Intel 7260?

I think I'm having a driver issue with the Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260. The driver version is 16.1.0.14 which is the only driver for Windows 7 at the moment. Frequently, but not all the time, when I click on the Windows 7 access point list, I get all of the 2.4 GHz band right away, but the 5 GHz band takes 5 - 10 seconds to appear on the list. Are you guys having this problem? So far, no speed or drop issues with the 2.4 GHz band. My router is only 2.4 GHz so I can't test the stability at 5 GHz.

View attachment 99731

 

Does anyone know if the 7260 will work on an HP envy 15t-j000?

I asked HP, and they said yes, but the customer support person seemed retarded

 

It "should," as I am using it in my HP ProBook 6475b (AMD chipset) with Windows 7. I don't see why yours would be any different.

 

Most HPs are bios whitelist locked to a small limited number of wifi chips.

It's entirely possible probook, being a business line, is not limited.

 

I currently have a centrino 2230

How is the bluetooth reliability on the 7260 compare to it?

How is the wireless N performance?

I'm thinking about trying the upgrade, and if it doesn't work, returning it.

Also, can you use this on a laptop that was originally built for 2.4ghz only?

I don't have an AC network at home.

 

Here's my impressions of having this Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 (not AC) for a week already:

Compared to my previous Centrino Wireless-N 1000 (2.4 GHz only with connections issues), N performance at 2.4 GHz is excellent. I never had a drop out yet even with 25 wifi access points and routers that's being transmitted (apartment complex). Always 5 bars and 130-144 Mbps (router is only N150) at 30 ft on my Lenovo Y470. Throughput of 10-12 MB/s or 80Mbps - 100Mbps on a 144Mbps connection from USB 2.0 flash drive attached to router to my laptop at 30 feet! I haven't tested the 5 GHz band as I don't have a dual band router. The 5 GHz band should have 30 - 40% more throughput than 2.4 GHz.

The drivers (only 16.1.0.14 for Windows 7 as of now) are way better than the ones written for the Centrino Series.

For Bluetooth, while transferring files from phone to my laptop, it does not interfere the signal nor limit the throughput of the WiFi.

 

@cbautis2

I would retest if I were you. 10-12MB/s on 150mbps is impossible- this is as high as 300mbps routers go.

 

Nope. I get that speed on average at 144Mbps connection! Here's a screenshot where I'm 30 feet away from router doing a throughput test by transferring a large video file (sequential read) from USB 2.0 flash drive attached to router -> Desktop screen with laptop on battery in balanced mode power setting (Wifi power setting on advanced power options is set on "medium power saving" on battery leading to 4/5 bars and 5/5 bars on maximum performance when power adapter is plugged in, but this does not affect throughput at all). Getting 10 - 12.5 MB/s average throughput.
View attachment 99978

 

Windows does not show reliable speed. If you could transfer these files with TeraCopy (which BTW I encourage you to use in place of Windows default tool) with details expanded so the window doesn't close when transfer is finished you'll end up with an average speed calculated when the transfer is finished (as opposed to what Windows shows)

Also using a bigger file is advisable- it usually giver better speed but it also shows max speed that is achievable.

Please don't take it the wrong way- I'm not accusing you of lying or anything like that. I have a whole database of tests from smallnetbuilder at my disposal so this speed-test simply seems to be way of the mark. I have no interest of proving you wrong or being proved wrong.

 

I'll use tera copy instead but transferring from laptop to USB is much slower though. Are you getting around 3.5 MB/s?

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A reasonable speed for a 144/150mbps connection would be up to 5.5-6MB/s.
Sometimes transferring one way is slower than n the other- sometimes because the card does not transmit as fat as it receives (in terms of spatial streams) and sometimes because routers for some reason are better at receiving or sending (mine is better in receiving- luckily for me because I up my data to NAS over Wi-Fi)

 

So far with TeraCopy, I'm sending files at 3.8 MB/s. I can't test the full receiving speed yet since three other users are hogging the internet bandwidth, but I did a rough test anyway and get about 1 MB/s. Router is overloaded already lol. Connection still remains at 144 Mbps and 5 bars though.

