Intel 7260?

The person I e-mailed on the intel-wireless list mentioned that the patch was against linux-firmware.git
kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git - Repository of firmware blobs for use with the Linux kernel

He also attached the iwlwifi-7260-7.ucode file for my convenience, which I have posted here (zipped) also.
As you said, he mentioned that you will have to compile the drivers from the wireless-testing git here:
http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-testing.git

 

I just joined here specifically because of this thread.

I got my ac 7260 yesterday. Installed into my ASUS G73SW without any real trouble. I'm running a fairly heavily modified Debian Wheezy. As soon as I can get the card running, I'll let you guys know how it does with my ASUS RT-AC66U router.

 

I haven't had a chance to test it yet. I left the wireless-testing git clone compiling this morning. I e-mailed the list again because I noticed that the file drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-7000.c in git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-testing.git
lines 73-75 contents is:

Code:

/* Highest firmware API version supported */
#define IWL7260_UCODE_API_MAX 6
#define IWL3160_UCODE_API_MAX 6

I received a reply of: "Oops, you’re right. Seems that John hasn’t pulled our changes…. Well, you can either wait a bit, or simply change this by yourself."

So, just be aware, you need to change the 6 to a 7 in the IWL7260_UCODE_API define, or wait a bit more.

 

For win 7 drivers try the sager notebook site

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks for that. I took a quick look at things and thought something was odd but it wasn't registering.

 

Thanks! Here is how it looks at Sager website




Here is the link for the drivers

I am still waiting for my AC-7260 to arrive. So, if anybody will test them out, please, leave the feedback here.

 

Does that mean you got it to work or you haven't gotten it to work under Linux? Sorry, your statement was vague.

 

They are the same Windows 8 x64 drivers available from Intel's website, same inf and everything.... I e-mailed Sager and told them about the mistake.

 

Sorry. I've been quite sick. Haven't had the energy to do more than look at files. I'll see if I can get this working sometime today.

 

Goshdarnit! I was getting all excited. I'd downloaded them already but had not the chance to try them. Thanks for posting and saving me some time & grief!

 

That's alright, feel better! I saw that the v7 API changes are in the wireless-testing git now, so presumably it should work.

 

Thanks.

So far, I've tried simply putting the file into /lib/firmware. No luck. Frankly I think this may be a good deal more than I can deal with on my own without trashing my install. This sort of thing is well outside my field of knowledge. I've started a thread on this in my own forum so as not to highjack this thread.

https://openlinuxforums.org/index.php/topic,3274.msg108153.html#msg108153

 

Yeah, you will need to compile the wireless-testing kernel. Linux 3.9+ has a driver for the 7260, but it uses the older API v6 firmware file that was never released it seems, so just placing the file in /lib/firmware won't work (since it's v7).

I managed to determine all the changed code and pulled it into Ubuntu's branch of kernel 3.10 so I could continue using their standard kernel on my Saucy install, and it's working fine. iwconfig won't report ac mode or the correct bitrates as it doesn't appear to be updated for it, but looking at the diagnostic page on my router shows I'm getting an ac link with the card @ 866mbps.

If you want to proceed rolling a kernel from wireless-testing I recommend this guide for Debian. I use it to roll fresh kernels on a Debian Sid install I use at work and it hasn't failed me yet. Just skip his portion where he downloads the kernel and do the following in place of his wget command:

Code:

git clone http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/linville/wireless-testing.git

 

Try another model like the Haswell new notebooks.

 

Like what model exactly?

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Tapatalk 2

 

Try the np7370 or np7352

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

I've managed to compile the kernel, following the link Stratus Fear posted (thanks), with no small amount of messing around trying to figure out how to rename commands to fit the git link and other such tomfoolery. The last time I dealt with compiling was when Amarok dropped 1.4 for that godawful series 2. That was nothing like this. I also had no small amount of entertainment trying to get proper nVidia drivers to run with the kernel. That's an area I have considerably more experience with. Ultimately to no avail, though. I had to delete the xorg.conf file and let nouveau take over. I'm not particularly happy about that.

