Im running windows 11 on my new FW13 with the HX370 and i have 64GB of RAM installed as well as the RZ717 Wifi card.
Ive noticed from the beginning on that load times for websites are randomly very long and when downloading files it becomes immediately obvious that something is wrong as download sit at under 1mbit/s for a long time and only sometimes randomly spike to higher numbers.
Meanwhile Windows reports perfect reception and 1733mbps transfer speeds.
My connection has 1000mbps and im also getting the full speed when making the exact same downloads on any other device.
Is there a known issue with this wifi card or something?
This problem happened both with the FW drivers from March as well as with the new ones that released last week.
Also just did a speed test and im getting 2.26mbps down and 12mbps up from the laptop, while getting full speed from my other laptop which has worse wifi.
i just found one factor that seems to play a role in this but not exclusively.
i get better but still slow speeds when im not plugged into my docking station.
Im using a Kensington MD120U4 USB4 Mobile Dockingstation that gets power from a 100W USB PD Powersupply and all that is plugged into that dock is a Logitech Dongle.
While im plugged into this dock with the FW laptop the download speed is 0.5mbps.
when i unplug its ranging from 100 to 300mbps which is still very far from what the wifi should be capable of.
i also found that plugging in ANY USB C Charger will also result in a drop in Wifi performance, even when the battery is fully and no charging is actually happening the wifi drops to under 1mbps immediately when i plug in a charger.
tested multiple different ones with the same result.
The same also happens when plugging in a Powerbank so there seems to be a major problem here.
Plugging into the USB4 ports has the same result on both sides of extremely slow and barely usable Wifi, using the front port on the right is even slower.
Using the front left port is as slow as using the USB4 ports.
There could be so many things that are causing the slowdown. From firmware on the RZ717, to the drivers, to the EC telling the card one thing and it going into a lower power state (hence the slowdown in connection), then there is the possibility of the physical antennas are not seated correctly or just one of them, or the card itself has a defect.
Here is a quick test that does not involve hardware changes: create an Ubuntu USB and boot to the “Live” OS. Connect via Wifi and see what your speeds are. If they rocket up, then it is with the drivers in windows.
Change that does involve hardware: Buy an Intel AX210 card and swap it out.
I recently swapped my Framework 16 from the stock WiFi card to the Intel AX210; my bluetooth disconnections went away, my WiFi now comes on faster from a cold boot (15 seconds vs. 60+)
To be fair I only have a weakie DSL connection at home so nothing is getting high throughput over the Internet.
There is the possibility that it genuinely is a defective card though and support would warranty it if it is failing all over the place. Just because it gets a strong connection does not always equate to high throughput. I have had network cards years ago that would link up to 100MB or 1GB just fine and they would barely beat out a 56K modem in throughput.
just did the test with the Ubuntu Live image and can confirm the problem persists even with Ubuntu but less severly.
Ubuntu with no charger plugged in results in 500 - 600 mbps in the speed test, which is still way below the 1000mbps i would be expecting but at least its usable.
The moment i plug in any kind of charger the speed drops to ~20mbps so faster than the 0.5mbps i get under windows but still a huge slow down.
Well that is nice that there was some improvement; the issues being described are likely an issue with the EC on the mainboard telling the WiFi card something and it goes into a super lower power state. This could be with the EC, could be the charge controller, could be the RZ717, or even worse; all of these.
Definitely contact support, just be prepared to help do some troubleshooting.
Consider buying the Intel AX210 card if it is compatible with the new HX370 board (I am presuming it is). This issue with the RZ717 card may not get resolved as quickly as desired.
I just wanted to chime in here and say, I was having the exact same issues with the RZ717 on Fedora 42. I swapped it out for the AX210, and initially, I thought the problem went away…but quickly realized the slow wifi issue is still very much present. I’ve resorted to running a very long ethernet cable - but there is definitely an issue with both wifi cards for me.
are you already in contact with the support?
They wanna send me a new mainboard now but theres not timeline yet when that will happen so for now i forced windows to use 2,4Ghz Wifi only as the speed drop is less severe in that case.
i also just ordered an AX210 as FW seems to be moving pretty slow and hope that i can get acceptable speeds with that one.
Sorry to hear that the issue persists albiet improved with the AX210. That points towards a BIOS issue with the EC or one of the other subsystems that drivers are taking are taking their feedback on and adjusting the speeds in an unfavorable state.
In the case of not every board exhibiting this issue then it would be exceedingly complex to narrow down what is causing it to be throttled to lower speeds. More testing internally likely needs to be done. I suspect this issue did not come up in their development testing.
Nice to hear the AX210 offers an improvement but the root issue is somewhere else. Thanks for reporting back in.
Given the persistence across different Linux distros but not Windows, I anticipate this is kernel level issue related to the fact that this is an SoC while the NIC is a separate module connected via PCIe. The Windows kernel communicates fine with the BIOS, so I’m not sure BIOS updates will solve this either if the Linux kernel doesn’t know how to properly communicate with the device IDs.
Don’t take my word as gospel because I’m just a hobbyist, but I have at least noticed that Linux distros have more support for low-power SoCs, and I haven’t seen a lot of support for higher powered chipsets unless they’re server-grade, for instance Nvidia’s Grace SoC.
I’d be happy to be proven wrong, but I doubt that a new board would change anything. Not even AMD’s beta drivers will do much, but it does go to show how much more robust Intel’s NICs have always been. Sorry, AMD. We’ll just have to be patient, I guess.
Still I would be curious what you dmesg and journalctl and top showed at boot and while downloading anything. If the AX210 only temporarily improved performance, I wonder if the kernel log will show a deluge of WATCHDOG messages.