Advantages of Killer 1535 compared to Intel 8260

Hey! I am planning on getting a new laptop sometime soon after Christmas and these are the two options that are available to me.

From what I have heard, the Killer does better in gaming situations (prioritizing gaming packets or something of the like) however the Intel would offer better signal reception/range.

The upgrade is $15 to the Killer variant, worth it?

 

Avoid any Killer card like the plague. They have great hardware spoiled by crappy drivers. I cannot count the threads of people having disconnections and/or blue screens of death.

Everytime I read one of those threads I smile and feel happy that I paid extra to get the Intel AC-8260 FTW. It simply works, no stupid bandwidth control or buggy drivers or useless gimmicks.

Never once did I have a disconnection or lag

Here is my speedtest results using the Intel AC8260, notice the ping rate how low it is (lower is better)

 

Thanks for the advice - are wireless adapters usually user-upgradable?

 

Yes they are user upgradeable with the exception of convertible notebooks where it's a part of the motherboard in the tablet-part of the notebook.

 

Just some other info.

The Killer supports Wave2 features, the Intel does not.
Intel doesn't support MU-MIMO while Killer does.

As for the "faster when gaming" that's just a gimmic. Your internet is only so fast, that is your limit. The only way the killer wins is if you're doing other things on you same laptop. For example downloading something. In that case the killer will use QoS and make the game packet have priority over the download.
It however doesn't do anything if another machine is using internet also.

End of day, I say go for cheapest one.
Personally I'm going for Killer just for the better chipset. I don't plan on installing the bloat software, just the basic drivers

 

MU-MIMO is a technology that is useful if a router supports it and it mostly a technology for routers, so I wouldn't call it a big deal.

That is so true. I've been saying this for years but people are so insanely gullible that they will pay extra for a card that will prioritize UDP packets from their own computer over TCP packets from their own computer. Anyone else in the household streaming something or downloading something and the whole supposed advantage goes to hell.
Well, it's not my money...

 

Thanks for the advice - I think ill stick with intel. As for QOS support - I already have my laptop set up as a priority device on my network, so that should be enough already. Thanks for the advice!

 

Sheesh, I better dump my Killer 1525 card, you are getting 3ms ping time to Dubai, and I am getting *266ms* !!



Are you sitting on the floor just outside the inside router for ETISALAT?

1ms is from being on the same subnet... 3ms, well, maybe 2 switches / routers in between.

Nice setup

 

but dude, if you don't live in Dubai then you shouldn't be doing a test using the Dubai Servers as that will obviously increase your ping rate. You wanna have speedtest.net automatically choose the closest server to you. Or wait, do you actually live in Dubai as well?

This is on an ETISALAT eLife 4.0 connection. Recently they upgraded all customers from eLife 3.0 to eLife 4.0 which basically is also a fibre optic connection but is double the speed of whatever you had before.

So I had a base connection of 20 MBPS and I opted to for the speed booster service which means you pay AED 100 more per month and the speed goes from 20 to 50. After the upgrade which was done free of charge to all customers, the base speed became 50 MBPS and with the speed booster it is now 100MBPS Down / 20 MBPS up

When they announced this on their website, I had to call more than 20 times each day to expedite the migration / upgrade to the eLife 4.0

 

Hook a fellow Arab up with a nice job in Dubai please haha

 

Been looking for a job since 2 years bro. Nada

 

Awesome connection, great price

No, I am not in Dubai, and I was only joking, showing the difference between your local exchange throughput and my long distance throughput to contrast the awesome speed you are getting for throughput.

Glad to hear the 8260 is a good card and drivers are working well, that is one of the choices for Wifi in the builds I have been quoting.

Usually I try to avoid relatively new Wifi cards until the drivers work out, but it sounds like you think they are solid.

Thanks for the feedback

 

I've actually seen a decent performance boost when using a Wave 2 router and client with MU-MIMO, even if the other devices don't support it.
A few routers out do support it now and mostly and new routers in the future will support it as it's part of the new standard.
This also makes me think Intel is using older hardware since they don't support the newer technology.
I personally just purchased an 1535 and am going to use the basic drivers only without the other software (since it doesn't matter much).

I'd rather have things as late of versions as they can be now so I don't have to upgrade as soon later

 

I'd rather have a card that works great rather than some great features on paper that don't translate into any real world improvements or stability. The Killer cards are great on paper, they sound awesome, bandwidth control to prioritize traffic! Great! all routers these days have QoS! LOL. And, if only it worked without causing disconnections or blue screens of death. If only Qualcomm invested just a little bit to get some drivers to run stable. I'll take a reliable connection over a fancy new one with gimmicky features that don't give me a stable connection any time of the day.

 

There are often transient Wifi protocols and various attempts have been made over the years to help with off-loading channels and congestion relief.

Intel is usually good about supporting all new protocols, but sometimes they choose their own in house solutions as well.

Intel is also plugged in to the standards community and has a good view of what is coming down the road; they may choose to skip a generation as they want to implement the "final" iteration in products.

Note that the 1535 is short on BT tech, they are still at BT 4.1 and the 8260 is at 4.2 which may be a bigger deal as "the internet of things" progresses.

Bluetooth 4.2® Smart Ready (Low Energy) (from 8260 pdf)

"Dual mode Bluetooth 4.2® connects to the newest low energy Bluetooth® products as well as your familiar devices, such as headsets, keyboard, mice and more. "

I think either one would be a good choice. If I were actively traveling these days, I would carry both in some form; one internal and one as an external dongle.

