[SOLVED] Laptop network card replacement with 3x3 and WiFi6(e)

[CransNeighbour]

Heya,

sorry for the strange title of the question, I've just started reading about networking and network cards so I'm still a bit wonky with the terms.

Anyway, I've got a XPS 15 9550 from 2015 and would like to replace the wireless network card, mostly because it just doesn't play nice with Linux. It currently has a Broadcom BCM943602BAED, which uses three antennae, am I right to assume that means that it is a 3x3 card? I cannot find relevant spec sheets for that particular card.

The internet recommends the Intel AC 9260 and the newer Intel AX 200. I was thinking about buying the AX 210, but all of those cards are 2x2 and only have two antennae plugs. So the question begs whether I should care or not. Do I just get the AX 210 and leave one antenna dangling around, or should I get a different card altogether?

Thanks

 

[kerberos_20]

yup your card is 3x3MIMO 1300Mbit, intel sells just 2x2 but its 1725Mbit (for intel AC 9260 or 9560)
so if you swap, connect just two antenaes

 

[CransNeighbour]

That's what I thought, thanks for your answer.
The connectors on the Broadcom card are labeled J0, J1 and J2, does it matter which of the antennae I do not connect or are they mostly equal?

 

[bill001g]

It is actually fairly rare to see wifi6 or wifi6e cards that can do 3x3 mimo. I suspect they are having technical issues getting it to work, this was why you didn't see 802.11ac 4x4 devices for a very long time after 802.11ac was on the market.

As long as you can get 160mhz channels a 2x2 wifi6 or 6e connection is going to be much faster than a 3x3 connection running at 80mhz. The extra bandwidth is a huge increase, trying to stuff more overlapping signals with mimo tends to get less and less when you go above 2x2 mimo.

You are likely going to have to experiment to see if there is any combination of antenna that is better. Leaving one unused will not hurt.

The only thing to be careful of is does it use m2 cards. Almost all newer machines use m2 but it has only been in the last couple years before that you found a lot of 1/2 size pcmcia. All the newer wifi6 stuff seems to only come as m2.