Intel AC 7260 Ping Spikes in League of Legends and other games

Good evening everyone !
My girlfriend has an old clevo laptop with the wi fi adapter Inter AC 7260 and lately she started having awful lag spikes in online games like League of Legends. We both tried same wi fi network to make sure it wasn't the network itself being problematic but I get about 50-70 ms and she goes as high as 500 even for minutes at a time.
I tried reinstalling the windows and it worked for a few days. Then I tried unistalling and reinstalling the latest drivers. It didn't work at all.
I even tried this fix I found on a forum :
"- 802.11n channel Width for 2.4Ghz conenctions to 20mhz ONLY (Defualt is Auto)
- Prefered Band 2.4Ghz (Defualt is Auto)
- Roaming Agressiveness 1. Lowest (Defualt is 3. Medium)
- Wireless mode 802.11b/g (Defualt is 802.11a/b/g)" but it didn't work at all. Sometimes she gets spikes for about 5 seconds with the highest being 399 ms and then it gets back to 60-70. But this is still awful because a second in a team game can make the difference between win and loss.
The laptop also has a GTX 970M, intel I7 4710 HQ, 16 gb ram, CLEVO P65_P67SE (socket 0) motherboard.
Any ideas for a fix ?
Worth mentioning is that we tried 3 different wi fi networks with the same result.

 

Use WLAN Optimizer and tick both "disable background scan" and "enable streaming mode".

Also in Device Manager uncheck "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" for the 7260.

 

It didn't work.. any other ideas ?

 

Sadly no. The Intel wireless cards are notorious for their ping spikes (although WLAN Optimizer fixed them for me in the past) and that's why I have been recommending Killer 1525/1535 for years now. You can find them for $20-$30 on eBay/Amazon, install the drivers only INF package via Device Manager (not the Killer Suite), and no more ping spikes while gaming IME.

 

Can I put one of those Killer adapters on that motherboard ?
I know it supports as high as intel AC 8265.

 

Yup, I had the same laptop previously (P650SG the version with the 980M) and it came with a Killer 1525 from the factory. A Killer 1535 would also work.

 

I have ping spikes recently as well that have been driving me crazy, but I have not had time to rule out all the possible factors. My Dell 7577 has the Intel 8265 NGW and normally sees latencies of 30-40ms in OverWatch but gets frequent spikes up to around 100-130ms which ruins my gaming sessions. Been getting frequent server disconnects on OverWatch which end up crashing my actual WiFi connection for a split second before seamlessly reconnecting.

My internet connection is stable 100% of the time when doing normal browsing and even heavy downloading of actual-real-world-speeds of 190Mbits+.

My adapter:

 

Sorry to disturb you, I was just wondering. Would it be alright with a usb wifi adapter ? Or the ping spikes would continue to happen ?
I was looking at something like this : https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-12...26131&sr=8-4&keywords=wifi+usb+adapter+gaming

 

Honestly I've never tried, but given the latency sensitive nature of online gaming, and given USB's susceptibility to CPU and DPC latency spikes, I don't think it's a good idea.

 

If you're sensitive to latency, why use wifi at all?

 

Disable Packet Coalesing (it aggregates packets before transmit to increase transfer rates and reduce CPU usage but can conversely cause latency spikes) another thing is to reduce Roaming Agressiveness to low (If you have a lot of nearby APs. Both these options are found in the device’s advanced settings.

If nothing else try the newer 8265/9260 or a Broadcom card or the Qualcomm QCA6174A (it’s the non Killer Branded 1535). I usually recommend the original non branded cards vs the Killer marketing as I feel it’s a ripoff if priced higher as they provide nothing over the stock 6174A other than that Suite and drivers are just stock QCA ones.

As for yrekabakery you will find quite a few people with issues with the 6174A for every one on an Intel card to the point where Dell was giving 8260/8265 cards as replacements. Not due to the hardware per se but due to Qualcomm’s drivers. Then again you also have various factors such as AP compatibility and antenna placement within different laptops leading to different results between cards.