 

It sucks you have had this experience with the Killer card(s), but I have never had a BSOD from using a 1202 or 1525 driver... but then again I usually stick with a driver version once it performs as needed (in comparison to other devices).

The prioritization works well locally for giving priority to Video vs large downloads - even though I have QOS prioritization in my router, locally the high transfer rate for long periods of time can have a glitchy effect on video.

What I have found is if I configure the Network Manager upload / download speeds accurately it works great. If I ignore it, and just run anyway, it can occasionally cause glitchy video. It also works to not install the Network Manager or Filter driver.

It's silly that Killer wouldn't put up a series of sites for automatic setting of upload / download speeds, that would have solved the whole problem, but for whatever reason they haven't.

It's a crap shoot with Wifi compatibility, so far all new vintage routers accessed with 1525 have been working fine, and with all the 5 year old routers I come across the same, but I am sure there are some that the 1525 won't do well with, it's just luck of the draw.

I usually upgrade my routers when I have a new Wifi card coming, and it has been a couple of years since I have upgraded. I do test first, but I expect newer Wifi cards need protocol support of new routers - make sure to do your homework on what both support before committing to a purchase.

 

I upgraded my ASUS RT-AC68U to the RT-AC88U when it first came out to get better technology like MIMO and what not, all I had was random disconnections in the middle of things I was doing, tried every firmware, Merlin, ASUS, all had the same problem. So I sold it then got the RT-AC3200 which is supposed to give you the ability to have a single network SSID and then assign the device to the 2.4GHz network or 5GHz network depending on the network congestion, that was amazing, no longer did I have to sit and wonder hmmm, which band is better? 2.4 or 5? again, all sounds great on paper, that router gave me more disconnections than anything, it was unusable, I waited for weeks checking daily on the ASUS site for firmware updates, and while the changelog did mention improvements to the auto switching bla bla bla, it never did help, so I sold it and went back to my trusty RT-AC68U (this is why my ping rate is very low BTW), that router is the gold standard for me, let the new features and MIMO go to **** if they cannot offer me a stable connection.

 

Same here, I keep the best of each generation router around as backup. I have a DIR-655 that has worked amazingly well all the years I have had it, best router purchase ever, and the RT-AC68U is working out to be the same.

My Netgear WNDR3700 was going great for years, then fell victim to the transmitter burn out on 2.4ghz they all seem to suffer from eventually - and I took special care to give it plenty of cooling and run the power at lowest setting - went on to use 5ghz only for a while, but time marches on, new routers gotta be bought

It sounds like you hit the RT-AC88U at the wrong time. I got one that out of the box dropped connections like crazy, but the latest firmware fixed it and I got slightly better throughput with it than the RT-AC68U. Timing.

I have let pass several new routers, waiting for the "final version" before I get another.

Maybe the AC5300 will be "it", err nope, latest firmware is dropping 2.4ghz connections...

 

That's the thing though, MU-MIMO isn't "on paper". It's been proven that it increases bandwidth and efficiency. And routers do exist that support it.
The only issue killer has is that "sometimes" the silly app they include screws with people, BUT you can opt to just run the drivers without the app.
The killer cards themselves use a good chipset. Atheros (Qualcomm) have often been seen as better vs. Intel for many things. I've personally always seen better compatibility, drivers, range and speed on them. (Not just Killer but vanilla also).

Most routers are either Broadcom or Qualcomm chipset. None are Intel. Also FWIW intel just re-brands and customized some things from major other vendors. SSD and WiFi they do that with also but this isn't a well known fact...

I've had as many issues with Intel as I have any other vendor. End of the day they are all the same. Intel actually annoys me more because they hide things more and are harder to work with.
Have you ever had to work with Intel support? They want to send you to the OEM always and wont support you at all if you buy a WiFi card yourself etc.

The full specs of Intel cards I only got from contacting an Engineer I know. That's also the only way I could ever get help about finding out how to deal with the latency spike Intel cards have every 60-90 seconds.
If you search the internet about ScanWhenAssociated setting, that was discovered by me from an back-end Engineer and something Intel doesn't/didn't want known existed. Now tons of places are starting to share it. I posted it on NBR first though of course

Here is a fairly recent review that includes MU-MIMO before and after:
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Networking/Killer-Wireless-AC-1535-Review-MU-MIMO-Era-Begins

Grant it the card they compared to was single band but just look at the killer even with MU-MIMO on vs. off.

As for QoS. It doesn't always work properly on routers.

Anyway, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say Killer is better over Intel. They both have pro and con, but don't go by the killer app and it's issues as saying hardware is better or not. I am comparing pure hardware and driver level. Run the native Qualcomm or Killer only drivers and not the app if you don't like the QoS stuff, but the hardware is still decent hardware...

The issue here is the devices that can use the newer BT techs are generally limited and very slow to market. I see new devices still being released on 3.0. Most will release to 4.0 and many skip the minor bumps as they generally are only minor changes.

Also if I had to compare better WiFi to better BT I rather have better WiFi but that's just my 2 cents. It comes down to what your use cases are. If you just use a BT mouse/keyboard well, 4.2 probably doesn't matter.

I do wish a Wave 2 BT4.2 device existed, even better if it was 3x3 channel lol.
Right now only can find older draft 3x3 cards. Even Intel which will soon release a 3x3 AC card, it won't be wave 2... Sad...