So I swapped out my Mediatek with the Qualcomm NCM865 wireless card and had a few issues that I am sure others have experienced. I believe I have worked out the main problems and this is for anyone doing the same swap:
Problem 1: Drivers, No idea why it is so hard to get up to date drivers for this card. The usual posted ones have timestamps from last year. With those drivers I was getting very abnormal connection rates (between 5-300Mbps) and the closer I was to a transmitter the worse it got.
Windows update would not find anything newer but you can manually download the newest drivers for both wifi and BT from the windows update catalog: Microsoft Update Catalog
Just open the CAB files and extract to get the latest drivers. My upload/download speeds are now about where I expect them at 600 down 500 up
2: Bluetooth audio, I was also having issues with bluetooth headphones not getting audio, the usual fix of disabling the telephony service did not help in my case.
I found for some reason my headset was being associated with 2 bluetooth devices in windows, The Qualcomm one and another listed as “AMD BT Audio Device”.
By disabling the “AMD BT Audio Device” located under “Sound Video and Game Controllers” in the device manager all my issues were resolved BT audio works perfectly now.
Just wanted to thank you for this. I put the same card in an ASUS G14 (2024) and had the same bluetooth audio issue. Your solution worked for me as well.
I found the updated drivers from Lenovo but your solution is more elegant.
Thank you thank you thank you, I got the MSI Fastconnect 7800 and this solved the bluetooth headphone audio problem, one restart and my AirPods Max work perfectly now.
So far this card sucks. The latest drivers I can find are the 3.0.0.1207 from March and I’m barely getting 500/600 vs my RZ616 which I could get >1Gb on.
I created a Framework account just so that I could post a “thank you” for this fix. While it’s not for a Framework laptop (mine is an ASUS PX13), this solved hours of frustration when I installed the new Qualcomm card in my laptop (replacing crappy MediaTek). Thank you!!!
I just ran into this issue again and had to do a Google search to find this thread again.
Which brings something up - while it’s cool we found a workaround solution, why do we need to disable the AMD BT Audio Device to get BT audio to work with this Qualcomm card, but not with the MediaTek or the Intel AX210?
Also, I notice it’s not easy to find drivers for this card on Qualcomm’s site directly. The only place where I can find it is the MSI site where the card is also sold under (and there are no new drivers - same version I already have installed).
Is this still a pretty janky card for BT?
The frustration is that the next time I have reinstall Windows and start over from scratch, I don’t think I’m going to remember these little weird work-around fixes.
That would be a good question for Qualcomm. Maybe Framework does something in firmware that causes this issue but since we are going into the device and making changes they allow but don’t directly support it’s kind of on us to figure it out the quirks.
I’m of the opinion that if I buy something and then mess with it. Any weird bugs are on me to figure out and share with others if they also want to try the same thing.
I’m just putting it out there, not saying it’s a Framework issue.
If anything, it’s a Qualcomm/AMD issue, since it seems to be a driver or device conflict somewhere. Disabling the AMD BT Audio Device probably solves a specific conflict where audio is being sent to the wrong device.
Still I don’t understand where the AMD BT Audio Device is coming from. Is there another BT radio we’re not aware of?
Disabling the “AMD BT Audio Device” worked for me perfectly, thank you so much!
I also find the Qualcomm drivers from MSI as its the card in their HERALD-BE Network card.
First of all thanks, your fix got my BT to work, unfortunatelly I can not get de BT to use AptX codec, I replaced my WiFi/BT Card thinking that the Qualcom chip will give me AptX support but got dissapointed by the lack of it.