 

And you will also find hundreds if not thousands of forum and Reddit posts complaining about the ping spikes on the Intel cards dating back as far as the AC 7260, and people are still reporting such ping spikes with the 8265 that may or may not be resolved by WLAN Optimizer.

 

Thanks for these suggestions guys. I will be trying them out and will report back if anything improves.

 

Have anyone tried using PingPlotter?

Post #14 here seems to do a good job of analysis of this issue...

https://communities.intel.com/thread/111336

Unfortunately post #15 sounds like a moron with his "official" response. Smdh. Jonathan B sounds like a tool in general.

Post #22 suggests downgrading to driver version 19.20.0.6 to eliminate issues.

Post #32 suggests driver version 19.80.0.3 is best.

Looks like I have some more variables to try.

It is unfortunate Intel already locked down that thread from late 2017... They don't seem to care at all.

EDIT:
Also, I updated my initial post in this thread with a shot of my wifi adapter chip in case it matters. (Not sure which numbers were the ones I should be hiding though in case I should black out more of them.)

 

On both my 7260 and previous 62xx WiFi I always had to disable the ScanWhenAssociated key in regedit or I would have lag spikes in every game, Intel reps said for years that they would fix in the newest and latest driver, never did so.

 

WLAN Optimizer automates this.

 

As of approximately 1 year ago, the drivers were seemingly confirmed broken by more than one person (at least for the 8265 specifically, although the driver packages being issued by Intel include coverage for the 7260 as well as the 8265). We all know how serious Intel is about addressing critical issues. It was also stated by more than one person that even using WLAN Optimizer had no effect.

Can anyone confirm it's all fixed up now? Or point to specific instructions on how to make the registry edit necessary if that is a viable solution at this point?

 

This has been going on for many years, not just 1 year. I was using WLAN Optimizer to fix Intel driver's ping spikes 8 years ago when I first got into laptops. Like I said, part of how WLAN Optimizer works is it creates that reg key and sets it to 0. That's why there's a WipeOut.reg file in the WLAN Optimizer folder to restore the default registry settings if you decide to delete the program. The downside with using the program or setting the key manually is it effectively disables roaming, which can be problematic when you're moving around a lot. And I've also had rare problems discovering or connecting with certain public wireless networks when using WLAN Optimizer, although this was years ago and on much older 6 series Intel cards.

 

But, its a program running on background/on startup, doing the edit on regedit takes 2 minutes, and at the time I didn't know the program, but I know that regKey by name, changed it in so many laptops from friends..

 

That registry change alone didn't fix Intel's ping spikes for me. I had to also check "Enable Streaming Mode" in WLAN Optimizer to fix it.

 

I'm not running Intel WiFi cards anymore, Killer, for all the flak that they get are still better than the Intel wifi cards, no random drops/spikes, but thanks for referring that one, I will check it in my friends laptops.

 

Killer is just a QoS suite they don’t make cards nor their drivers, they simply rebrand the QCA6174A (1435/1535) and Intel 9260ac (1550) . The suite is known to cause DPC latency issues. Even my Inspiron came with Killer’s software (SmartByte in my case) and I usually recommend its removal as it caused many people headaches.


Killer sells both Intel and Qualcomm. I think you mean you like the QCA6174A. Just saying so if you go the QCA route you can get the original QCA labeled one if cheaper since it’s seems quite a few who buy the Killer branded one don’t install the QoS suite anyway.

 

Yup, I'm running just the .inf drivers, between latency spikes and memory leaks in older Killer software thingies, but the hardware puts anything by Intel up to the 7260AC(never bought any Intel WiFi card after that model, tired of the ping spikes that started in the 3260 models that was never fixed) in a corner.

 

This is exactly why I switched to Killer a few years ago starting from the 1525 and never looked back. I'm using the Killer 1535 now. Even though WLAN Optimizer fixed the ping spikes for me on the AC 7260 and older Intel cards, I still get lower ping and less jitter on the Killer cards, which translates into a slightly but tangibly improved online gaming experience. I installed the INF wireless and Ethernet (my model also has the E2500) drivers using Device Manager, no Killer Suite. Lower and more consistent latency, and no more ping spikes without needing a reg edit or separate app.