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> I thought whether my hardware was failing but You're now making me question whether this is a problem with the wifi card or the driver. I admit I'm still con

> I thought whether my hardware was failing but You're now making me question whether this is a problem with the wifi card or the driver. I admit I'm still convinced it's probably the card (I have an earlier revision in a ThinkPad that works fine), but now I'm not so sure! Curious: Are you talking about that "little" issue where the i915 module was randomly causing a panic? I ran into someone who had some really perplexing issues that a kernel update later resolved, and their dmesg was strongly hinting (to me) that it was linked to the i915 drivers. That, and a bug report I managed to dig up. And I also agree. I'm looking at a Ryzen build, too. I have a couple of Intel NICs in my file server though and they're better quality IMO than the Realtek cards.

bayindirh 6y ago
Actually it can be anything. My mother owns a HP Spectre X2 convertible with an Intel WiFi card. Only the driver bundled with the Windows works. Any newer version via Windows Update or Intel breaks the card after a standby-wake cycle. Both updated drivers support the card on paper but, either the driver has a problem or the way the hardware designed on that particular computer messes some stuff up. BIOS upgrade didn't fix anything too. > Are you talking about that "little" issue where the i915 module was randomly causing a panic? No, I started to see some lines in the display like a faulty GPU draws. Sometimes a line, sometimes small corruptions were visible but, it was always fixed itself after a minute or two. The laptop in question is extremely low power so, nothing gets hot. Newer kernel updates fixed these issues too. Intel's mid-range and higher-end NICs have proper offloading and processors so, they neither tax the system much or fail to reach their advertised speeds. They're real cards for real loads, so they're more reliable AFAICS. A Realtek card works reasonably well for most of the light loads but, load it up with sustained high load, it cannot saturate the interface as it should.
- Zancarius 6y ago
  > Any newer version via Windows Update or Intel breaks the card after a standby-wake cycle. hahaha that's insane. I've seen some weird things come out of HP machines in the past, so somehow none of the above would surprise me. > No, I started to see some lines in the display like a faulty GPU draws. Ah, interesting. There was a drive bug in the i915 module that could potentially cause a panic on certain hardware. I never experienced it myself, but I ran into someone who had a similar issue. I don't think their problem was tied to the i915, but it was also resolved by a kernel update. > A Realtek card works reasonably well for most of the light loads but Yeah, and the Realtek chipsets are much more cheaply designed. Although, what puzzles me is that most of the Intel chipsets aren't that much more expensive (depends on vendor, of course, but you can easily find off-brand dual-port cards for ~$40USD with an Intel chip). It really makes it pointless to invest in Realtek cards that are both cheap and may or may not work at all. I remember having an issue with the onboard one in my desktop where it would randomly disconnect after negotiating 1Gbps. If I forced it into 100Mbps it would be fine. But, as with the earlier discussion(s), that was also resolved with a kernel update. I used an Intel card for a few years because of that reason, so I have no idea when it was eventually fixed.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    > hahaha that's insane. Moreover, out of the box driver is a stock intel wifi driver. It's not vendor-specific. Phew. > I remember having an issue with the onboard one in my desktop where it would randomly disconnect after negotiating 1Gbps. That's how the new driver broke one of the NICs. Other ones were just failing to detect carrier at all. The bug you're referring is [0], which I also added some feedback. [0]: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205047 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205047 Realtek's cards are not bad. They're not slow (in terms of latency). They're just not suited to sustained high loads (~60% of interface capacity).
    - Zancarius 6y ago
      > The bug you're referring is [0], which I also added some feedback. Possibly not, unless I'm misunderstanding. The bug was seen in a Realtek card in 2011-ish. I'm suspicious that might've colored my opinion of Realtek early on and why I still buy Intel cards to this day. Well, depending on the motherboard, of course.
      - bayindirh 6y ago
        Oh, then Intel actually caught-up with Realtek and broke their cards the same way for some time then. :) Realtek's 8139's first revisions was not able to perform well in most cases (~30mbit max speed, unrealiable). 8169 is much much better. Their new wireless cards also work very well if the driver is good, but they have so many sub-models with very different feature sets, so you need to get the exact chip for your needs. I use a 8111 (PCIe, Gigabit) at office for desktop to laptop bridge and it works fairly well, no stability or speed problems for now.
        Zancarius 6y ago
        > Oh, then Intel actually caught-up with Realtek and broke their cards the same way for some time then. :) Hadn't thought about it that way, but that's hilarious. Realtek's such a trend-setter. > 8169 is much much better. Just checked, and apparently that was the card in the machine I had issues with. I think part of the problem is that it was new at the time. So, I can't really fault the drivers per se. I never had any issues with it after they were fixed.