Anyway, to the nitty gritty. It works. Quite well, actually. 5 GHz signal is much stronger with less fluctuation than I get with my ASUS USB-N53 dongle. Network Manager reports speeds up to 300 Mb/s so far. That doesn't mean it won't go higher. Just that I haven't given it a reason to. 5 GHz is also stronger and more stable than 2.4 GHz. I believe someone else said the same thing. That's fine with me. I got the 7260 for 5 GHz AC anyway.

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with 802.11 N for the moment. I completely forgot that the ASUS RT-AC66U will only do AC in Bridge Mode. At least, that's the way it is with the garbage ASUS calls firmware. I strongly suspect I can get around that obstacle with some thirdparty firmware. Seems like I'll be having a closer look at dd-wrt.

I haven't done any real testing, aside from pulling in a few fairly large files from the internet. If anyone wants to suggest way to put it through it's paces, I'm willing to listen.

 

Nice idea again... however, even though the driver installs on Win 7 x64, you're unable to scan for access points. Most likely it was a version for engineering release cards.

 

So, who tested that drivers? Are they working?

 

It is rare to find answer for your question the same minute you've posted question.

 

Further, I found some earlier 7260 drivers in the Sony site, but those are also Win8 only, I checked the INF... after going through the trouble of setting up a VM hacked with the correct model number in the SMBIOS string before the drivers would extract... took me a while, but was able to do it via virtualbox and these instructions:
Changing a VMs virtual hardware info to match t... | VMware Communities

So if anyone finds these: Sony eSupport - SVP132190X - Drivers & Software rest assured they are Win8 only, I even tried to force them as Win 7 x64 drivers and still get the Code 39 error, same as when I tried the original Win8 drivers on Win7... *growls at intel*

 

FYI, the official Intel drivers for the AC 7260 are also compatible with the Windows 8.1 Preview.

 

I pulled the AC-7260 out of my notebook after running a few speed and connection strength tests on 5ghz because 2 of my 3 SSDs have W7x64.

I'll put it back when working W7 drivers are released.

 

So how was it? Can you share your test results?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/net...7260-wireless-card-5ghz-test.html#post9257093

 

What are you all doing for the Bluetooth drivers? It doesn't look like it's been released the drivers yet. Am I right?

 

Bluetooth seems to be picked up by the Windows generic driver no problem. You can find the PROset Wireless Bluetooth software package on Intel's support site which adds some more functionality, but everything appears to work straight away.

 

Good to know. Thank you. Frankly, I don't need anything 'demanding' for bluetooth. I use Razor Orochi Bluetooth gaming mouse, so bluetooth is important. As long as I get a good connectivity using the generic Windows drivers, then I am all set.

 

So, Q2 is over. Will we see Win 7 drivers near days?

 

I don't think your q2 is the same add theirs

 

True story

 

Still no updates. Isn't Q2 over already?

 

Wow, after receiving two incorrect cards from buy.com (even UPC claimed to be Wireless-AC, instead two were 7260-AN). Then overnighting a real Wireless-AC card (provantage). I come up diceless. I hate everything about Windows 8. This can just be added to the list (I use Windows 7). What I'm saying isn't new to anyone. But check this irony out:
first line of the file
2a 57 45 53 54 4f 50 46 4f 52 4e 4f 4f 4e 45 2a

aka

*WESTOPFORNOONE*


Taken from the Netwfw02.dat file. ADORABLE. They apparently stopped for someone, because this Windows 7 driver should be released by now. Or just some franken hackery.. What are the 'pieces' of a W8 driver anyways?

I mean, you can take different things from the end of the driver file
/ OID_INTEL_POWER_MODE
[WMI, Dynamic, Provider("WMIProv"),
guid("{E34B42A7-2A21-49fb-8E2F-C07BC4C19A67}"),
localeid(0x409),
Description("Read/Write the power mode")]
class INTEL_POWER_MODE_OID
{
[key, read]
string InstanceName;

So annoying. Especially when my clevo has the wifi card under the keyboard. I feel like I could potty-mouth my way into ban-nation right now, so I am going to stop typing.

