Intel® Wireless-AC 9560 vs Killer™ Wireless-AC N1550, which is better?

I see a lot of laptops having the choice between these two for wireless, which is better, what's the difference?

 

If you're over 12 years old, anything with 'killer' in the name is the one that is not better.

Intel Wireless and Wired solutions are usually the gold standard (for a reason).

 

Avoid anything from Killer Networking like the plague!

Even if you install the driver only INF file, the moment you get online the Windows Store will automatically download their POS Killer Performance Suite for you in the background which is supposed to prioritize bandwidth for certain apps but most of us have super fast internet these days that it doesn't matter! Even if I am downloading a movie in the background and streaming YouTube videos, that will not affect anything! Even if you uninstall the Killer Performance suite from the Windows Store apps, it will leave its services and registry entry remnants behind. That is a pure example of bad programming and shoving crapware into customers' throats when they never asked for it!

STICK TO INTEL ONLY!

 

Was wondering what and if there were any hardware differences. Driver wise.. I have killer lan on my desktop, and have suffered so many memory leaks that had to be resolved by reinstalling their drivers after fully removing them.. The new software suite that needs to be installed from the windows store feels more like a downgrade.. doesn't even start with windows so I don't know what the point of it was, no way I'm opening it every time I want to play a game or something. I would just be installing the driver only inf file.

Are they the same hardware wise, or what's the difference? I see that there is a intel 9260 as well.

 

Intel 9260AC = 100% the same as Killer 1550. It's just a rebadged edition of it with the Killer crapware

 

Thanks, made my decision for me. 9560 easily seems to be the best choice.

 

100%

 

The 9260 is a complete WiFi card on its own. The 9560 needs additional circuitry/smarts from the chipset/CPU/OS combo and only works with the latest platforms.

https://ark.intel.com/compare/86068,99445,99446

Otherwise, they are identical in their capabilities. (See the 'view now' links in the Product Briefs section).

Note also that they require Win10x64 too (or the Linux/Google O/S equivalents; i.e. latest), unlike the older 80MHz bandwidth capable, Bluetooth v4.2 AC-8260 WiFi card.

 

I'd suggest getting 9260 rather than 9560. Soon, new 802.11ax cards will become available, and selling 9560 will be much harder than 9260 since it is impossible to use on many machines.

 

From the information that's available now I believe the Intel AX200 and Killer 1650 will be the upgrades for the 9260 and 1550 while the AX201 will be the upgrade for the 9560.

Upgrading your Wireless card may not change the Internet download speed but with an AX wireless card paired with an AX router the transfer speeds of files across devices on your home network should increase.The amount of increase will depend on your settings and hardware.

 

To further clarify; it's not that any single device will be faster (there will be increases, of course), but an individual network as a whole will be perceived as faster.

In a typical home or small office network, there may be anywhere from 20 to 100 devices. As a whole, a fully AX network will be able to handle many more devices concurrently than any current AC, N or (shudder) G network ever has. And to each individual device, it will seem like it always has priority. Depending of course on the ISP data rates available.

WiFi is a shared spectrum (think of it like CB radio or Walkie Talkies). What a fully AX capable network will bring when the devices also connect with AX tech is WiFi spectrum 'sharing' at it's absolute best. We're still a year or two from seeing a real world network like that now.

Not only is the WiFi spectrum shared between devices on any single network, it is also shared between routers that can 'hear' each other too.

 

It looks like the Samsung S10 cell phone is the 1st device with Wi-Fi 6 coming to market due to inclusion of the Broadcom BCM4375 chip even though the phone's Qualcomm 855 processor has the feature.

Th e BCM4375 is a smartphone Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth 5 combo chip. Key features include:
Support for 2-streams of Wi-Fi 6
Bluetooth 5 including Low-Energy Long Range (LELR)
Real Simultaneous Dual-Band (RSDB)
1.43 Gbps Wi-Fi PHY Rate
1024 QAM Modulation
OFDMA
MU-MIMO

 

Just curious, what's the difference between the ax200 and ax201?
I'm guessing the 1650 will just be killer drivers on Intel hardware.

