Korth wrote:
I've gone wireless - long story, but no wired network until the 10G fiber gets installed - and I found, interestingly, that the ASUS 3T3R dual band WiFi accessory provided with my ASUS X99 mobo isn't as magnificent as promised. The ASUS 3T3R gizmo is really neat (and comes "free" with ASUS mobo) and it lets you position your antennas where desired (usually high up to maximize signal and minimize ugly) - but the antennas themselves are just mediocre and it turns out there's signal latency between them and that long wire that leads to your computer (where they actually get processed). My new TP-Link Archer T9E card uses the same Broadcom chip, the same (albeit rebranded) drivers, and the same spec AC1900 - but it actually performs as promised, consistently achieving and sustaining fastest "theoretical" speeds at each band - because while the antennas all stick out of the back of your computer, and it fills up a PCIe slot (usually that tiny one above or between the GPU cards, lol), it is able to process the signal "instantly" for excellent beam-forming (meaning that it finds and holds the "best" 1300Mbps/600Mbps signal shortcuts to and from your WiFi router, directly through ten walls and three rooms and two floors and every obstacle within). The black PCB and black heatsink and black backplate are all just gravy.
I'm still using this Archer T9E wifi card - long story, but still no wired network until the 10G fiber gets installed.
5 signal bars and 1300Mbps+600Mbps connections almost all the time almost every time, bandwidth dips from time to time but I've never seen it go below Gigabit speeds. (Since I discovered and enabled Broadcom's channel merging functions in software, anyhow, lol.)
Consistently low latencies and high responsiveness in games vs the ASUS 3T3R with consistently high latencies, awful pings (and ping spikes), and sluggish responsiveness in games.
Highly resistant to noise vs the ASUS 3T3R frequently dropping to around 2-3 signal bars (and slow 50Mbps~600Mbps bandwidths).
I put a thermal probe onto the heatsink - big expensive-looking metal heatsink so I expected it must be there because it can get hot, yes? - but I've never seen it go above 45C in a 30C ambient, even when deliberately trying to run it hard and heavy (with tons of two-way torrent traffic while the wifi network was cloggy and the gateway was busy).
Although wired is by far the best and only way to go with a desktop system, wireless should only be used when wired is not an option. In my case, half my home is still being (re)constructed and my internet provider is not yet up to speed (plus I've got internet working well enough for now so it's not an urgent priority). For many people, a shared internet gateway/router is not physically accessible or their mother/wife/landlord/strata won't let them run wires from room to room. But if you've got a way to wire your desktop directly to your internet then it's foolish to prefer wifi.
https://www.howtogeek.com/217463/wi-fi-vs.-ethernet-how-much-better-is-a-wired-connection/
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[/Korth]