 

Software Upgrade

Sager has a driver out for windows 7. people who have tested it on other non Sager computers have said it works.

Drivers for Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 Card?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/net...-intel-ac-7260-wireless-card-5ghz-test-4.html

 

Awesome thanks! I'll test this new driver tonight after i get home from work. My HP ProBook 6475b is able to boot into Windows with the Intel 7260 card and all i was missing were some good working drivers. This solves that little problem.

My Lenovo ThinkPad E425 would halt at the BIOS and tell me to remove the incompatible wireless card. I haven't bothered to try with my old Dell Inspiron 1525.

 

That's some good news, seem like hp lifted all the wifi white list. Still to see if hp branded is required.

 

I am going to install the card when I get home tonight and test it as well. I will post results. The notebook this is going in to doesn't currently support 5ghz, so this is going to be an improvement.

 

Just installed the card and driver on a Dell laptop L502z i think is the model. At any rate, it's working beautifully. A wag of the finger to intel, who didn't even release a driver for this card before another MFG did.

 

What did you use for the Bluetooth driver? Windows Update doesn't find anything and I tried Intel's Downloads without success.

View attachment 99191

 

Does anyone know when intel will be releasing a 3 antenna version of this card? I have another laptop I would like to swap out wireless NIC's on.

@davidricardo86 my bluetooth is working fine. Just tested it by sending a file. Windows detected new hardware and installed it.

 

2 antenna cards are thought of more as stock notebook hardware while 3 antenna are prized upgrades.

The worst wireless hardware in notebooks IMO are the zero gain antennas.

The AC-7260 is no exception and I think most of us are awaiting a 3 antenna 802.11ac card from Qualcomm Atheros and Intel.

When setting up your network with an AC-7260 don't forget the card settings.Everyone does the router setup setting but sometime forget the wireless card settings.

The "ScanWhenAssociated" registry key is present for all Intel Wifi devices with the exception of the Intel 7260
in which is must be created for. Change the value from default 1 to 0.

This would in effect disable roaming of your wireless which for the average home user isn't an issue. Roaming just allows you to hop from one wireless device to another if signal is too weak or a more preferred device is in range.

I wouldn't bother with this registry tweak,just set the roaming in the AC-7260 properties to lowest.

Another thing you can do is disable one of the radios. For example if you only use 5GHz disable the 2.4GHz radio (Bluetooth will still work).Do this only if you have the every 60-90 sec repeating of a 1-2 second spike issue.

 

How are the drivers for this one? Constant dropouts/extreme low speeds with the 6300 when going with a driver version higher than 15.4 are really pissing me off, can't even get over 144p streamed on YouTube while I normally can stream 'original'/1080p with no problem etc.. Wouldn't be a problem if the 15.4 drivers didn't disappear from earth and internet.

So what does changing roaming aggressiveness do anyways? Does it change the scan interval or does it change how bad a signal has to be become before switching over? Intel isn't exactly clear on their website.

~Aeny

 

This card works perfectly in the laptop I installed it in. It only had a 2x2 card to begin with (that didn't even see the 5ghz band) so this was a major upgrade for that machine. I have another laptop that has a 3x3 card now, but since I can't seem to sell it, I might as well upgrade it. Looks like there is no ETA on a 3x3 card just yet as this is still pretty new tech. The reg key you talk about is something that I need in such a wifi noisy neighborhood. Although disabling that feature would force it to stay on one network, doing say may mean performance hits. I will have to look in to the spike issue on mine and see if I get that happening.

 

I have the 7260 Dual Band AC card working nicely on 2 separate laptops, an Acer Aspire TimelineU M5-481TG-6814 running Win8 x64 and another Acer Aspire AS7741G-6426 running Win7 x64. I like Acer because they don't blacklist/whitelist WiFi cards like HP and some other manufacturers do...

