Hi all, does anyone know if t he Intel AX210 will work in the AMD Ryzen version of the Framework 13? I’ll be honest, I am quite skeptical of MediaTek and have had nothing but good experiences with Intel Wi-Fi modules over the years. I reached out to Framework support to inquire about adding an AX210 card to my order and received the following response:
Upon checking, Order Rxxxxxxxxx is a Framework 13 AMD Laptop. The AMD Laptop already comes with a Wi-Fi adapter AMD RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E.
Please note that the Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 No vPro® module will not work with the AMD Laptop. Also, we cannot add the wifi module because it is not part of the configuration for the Laptop.
I see no reason the AX210 (or AX200) should not work, it’s a standard PCIe wifi card.
The AX211 (and AX201) uses an intel-specific host-offload functionality so those will only work on Intel hardware of a new enough version with the specific firmware support enabled.
For example I have an Intel AX200 in a 4 year old Ryzen notebook. It works fine.
Framework can’t give it to you as a selection as they get the wifi cards as part of CPU bundles from Intel & AMD, and it greatly simplifies their assembly lines.
Assuming there’s no EFI lock or restriction set on the PCIe slot, the AX210 should work with a Ryzen CPU. Google it, many are doing just that with other systems.
Okay thanks, you guys are confirming what I thought. I wasn’t asking to swap the included AMD RZ616 that it is built with to a AX210. Just simply to add an additional AX210 card onto my order.
I’ll reply to them with that clarification and see what they say.
I mean if you just want to buy an AX210 card, it’s probably simpler and cheaper to just order it from Amazon or whatever other seller you might prefer instead of trying to disrupt Framework’s assembly processes.
Just FTR, it does work, of course. (Source: I have just replaced the horrible MediaTek adapter with Intel AX210 No vPro and I am able to post this comment on the Internet.)
The big problem in these types of conflicts is older than you might think, it is a default programming problem in the construction of the hardware, where an IRQ range of the device is pre-established. In other words, whenever certain device drivers are installed that have the same IRQ addressing priority range, they will suffer from malfunctions. As an example of the older ones, when I used a 100Mhz Pentium and was unable to use the AGP SIS 720 video card and the ISA US ROBOTICS 56K modem, one of the two drivers always had to be uninstalled so that one of the devices could work correctly. I believe that with the number of programmers in the world today, it is easier to get around this problem today, unless the addressing is locked via firmware, then just rewriting the firmware with a new range available on the motherboard. If you find a solution, let us know!
I personally have both versions of the Ryzen Framework 13 and the 7940hs version of the Framework 16 and have AX210 wifi cards in all of them and it works just as well as the the Intel laptops. My guess is that Framework must sell the Mediatek adapter with AMD CPU versions as part of being in the AMD Advantage program.
You can get the AX210 wifi card for as little as $20 on Amazon.