Okay, cool. That’s the one I was looking at possibly ordering
Linux here.
The thought crossed my mind, I had even ordered an AX210 but ended up returning it in its original packaging.
Reason being, the reason I was looking for replacing the Mediatek card was failure to connect on some boots/resumes from suspend. An issue that was later solved via a (Linux) firmware update.
So once I was happy with the Mediatek card, no reason to risk the linux-support lottery with the Intel card.
Make no mistake, Intel cards can also be crappy on Linux.
My previous 11th gen Intel Dell XPS had an AX201, and with the latest iwlwifi firmware they introduced a regression that totally killed bandwidth if bluetooth earbuds were connected. It was impossible for me to have Teams calls with my earbuds, or watch a YT video because it would start buffering like crazy. I had to manually revert to a previous firmware version and had to pin that version to avoid receiving any further updates, since the bug report I opened went unnoticed.
So yeah, keep that in mind. Grass ain’t necessarily always greener on the other side.
EDIT: sharing link for those who are interested:
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The biggest issue I have is there seems to be issues with the bluetooth on windows
So, I decided to give the Mediatek a chance. What I found (on Fedora 39):
- It’s 5Ghz performance is within margin of error of an AX210
- It’s 6Ghz is definitely worse than an AX210 for weaker signals, but gets better throughput with stronger signals.
- According to my router, the Mediatek keeps on “re-connecting”, but that doesn’t seem to affect long running connections.
- It’s Bluetooth signal is significantly stronger than an AX210
So, for now I’m keeping it.
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Got a few weeks of usage here – works well. More stable connections and faster (re)connects.
I bought an AX210 and tested it against the MediaTek that came with my machine under identical conditions. Even swapped them a couple times to prove that it wasn’t a dodgy antenna connection or anything like that. The AX210 was very significantly faster.
On 5GHz, while sitting within line-of-sight on an AP, the Intel would clock 500 Mbit/s speedtest throughput while the Mediatek would do 200-250. In another part of the house with moderate (but still not bad) signal strength the Intel came in at 200-225 Mbit/s, while the MediaTek wandered around between 25 and 50. That’s not “within margin of error” for me. Might as well “upgrade” to a 15-year-old 11n card.
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I wonder why there’s so much reported variance.
The AP’s in use and enviromnent seems to affect the Mediatek Wifi cards more than the Intel ones.
I moved, use the same AP, but am now closer, and speed is slightly down.
Likely because of interference from neighbourhood.
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To add one more anecdotal experience which support the Mediatek being fine if the networks is good, but more prone to issues if its not (at least under Linux):
In my home network the Mediatek was fine and I noticed no issues.
However at work I connect to a very large Eduroam network and would often get disconnects for several seconds, sometimes it would fail to reconnect on its own at all until I disabled and re-enabled wifi
There are definitely some issues with the eduroam Network here, people with other laptops and windows users are affected too, though often to a lesser degree.
After switching the card out to an Intel AX210 there are no noticeable disconnects anymore.
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Swapped mine out for the one in the MSI Herald WIFI 7 Card. Its a Qualcomm Atheros and honestly I haven’t really noticed much of an improvement. I also dont have any other wifi 7 devices so that may or may not be why lol.
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I swapped out the Mediatek for the AX210 a little over 2 weeks ago now. I have noticed slightly better connection speed, but only slightly. The biggest difference I think has been connection reliability. I have so far experienced no issues with the AX210 and have been able to enjoy steady speeds. Also, perhaps I was just being stupid, but I was able to pair my BT mouse with the AX210, whereas I was unable to with the mediatek. (mouse is Razer Orochi V2)
Considering the price for a card on amazon, I would say go for it. I also have no compatibility issues or classing between intel and AMD. I wanted to be stubborn and not have intel drivers installed but the lapop has thunderbolt - which is intel. So they have drivers on it anyway lol And, to be frank, there is nothing wrong with intel.
So, if you have an extra 10-15 bucks (US) and are having issues with the mediatek, then the ax210 is a perfectly good alternative.
