cautious about firmware updates for this router too. D-Link had a history of making things worse with updates and at times simply removing features that refused to work (and you can't roll back from certain firmwares they released)

 

I didn't realize the D-Link was rated so poorly nowadays. Back when I bought it (when wireless N was still in its infancy), computer magazines had rated it highly. But since it is a number of years old at this point, I'm thinking seriously of upgrading it (no matter what happens with the 7260). Can I ask what routers you recommend? I use 2 wired desktops, an old laptop with at best wireless G, and various Kindles, so there are some older legacy items.

While I have no problem at all buying a wireless ac router specifically for the 7260, we do travel occasionally and it would be beyond frustrating if there were problems connecting with older routers. I sent a note to my Dell rep last night but haven't heard back yet. I'm not sure what they would be willing to do for me at this point as we're now over our 21-day period. On the offchance we can get a different wireless card, these seem to be the current choices:



Any insight as to our best choice as far as stability and reliability?

 

i recommend the netgears R6250 or R6300 or the R7000

the interface is very easy to understand and configure and the hardware is top notch.

 

As for the router I would recommend a Netgear R7000 (actually I did recommend it here). That is if the price is acceptable.

 

if on a budget, a friend just bought a Netgear R6100 says it performs admirably,

for 90$ at bestbuy its a steal for 802.11ac

 

One caveat emptor is that it only has Fast Ethernet which basically limits all data transfer up no more than 12 MB/s. When purchasing a cheap 802.11ac router, make sure it has Gigabit ports to unleash 7260's AC performance.

 

yes you're right, i forgot the R6100 only has 100mbps wired.

go for the R6250 if gigabit wired is a must have.

 

I'll get to Best Buy this morning and pick up an R7000. No sense nickel and dimeing something this important. I'll let you know!

 

Just connected the R7000. The Dell M4800 connected immediately to the 5G connection (since the default Netgear had 2 configs, one 2.4 and one 5, I also set up two SSIDs; don't know if that was really necessary, but I did, and The Intel 7260 card picked up the 5G one). So now we have a super sexy router; we'll have to see how well it pitches woo or if it ends up breaking my heart (I'm on a metaphoric roll here). I only had one hiccup trying to connect a very, very old piece o' crap winXP Lenovo but did manage to do that, too.

When I set up the two SSIDs, I did get a balloon on the laptop saying Intel can sync the two profiles (or something like that). I had uninstalled the Proset software so I'm not sure what I just did; just figured the two profiles needed to talk to each other. Any insight to what that was?

Is it necessary to prioritize the QoS for Netflix viewing or are the defaults just fine? Same with online gaming (see my name)...is it necessary to prioritize that? Any other settings I need to be aware of to make my life less miserable?

But getting back to the original problem with the Intel 7260 in the Dell M4800, we'll wait and see. It's only been an hour. If it can maintain internet connectivity for several days, I'll start to relax. "Optimum stability" sounds mighty fine. Will update later if I'm good; sooner if I'm not! Everyone's help is much appreciated.

 

how does this campares with the 3160?

I'm gonna buy a new laptop and I don't know if it's gonna do well with the 3160.