Slow WiFi on new Laptop 16 running Linux

I recently purchased a Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen™ 7040 Series) and have run into some trouble with my WiFi speeds. My old laptop (HP Victus 16-r0xxx) is used to speeds around 320 Mbps download and 93 Mbps upload, but my new laptop is at about 18 Mbps download and 23 Mbps upload. Both are connected to the same network and in the same room. This problem has persisted over multiple distros, namely Bazzite, Pop! os, and Mint (details below).

I have already tried turning off WiFi powersaver, turning off IPv4 and IPv6, switching to exclusively 2.4 Gh and 5 Gh versions of the network, and changing my DNS without any significant change. At this point I don’t know what to do, and I don’t particularly want to swap back to windows.

Current Specs:

Distro: Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64 Bit

Kernel: 6.17.0-35-generic

BIOS: Insyde 3.05

WiFi Link Speed: 54 Mb/s

Plus, some info that I found using a command from this post.

    Interface: wlp4s0
    Signal strength: -31
    Signal quality: 100
    Signal bars: ▂▄▆█
    Wi-Fi Speed: 540 Mbit/s

Your laptop probable came with a Mediatek MT79xx wireless adapter (branded as AMD RZxxx). lspci |grep -i network should confirm that.

Search this forum for RZ616; Those adapters unfortunately seem to have known issues with Linux drivers and some access points.

Mine (FW 13 AMD 7040) is a MT7922 that, on the networks I’ve used it so far, hasn’t had obvious issues. But this does really seem to depend on specific network frequencies, options, and version of the WiFi spec supported.

The good news is that you can replace it with an Intel one that has a much more stable track record for under USD 20.

Edit: I see that FW states the AX210 non-vPro model is not compatible with AMD machines? That seems wrong, again the RZ616 threads I mentioned before should have many posts from people that solved this by using an AX210 on their AMD laptops. AX2x0 are standard and compatible, AX2x1 are the Intel-doing-its-special-thing ones.

1 Like