(P.S. My system is AMD7040 series (of course) with 32GB ram and Win 11. I put ram because SOMETIMES ram does weird things with compatibility)
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There is nothing wrong with mediatek either
And buying a cheap card from amazon could compromise your hardware, not worth the risk IMO
Shouldn’t be an issue if you get the right hardware instead of a sketchy 3rd party. Just gotta pay attention to what you’re buying. General use case, sure, nothing wrong with the mediatek. But, myself, and other people, have had issues - however minor they might be. Thus the whole discussion here.
TL;DR The mediatek is fine, but if you have issues, try to swap it out with something that is lying around, or buy an Intel AX200/AX210.
I ordered an Intel AX210 before my laptop even arrived due to previous terrible experience with non Intel wifi cards. I’ve had multiple realtek and qualcomm ones with a lot of issues like missing drives, regular kernel panics, broken connections, such that KDE plasma would crash, not being able to connect to certain networks like eduroam,….
I put the mediatek from my Framework in my desktop, and I have to say it seems to be working fine (bluetooth and wifi). It still could have issues with less reliable connections or AP’s (that’s often the issue with non-intel, e.g see the eduroam issue above).
What I don’t understand is that people swap the mediatek out for cheap alternatives. If you are using Linux, IMO Intel is the best choice. And from my experience even on Windows Intel is the best choice. It’s not perfect, nothing is, but it seems to generally be the best option.
Some other stuff:
- Killer is just marked up rebrand from other manufacturers (now Intel) Look at the ordering code for the BE1750, it’s just the BE200. And Windows will install Killer bloatware if you install the card…
- If you want to have a good wifi experience, don’t buy “Wifi 7” cards, the specification isn’t even finished yet and so are the drivers.
- Realtek and Qualcomm cards used to have (could be better with newer cards!) terrible/inferior Linux support, so keep that in mind!
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I swapped it for an old intel 8650 cause of a mixup (that one should have gone back in the t480s and the ax210 in the framework but somehow it ended up reversed XD), only realized when it would not use 160hz bands when I was doing speed testing.
ax210 is pretty much the go-to for now imo but if you don’t have an actual reason to swap you may as well keep the mediatek.
Or just flat out not post but that’s not really wifi 7s fault I suppose XD
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I have both the MT7922/RZ616 that came with the AMD FW13 and the Intel AX210. In my [Linux] experience, connectivity tends to be more stable with the AX210. Especially when moving between access points of the same network, which doesn’t (yet) have mesh or handover support on the gateway side, it tends to be considerably smoother on the AX210.
Anecdotally, Bluetooth on the MT7922 seems better and more reliable for me.
Other than that, I haven’t observed any significant differences for a home environment.
One downside against the AX210, however, is that it doesn’t play nice if you want to use it to create a 5GHz access point / hotspot. In fact, virtually all 5GHz bands show up as "no-IR" in iw <dev> info. Then again, this may be in part due to the regulatory domain (changing it manually may not work), part due to driver or module restrictions, but it’s not the first time Intel cards have been cheeky wrt 5GHz band hotspots, regardless of where the cause lies. The MT7922 appears to be a lot more lax on that front and has no issues, if a suitable band is selected.
Then again, the AX210 has Bluetooth 5.3 vs 5.2 on the MT7922.
Finally, if you do need to obtain MT7922 drivers for Windows, getting 1st party ones from AMD or MediaTek is mission impossible. You either have to rely on those that ship with Windows or on the OEM. Not so much of an issue wrt Framework, but in case anyone considered putting the RZ616 on another machine it’s a consideration.
I guess it comes down to personal choice/preference/priorities with the usual YMMV disclaimer.
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I’d like to replace it with AX210. I just moved to a new environment, and bought a FW13. I constantly have some sorts of issues: BT mouse disconnect, Wi-Fi issues…
I don’t know if MT7922 is really junky or the new environment. but my old mechrevo/tongfang AMD + AX210 has very very fewer issues, if not zero. Maybe I should swap Wi-FI+BT cards and see what happens first.
I use Debian testing.
kind of late, but have you installed intel iwlwifi firmwares?
Yes, I think the problem was that one of my hooks pulled the iwlwifi module into the initramfs and the iwlmvm module was then missing in early boot. Putting the iwlmvm module in my mkinitcpio.conf so it is available when it loads has helped. No idea whether that is the correct way of dealing with that problem but so far it works fine.
I swapped AX210 and MT7922 of 2 AMD systems. AX210 works much better on FW13 than MT. Much less issue through suspend/resume cycles.