 

I believe the answer to your question was answered by tilleroftheearth in post #8

 

Yeah for the 9260 and 9560. Was wondering if it was any different for the new models

 

There's engineering samples of the AX200 and AX201 out with official testers for several weeks already and surely they're under NDAs at this time.If any are in private hands no ones talking.

Picking the right router will be tougher for pairing with an AX card.March should have another set of draft specs(draft 5?) adapted but final specs are still a ways off.

I'd wait and make sure the hardware has WPA3 support.

The Windows 10 April update should also have some WPA3 support included.

If you want to be an early adapter keep on eye on ebay for the China sellers of wireless cards.

 

Form factor difference. The AX201 is smaller than AX200. AX200 uses 2230 size and AX201 is 1216.

 

No, it will (201) probably be available in both 2230 and 1216 just like the 9560. Difference is the AX201 is a two part solution (RF only card + WiFi/BT chipset in the latest gen CPUs) and the 200 is a full solution (RF+ WiFi Chipset in the card itself). Pretty much just like the 9560 and 9260. The full solution (AX200 like the 9260ac) will be backwards compatible. Functionally both 200/201 are the same so there shouldn’t be any performance differences.

 

correct. just hoping that the "divided form factor" will not take the upper hand in the next years, that would greatly impact upgradeability of wifi adapters...

Sent from my Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (Oxygen) using Tapatalk

 

Looks like that trend has already started with some 13” units like the Dell XPS 13 9370/9380 that have a soldered QCA6174 (Killer 1435) card.

 

Interesting. If the AX201 is CNVi then it can be smaller than the AX200.

Intel's ultimate goal is to have it all integrated. CNVi is just a step. Ultimately you might just need an antenna.

For most ultrabook form style devices the upgradeability doesn't really matter, and the integration reduces BoM.

 

@IntelUser upgradeability goes hand in hand with repairability, which is important for business devices - be they ultrabooks or not.

 

Official Killer Support here!

The Intel 9560 relies on specific motherboard chipset and CPU instructions to function. It is not a standalone network adapter. The more apt comparison would be between the 9260, which is a standard M.2 adapter, and the Killer 1550, which is based on the Intel 9260 but with special instructions that enable our feature set.

The Killer Control Center works by using the Killer Network Service, which prioritizes outgoing data packets. This causes high-priority packets, which are generally packets from latency-sensitive applications and services such as online games, streaming video, and web browsing, to return more quickly, creating a cumulative effect of lowered latency for high-priority applications. If you do any online gaming especially, you will likely see a positive difference in latency and ping with the Killer Control Center.

We do not have any issues with memory leaks with our current suite. Of course, software always needs to be updated regularly, especially with Microsoft using a "Windows as a service" model, which means they can and will drastically change how the operating system works without attaching a major revision or service pack number. This means that all software can begin experiencing issues due to changes in how the operating system works.

Regarding the move to the Windows Store, this is out of our hands. Microsoft is mandating that all hardware support for Windows be moved to the Windows Store.

The Killer Control Center does not need to be loaded to do its job. The Killer Control Center is just your user interface for the software and service. If you don't need to make changes, you don't need the Killer Control Center loaded. The Killer Network Service will continue to operate using any configuration changes that you have made, even after the Killer Control Center is closed.

 

Thanks for the reply and clarification. The only thing I'm wondering now is, does the 9560 benefit in any way over the 9260 from using the motherboard chipset and cpu instructions?

 

As far as I am aware, there are no real benefits at this time. As @IntelUser mentioned, Intel seems to be aiming for a more integrated approach, so shared pipelines and coding would certainly help with that. However, I don't know of any useful applications of this just yet.

If you want to read the technical explanations, you can read that here - https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/programmable/soc.html

-- Anthony with Killer Networking

 

That's pretty interesting. If there aren't any benefits now maybe there will be in the future. Does killer have any plans to work on their own version of these kinds of chips to see if they can reap any benefits with this more integrated design?

 

I haven't heard any specifics. This is all still very new. If we did, it would probably come from our partnership with Intel, since the technology relies on coding in the chipset and CPU.

-- Anthony with Killer Networking