There are 5 total AC devices (3 Galaxy S4 phones, and the two laptops w/ Intel 7260 cards) connected to the Asus RT-AC66R router at home with no issues. Heck, the AC connection is actually faster than the wired connection due to my older Cat5 cable runs, haha -- pulls about ~80Mbps from my ISP's speed test: XFINITY Speed Test

 

Unfortunately the Windows 7 x64 drivers from the Sager site don't work too well for me using the 7260 AC on a Latitude D830. The signal quality reported by Windows is really low and connectivity drops entirely after a minute or two. This happens in any mode, a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4ghz or 5. I've been using this card in Ubuntu Linux with absolutely none of these problems. Really good signal (mid -40s dBm from a different floor in the house) and high link speed up to 866 there in Linux. I'm going to wait for Intel to officially release drivers on their site and try again. Perhaps by the time they do, there will be a newer build that doesn't have these problems for me.

 

got my card today from provantage.

put it in my Dell XPS 18 (have an hp but the bloody whitelist...)

Anyways, rocked a 110mbps speed test.

Love this car with my two netgear R6300 routers

 

Do you have one of the new R6300v2 or are both v1?

R6300v2 ( Broadcom BCM4708):
r6300v2 - Page 8 - NETGEAR Forums

Review:
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32126-netgear-tries-ac1450-on-for-size

I have an R6300v1 for over a year.

The new 16.1.0.14 driver for the AC-7260 works very well on Windows 7.

 

The frequency ranges of 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz haven't changed from 802.11a to 802.11ac (or 802.11b to 802.11ac), the antennas either work in those ranges or they don't. The only difference from 20Mhz/40Mhz/80/Mhz is how many frequencies are being used at one time. The antennas have to work across the entire range no matter how wide the channels are.

Which 5ghz channel are you guys setting your router to?

My R6300 has 36,40,44,48,149,153 and 161.

The AC-7260 is an 80mhz bandwidth wireless card
the 2.4 GHz band has CENTER frequencies ranging from 2.412 ( ch1 ) through 2.472 ( ch13 ), this is a range of 60 Mhz, enough for 1 ac link on channel 7

The 5 GHz band ranges from:
5.180 ( ch36 ) through 5.320 ( ch64 ) -> 140 Mhz,
5.500 ( ch100 ) through 5.700 ( ch 140 ) -> 200 Mhz
5.745 ( ch149 ) through 5.825 ( ch165 ) -> 80 Mhz

I'm getting my best 5ghz band signal quality and signal speeds measured in Windows WiFi Monitor while set to the 161mhz channel while the 2.4ghz band is on channel 7

In Windows 7 I stay mostly between 390Mbps and 520Mbps with only spurts of 628Mbps and 866Mbps.

When I did a clean Windows 8.1 Preview installation with the WiFi enabled driver version 16.0.0.62 was installed by the OS.

The Windows WiFi Monitor showed good signal quality but the signal speed stayed at 90Mbps to 120Mbps.

The 16.0.5.3 driver from Intel downloads raised the signal speeds to where it would occasionally reach 468Mbps.

The 16.1.0.14 driver allowed the signal speed in W8.1 Preview to reach the top 866Mbps but where W7 doesn't drop below 390Mbps and is mostly at 520Mbps,W8.1 is often showing below 390Mbps.

I think the antennas are the weakest part of notebook wireless.

I will try out some different antennas in my MSI notebook.

 

Supposedly higher channel can have more power(at least base on some source) and some router do implement that.

 

I think I am having some issues. I did a router shuffle and am currently on a R6300v1 router. The problem I am seeing is, the laptop is connected and showing a very strong signal. However LAN file copy is incredibly slow. I copied a 2GB file from my NAS and I only saw speeds peak at 5mbps. This seems incredibly slow for this card. During the file copy the adapter speed fluctuated, but generally held steady over 400mbps. Does anyone have any ideas what the issue could be? I saw faster transfer speeds using an N router.

Thanks!

EDIT: Interesting update 1: I switched back from the r6300 to my old faithful n900 router and not only did the LAN speed file transfer jump WAY up (started the copy and it was transferring at 12mbps and climbing), my connection speed per speedtesting sites also increased.