bayindirh 6y ago

Actually it can be anything. My mother owns a HP Spectre X2 convertible with an Intel WiFi card. Only the driver bundled with the Windows works. Any newer version via Windows Update or Intel breaks the card after a standby-wake cycle. Both updated drivers support the card on paper but, either the driver has a problem or the way the hardware designed on that particular computer messes some stuff up. BIOS upgrade didn't fix anything too. > Are you talking about that "little" issue where the i915 module was randomly causing a panic? No, I started to see some lines in the display like a faulty GPU draws. Sometimes a line, sometimes small corruptions were visible but, it was always fixed itself after a minute or two. The laptop in question is extremely low power so, nothing gets hot. Newer kernel updates fixed these issues too. Intel's mid-range and higher-end NICs have proper offloading and processors so, they neither tax the system much or fail to reach their advertised speeds. They're real cards for real loads, so they're more reliable AFAICS. A Realtek card works reasonably well for most of the light loads but, load it up with sustained high load, it cannot saturate the interface as it should.

Zancarius 6y ago
> Any newer version via Windows Update or Intel breaks the card after a standby-wake cycle. hahaha that's insane. I've seen some weird things come out of HP machines in the past, so somehow none of the above would surprise me. > No, I started to see some lines in the display like a faulty GPU draws. Ah, interesting. There was a drive bug in the i915 module that could potentially cause a panic on certain hardware. I never experienced it myself, but I ran into someone who had a similar issue. I don't think their problem was tied to the i915, but it was also resolved by a kernel update. > A Realtek card works reasonably well for most of the light loads but Yeah, and the Realtek chipsets are much more cheaply designed. Although, what puzzles me is that most of the Intel chipsets aren't that much more expensive (depends on vendor, of course, but you can easily find off-brand dual-port cards for ~$40USD with an Intel chip). It really makes it pointless to invest in Realtek cards that are both cheap and may or may not work at all. I remember having an issue with the onboard one in my desktop where it would randomly disconnect after negotiating 1Gbps. If I forced it into 100Mbps it would be fine. But, as with the earlier discussion(s), that was also resolved with a kernel update. I used an Intel card for a few years because of that reason, so I have no idea when it was eventually fixed.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  > hahaha that's insane. Moreover, out of the box driver is a stock intel wifi driver. It's not vendor-specific. Phew. > I remember having an issue with the onboard one in my desktop where it would randomly disconnect after negotiating 1Gbps. That's how the new driver broke one of the NICs. Other ones were just failing to detect carrier at all. The bug you're referring is [0], which I also added some feedback. [0]: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205047 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=205047 Realtek's cards are not bad. They're not slow (in terms of latency). They're just not suited to sustained high loads (~60% of interface capacity).
  - Zancarius 6y ago
    > The bug you're referring is [0], which I also added some feedback. Possibly not, unless I'm misunderstanding. The bug was seen in a Realtek card in 2011-ish. I'm suspicious that might've colored my opinion of Realtek early on and why I still buy Intel cards to this day. Well, depending on the motherboard, of course.
    - bayindirh 6y ago
      Oh, then Intel actually caught-up with Realtek and broke their cards the same way for some time then. :) Realtek's 8139's first revisions was not able to perform well in most cases (~30mbit max speed, unrealiable). 8169 is much much better. Their new wireless cards also work very well if the driver is good, but they have so many sub-models with very different feature sets, so you need to get the exact chip for your needs. I use a 8111 (PCIe, Gigabit) at office for desktop to laptop bridge and it works fairly well, no stability or speed problems for now.
      - Zancarius 6y ago
        > Oh, then Intel actually caught-up with Realtek and broke their cards the same way for some time then. :) Hadn't thought about it that way, but that's hilarious. Realtek's such a trend-setter. > 8169 is much much better. Just checked, and apparently that was the card in the machine I had issues with. I think part of the problem is that it was new at the time. So, I can't really fault the drivers per se. I never had any issues with it after they were fixed.