View attachment 99981

 

Finally got a chance to test it with only me connected to the router at 30 ft and AC power plugged, maximum peformance power plan and 144Mbps connection throughout the test. You're correct. 1 GB mpeg-2 vob file transfer from USB 2.0 attached to 2.4 GHz band router -> an internal Sata 2 HDD goes from 4.5 - 5.5 MB/s with the average of 5 MB/s (using TeraCopy). I need to get a faster router lol, but my current router is still gives super stable internet connection (haven't had a single drop for years without restarting the router). I read reviews on some N600 and N750 routers but many say that they're fast when they work but often drops connection.

View attachment 99985

 

I'm only about 15' from my Netgear R6300 but I'm not in line of sight and there's 2 steel reinforced cement walls between my MSI GT780DX notebook with the AC-7260 running Windows 7 x64 HP.

In the Wireless Properties>Intel Connection Settings I have 5.2GHZ band and Cisco Options selected.

Windows Connection Status is mostly 5 green bars at 520mbps with sprints to 650mbps and 866.7mbps.

Copying the Windows 8.1 Enterprise Preview ISO from the notebook desktop to a USB drive attached to the router using Windows copy was between 6.02 and a peak of 6.24 MB/s.

Using TeraCopy 2.3 beta saw a steady speed of 7.5 MB/s most of the way but did peak at 7.8 MB/s and drop to 7.3 MB/s on occasion.

Dragging the same ISO from the router attached USB drive to the notebook desktop using TeraCopy showed a steady 5.5 MB/s.

The results were almost exactly the same whether on Windows 7 x64 HP or Windows 8.1 Preview x64.

 

Once again, I'm confused by the numbers, or the designators.

On the left side of your picture, the download connection status lists your speed as 650.0 Mbps, and the right side on the transfer's speed is 6.24 MB/second. Edit: Deleted fuzzy math. 6.24 MB = 49.92 Mb.

According to this thread:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/724851-asus-rt-ac66u-how-get-ac-2.html

The connection speed on the left side (650 Mbps) should equate to 81.25 MB/second (650/8=81.25).

So, which window is correct? You can't just substitute Mbps and MB/sec in a one to one ratio.

AFAIK All wireless speeds are standardized in Mbps. It kills me when some TWC commercial blasts out "Receive wireless speeds up to 50 Megs"! That's 50 Meg-o-bits, not 50 Meg-o-bytes.

I guess my point here is, all wireless speed reports should be in Mbps, and not MB/sec, as that is totally confusing. If you are committed to using MB/sec, please use the small b (Mb) to denote bits.

Data rate units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I'm not trying to get anyone of the fine posters here riled up, as I think a lot of users are guilty of the MB versus Mb confusion. As the picture shows, even MS doesn't get the confusion, in the different speeds, their windows are reporting.

 

I fail to see your point here. Connection status is 650Mbps which is roughly 81MB/s. How did you come up with 81.25 byte connection?

Everything is correct above and no units were substituted.

 

Fuzzy math?

I used this calculator:

Bit Calculator - Convert between bits/bytes/kilobits/kilobytes/megabits/megabytes/gigabits/gigabytes.

650 Megabits = 81.25 Megabytes

My point is, why can't all speeds be expressed in the Mbps standard. In the Wiki it states:

"Megabit per second

A megabit per second -Mbps, Mbit/s, or Mb/s- ( not to be confused with MBps, or MB/s, which would be megabytes per second: also not to be confused with mbit/s which would be millibits per second: also not to be confused with Mbitpps which would be megabits per picosecond) is a unit of data transfer rate equal to:

1,000,000 bits per second or
1,000 kilobits per second or
125,000 bytes per second or
125 kilobytes per second."

So, who needs confusion?

When I run any speed test, it always comes back as Mbps, not MB/sec. Use of MB/sec is confusing in speed ratings, period. :yes:

Edit: Downloads, very sorry for being a PITA here. I'm having a bummer day, and it shows.

 

In my opinion there's no point using mbps when you're referring to i.e. transmitting data to/from a NAS o a network-drive.
For all purposes it's just a hard-drive and using MB/s is more practical and easier to comprehend.

