I’m looking for the absolute best Wi-Fi card that’s compatible with the Framework 13 AMD laptop featuring the 7840U CPU. I’m a college networking student, and while the Mediatek cards get the job done, I’d like to upgrade. Previously, I had a laptop with an Intel Wi-Fi card, and it seemed to perform a bit better.
I’m aiming for the absolute best card that I can install in my laptop, preferably with all the features—even if I’m not fully familiar with all of them yet. It would be great to have them so I can learn more about their capabilities.
I’m using Windows 11 Education and Ubuntu 24.04LTS
The Intel AX210NGW. This is currently the best PCIe based Intel card that you can get for AMD laptops. It is only WiFi 6E, but the newer WiFi 7 cards that Intel is making are not compatible with AMD computers.
You can find it on Amazon or on the Framework Marketplace for around $18.
Make sure you download the drivers for the wifi adapter before you swap it out, this way you will get wifi after you have swapped out the card.
Everything that I’ve seen with Wi-Fi 6E cards is that the AMD/MediaTek RZ616 (what came with your laptop) is usually the fastest, however there is a significant portion of users who have found it to be a buggy mess (although in my experience it is excellent).
When looking at Wi-Fi 7 cards the Intel cards don’t work properly with the Framework 13 AMD leaving only the AMD/MediaTek RZ738 and the Qualcomm card mentioned above. I am not sure how those compare, although I know that even when on regular Wi-Fi 6 networks reviewers have found laptops with the RZ738 to perform ~20% faster than laptops with RZ616, so even on networks that don’t support Wi-Fi 7 there is still a meaningful boost to the newer cards.
I did not know about that WiFI module until you pointed it out, but I still stand with the AX210NGW.
That is probably one of the absolute fastest, but I believe that the Intel one is still better as it is much more widely tested and has a reputation for being quite stable. In the end, it will take quite some time for WiFi 7’s adoption (some might not even bother upgrading their WiFi systems), so going with the Intel AX210NGW which is widely available and thoroughly tested seems like the better choice for me.
I’ve bought the AX210 No vPro from Framework and installed it yesterday.
So far it’s been working great, I still have to keep testing it. But what I do notice is that it connects to wifi network a lot faster.
This should not impact performance. It’s PCIe x 2.
Key Notched Provided
ID Pins Interfaces
A 8–15 PCIe ×2, USB 2.0, I2C and DP ×4
B 12–19 PCIe ×2, SATA, USB 2.0 and 3.0, audio, UIM, HSIC, SSIC, I2C and SMBus
C 16–23 Reserved for future use
D 20–27 Reserved for future use
E 24–31 PCIe ×2, USB 2.0, I2C, SDIO, UART and PCM
F 28–35 Future Memory Interface (FMI)
G 39–46 Reserved for custom use (unused in the M.2 specification)
H 43–50 Reserved for future use
J 47–54 Reserved for future use
K 51–58 Reserved for future use
L 55–62 Reserved for future use
M 59–66 PCIe ×4, SATA and SMBus
The use of an A key means it will exclude all cards that are not PCIe ×2, USB 2.0, I2C or DP ×4, and the use of an E key excludes all cards that are not supported by both A+E. Since PCIe x2, USB 2.0 and I2C are the only commonalities between the A key and the E key, an A+E card could only be PCIe x2, USB 2.0 or I2C, while an A only card could also be DP x4 and an E only card could also be SDIO, UART or PCM.
Irrelevant here because it’s PCIe x2, but an A+E slot is more restrictive in what it will allow than an E slot or an A slot.
This is also why you can’t put a storage drive in this slot since those are B+M or M.
I’m not sure about the FW mainboards, but there are actually mainboards with E-key PCI-E slot that still support storage via an M-to-E-key adapter, even though they’re physically blocking direct installation.