Although I agree that for networking purposes throughput should be in mbps.

 

The only time I ever see bits is networking link speeds. Every kind of data transfer that is only done locally (not on the network) is measured in bytes. Heck even Windows 7 measures the network data usage in bytes if you look at the wireless connection status. To make myself not be confused, I just multiply the bytes by 8 to get the bits.

 

I moved my location from 15' away and going through 2 cement walls to a line of site location about 8' from the R6300 router and ran the file copy test again.

The Windows file test showed an average improvement from the 6.02 to 6.24 MB/s range to a range of 6.50 to 6.78 MB/s

While the TeraCopy testing speed remained just about the same at a steady 7.5 MB/s,the Windows Network Monitor showed a 866.7 Mbps speed over the entire copying of the ISO from the notebook desktop to the USB drive attached to the router's USB 2.0 port.

During the testing from 15' the Windows Monitor showed the speed fluctuating between 390 Mbps to 650Mbps.with most time at 520 Mbps.

If I did the TeraCopy testing while inSSIDer was running on the desktop the TeraCopy test dropped to the 4.0 to 4.8 MB/s range

 

To be honest it's not what I expected. Do you get significantly better speeds when you are closer to the router?

Also you might want to test 2.4GHz- while it is overcrowded and limited in speed compared to AC- it does have better ability to penetrate through obstacles and fades slower with distance. I am very close to the router (802.11n 300mbps on 2.4GHz) and I get similar or better speeds than you do so it's possible that with 450mbps on 2.4GHz you'll actually get more than with 866mbps on 5GHz- far from the router that is.

 

Hi,

I've replaced the Intel 6325 in my Samsung NP5303 Ultrabook with the 7260 AC, using the Sager Drivers 16.1.0.14. WLAN is working fine (on a side note, the antenna system is not particular great at 5 GHz but that's not the topic here). I do however struggle with Bluetooth. The previous 6235 card has Bluetooth and it worked without issues.

Now, Bluetooth with the 7260 works fine when I reboot the machine. But when I put it into hibernation and wake again, the Bluetooth devices are gone in the device manager. I checked the Bluetooth support service, it is running, so that's not the issue.

I'm uncertain whether I face a SW problem here or some HW incompatibility between the Samsung 5303 and the 7260 (could be during power on after hibernation?). Any suggestions how to troubleshoot this are highly appreciated.

Thanks,

jayrockk

 

I don't think it's a hardware problem. More likely a driver issue.

 

Thanks. How do you come to that conclusion? I didn't see anyone report a similar behaviour of the Bluetooth part of the 7260, therefore I suspect a hardware dependency.

 

I don't see how could it be hardware- the card is working, BT is working- so hardware is OK.
The fact that BT does not resume working after you've woken the notebook up from hibernation suggests that there might be a problem with power management and that sounds like a driver issue.

 

Or if can be bios compatability, as it involve changing of power state.

 

Anybody tried the latest 16.1.1.3 from Intel Website (not Sager) and see if throughput improved? My throughput from a Netgear N150 router increased from 4.5 to 5.4 MB/s on a 144Mbps connection

View attachment 100448

 

Where did you find this driver?

 

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/confirm.aspx?httpDown=http://downloadmirror.intel.com/23045/eng/Wireless_16.1.1_Ds64.exe&lang=eng&Dwnldid=23045&DownloadType=Software+Applications&OSFullname=Windows+7++*

 

Thanks, I'll check it tomorrow.

Edit: Did a quick check and found no signification difference to the drivers from Sager. Speed is approximately the same. Bluetooth still no working for me after hibernation.

 

Bluetooth drivers from Intel still hasn't been updated yet. Just keep visiting Intel every week for a new release. Hopefully they release one soon.

 

Need to correct: 801.11 ac performance still is capped at approx 100 Mbps, measured with iperf. File copy at approx 9-10 MB/s. Wireless properties show up to 866 Mbps though. Went back to the Sager drivers.

 

Did some more testing and apparently I was wrong in my assumption that the antenna is low performance on 5 GHz. When I have AC power switched on, the reception on 5GHz is ok. When AC is disconnected, the reception gets much weaker. There are locations where I see the receive counter in the wireless properties stopping as soon as I unplug AC. When plugging AC in again, the receive counter continues. Obviously, no AC = no reception.

Unfortunately I didn't test this with the previous 6235 card so I cannot tell right now whether this is any issue with notebook or with the specific 7260 ac card. Anyway, I was wondering if someone has noticed such behaviour before?

For completeness, on 2.4 I don't see this behaviour.

Cheers,

jayrockk

Edit: Note to self: http://forum.notebookreview.com/samsung/727499-wifi-remedies-samsung-laptops.html

 

Anyone else update the driver to v16.1.1.3 dated August 7,2013?

I updated from v16.1.0.14.

Intel doesn't list the AC-7260 as supported in the list of supported WiFi cards but it's working for my AC-7260 in my MSI GT780DX.

v16.1.1.3 W8:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23044&keyword=6300&lang=eng

v16.1.1.3 W7:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23045&keyword=6300&lang=eng

 

Thanks WhatsThePoint. Before I was getting frequent lag spikes, didn't know if it was the router or the card or both or what. These seem to have improved it. Lag spikes still occur just not as often. I hope another driver update will eliminate them completely.

 

Just updated to the *Official* 16.1.3.1 drivers from Intel. No difference from the 16.1.1.3 so far.

 

Giving v16.1.3.1 a try now

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=23066&keyword=AC-7260&lang=eng

Don't forget that after you update the driver the Enable Intel Connection Settings box needs to be ckecked again and your settings reapplied.

 

Thanks for the tip. I prefer to install drivers only so all I did to revert back to my previous settings was to change the channel width of 2.4 GHz to "Auto" and left the rest to the "defaults." Overall, this Intel 7260 series is really good since I haven't had any issues with it unlike the Centrino series.

 

I have the Intel settings enabled>5ghz band>AP MAC address and Cisco option enabled

OS = Windows 7 x64 HP

inSSIDer still hasn't been optimized with an 802.11ac setting

 

Well, from your inssider screenshot you only have a few routers/access points. Look at how much routers/access points I have to deal with. I'm amazed I don't get crazy speed drops at this much congestion (router is only 2.4 GHz) at all though the link speed occasionally dips down to 78 MHz when there's too much interference from my neighbors. At least it's not like my previous Centrino Wireless-N 1000 where the connection drops every few hours. I don't know why inssider reports 156 Mbit instead of 144 Mbps like on the other Wi-Fi adapters such as Broadcom or Ralink.

 

You're using an old version of inSSIDer and don't have it filtered for only N networks.That's why I show so few.

I'm the only one on 5ghz

If I check the a,b,g and n boxes in the newest version of inSSIDer I'll probably have 50~100 wireless networks show up.I'm in a high rise apartment building complex of nine 20 story buildings

Most wireless networks broadcasting within range are probably using single 2.4ghz G and N routers supplied by the service provider.

The buildings were centrally wired at the time they were built 3 years ago.No modems>service is straight out of an R45 jack in the wall to my router.

My broadband Internet,Internet phone and cable TV + 3 extra paid channels is about $30 per month on 3 year contract.

When we signed the contract with SK the sent us a $300 check for signing.

Back in the states my service was terrible and expensive.

 

It's probably not exactly accurate what's being displayed about connection speed. To get a 156mbps connection speed you'd have to use 3 spatial streams with 20MHz channel width. That's pretty much impossible- you'd have to have a single band router that supports 450mbs connection- there were none like this as far as I remember.

As for 78mbps that's achievable on a two stream router with 20MHz channel width and would indeed happen because of interference. That would be a result of changing channel width from 40MHz (162mbps) to 20MHz and that actually makes sense. I'm guessing your actual connection speed is 162mbps and reverting to 78mbps.

The difference seems to be that with Broadcom and Ralink you had a different modulation type being used than with Intel now (16-QAM instead of 64-QAM) resulting in slightly different connection speed.

Now that I've written this post I realized that I might have just let it go. No one is going to get any wiser because of it and it seems terribly boring.

 

Thanks for the info. I just realized how much little I know about connection speeds lol. I do know that I will get far more interference if I set the channel width on my router to 40 MHz by enabling performance mode since I would have to combine 2 adjacent channel widths which would result to severe overlap. As long as Windows reports correct link speed values which it does to all Intel, Ralink and Broadcom adapters, it's all good.

Anyways, for this thread, IMO I recommend the 7260 series for anyone who plan to upgrade or replace their Centrino cards since the connection is much more stable and less problematic with the 7260's drivers.

 

Just got my 7260AC card today, testing on a Dell Latitude E6220 vs the ultimate-N 6300 card that was in there before. Getting about same throughput but better reception. Areas in the house where there used to be dead spots, I can now get a connection and actually get data through. (although at slow rate, 12mbps) This is with a Linksys E3000 running DD-WRT as the router/ap.

Can't get the bluetooth working, not sure if its drive issue, or the fact that my E6220 already has the dell bluetooth card/driver/software.

Waiting for AC router prices to come down a bit, then will pick one up and hope that will be able to cover my whole house.

 

I have a lenovo y500 on windows 8 and I just bought the intel 7260. I am currently using the intel 16.1.3 drivers.

My issue is that my Bluetooth keyboard disconnects frequently to occasionally and it won't reconnect for a long time unless i restart my keyboard. I did not have this issue on my last wireless card or any other devices. Anyone have this issue too or know of a solution?

Do i have a defective wifi card?

NVM I think i may have figured it out. i went into the device manager and in the bluetooth power management section i unchecked "allow this computer to turn off this device to save power"

 

Did this relly work for you? I've installed the latest 16.3 drivers and my Bluetooth is still gone after resume from hibernation.

 

I'm still getting lag spikes... grrr.

 

AirMagnet WiFi Analyzer Pro 15 day Demo

http://www.flukenetworks.com/content/anytime-anywhere-wlan-monitoring-and-troubleshooting

 

I'm confused. I currently have a Netgear WNDR3400 and an Intel 6300. I wanted to upgrade to a N900 but after AC hit, the Netgear R6300 and Asus RT-AC66U caught my eyes instead. I've been thinking if I should buy into the 7260 or wait for a 3x3 card instead since my laptop has 3 antennas. But the numbers I'm seeing don't make sense. Either I don't know much about networking or I don't know much about networking (yea, you read that right). If you guys have Windows showing anywhere from 340-886.7Mbps, then how are file transfer speeds over LAN only coming in at 5-10MBps? I thought 8 bits = 1 Byte. So theoretically I thought you guys would be seeing speeds around 40-100MBps

 

The best performance I get from the 2 antenna AC-7260 paired with a Netgear R6300 is when my notebook is in line of sight with the router at a distance of about 8" using Windows 8.1 and Intel driver 16.5.0.15

AC Routers with 2nd generation Broadcom BCM4708X chip are beginning to appear.The D-Link DIR-868L is the 1st to appear.
D-Link DIR-868L Wireless AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit Cloud Router Reviewed - SmallNetBuilder

What's new and unique about the BCM4708X is that it represents the first time a networking SoC of this to have integrated everything an OEM needs to make a router but the transciever - in this case a GigE ethernet switch, 5 port GigE PHY, USB 3.0 controller, standard I/O, and two PCIe 1x Gen 2.0 lanes (or three if the OEM opts to not use that I/O for USB 3.0).

The SoC also supports up to single channel PC DDR3 1600 as opposed to the more commonly supported PC DDR2 800 for current router SoCs.

802.11ac is a 5 GHz specific successor to 802.11n that brings higher throughput by increasing channel bandwidth to 80 MHz (with an option for 160 MHz), bringing higher order modulation (256QAM), increasing the number of available spatial streams (up to 8), and adding multi-user MIMO plus beamforming.

AC client wireless cards with 3 antennas have yet to appear.

If you're in no rush,wait for 3 antenna cards from Qualcomm Atheros Killer brand and Intel plus routers with newer chips and x3 5ghz radios

AnandTech | Broadcom Announces BCM4708x and BCM5301x SoCs for 802.11ac routers