[SOLVED] MSI Z590 Pro WIFI -- Slow Integrated WIFI, compared to WIFI adapter ?

[okjak808]

Hello everyone on Tomshardware Forums!

So just last week I decided to upgrade my platform since LGA 1155 is kind of outdated. I got a new motherboard from my local Best Buy the, MSI z590 Pro WIFI. When I realized it had onboard/intergraded WIFI I thought it would have much faster speeds compared to my WIFI adapter which I had to use on my LGA 1155 platform since it didn't have integrated WIFI. So a few days ago I completed my new platform build, LGA 1200. I was excited and finally finished putting them together, performance in games drastically improved and also just basic use as well, it's more responsive. I know my adapter would still be useful, I just wanted a motherboard that has integrated WIFI since my adapter does overheat at times and would shut off.

Although, this is where the excitement ends, while it felt faster by moving files and playing some games, I started to realize my WIFI was super slow, even when downloading a 564MB file took longer than expected. it gets even worse, the max MBs I get on steam when trying to download GTA 5 is 7.8peak MBs, while with my adapter (which I'm currently testing right now), is at 17.3Mbs peak, What the f$#@.

What I tried to solve this issue.

1. Uninstalled Intel WIFI 6 network adapter then reinstalled again.
2. Fixed position of antennas many times, while reseating them (remind you guys my router isn't that far it's literally in my sisters room which she is at the same floor as me)
3. Tried downloading drivers from MSI support
4. Tried using intel driver support software (but didn't have any new updates)
5. Updated Bios

Could my integrated WIFI be faulty or my motherboard, if so I still have till May 25th to return this, do you guys know what could be the problem. Also in some games it's impossible to even play any online games, ping spikes or is too high. Another thing I even tried testing my WIFI on my laptop which I mainly use for school. WIFI performs normally as it should.

Thank you for your time and reading this, have a beautiful day/night!

 

[kanewolf]

Hello everyone on Tomshardware Forums!

So just last week I decided to upgrade my platform since LGA 1155 is kind of outdated. I got a new motherboard from my local Best Buy the, MSI z590 Pro WIFI. When I realized it had onboard/intergraded WIFI I thought it would have much faster speeds compared to my WIFI adapter which I had to use on my LGA 1155 platform since it didn't have integrated WIFI. So a few days ago I completed my new platform build, LGA 1200. I was excited and finally finished putting them together, performance in games drastically improved and also just basic use as well, it's more responsive. I know my adapter would still be useful, I just wanted a motherboard that has integrated WIFI since my adapter does overheat at times and would shut off.

Although, this is where the excitement ends, while it felt faster by moving files and playing some games, I started to realize my WIFI was super slow, even when downloading a 564MB file took longer than expected. it gets even worse, the max MBs I get on steam when trying to download GTA 5 is 7.8peak MBs, while with my adapter (which I'm currently testing right now), is at 17.3Mbs peak, What the f$#@.

What I tried to solve this issue.

1. Uninstalled Intel WIFI 6 network adapter then reinstalled again.
2. Fixed position of antennas many times, while reseating them (remind you guys my router isn't that far it's literally in my sisters room which she is at the same floor as me)
3. Tried downloading drivers from MSI support
4. Tried using intel driver support software (but didn't have any new updates)
5. Updated Bios

Could my integrated WIFI be faulty or my motherboard, if so I still have till May 25th to return this, do you guys know what could be the problem. Also in some games it's impossible to even play any online games, ping spikes or is too high. Another thing I even tried testing my WIFI on my laptop which I mainly use for school. WIFI performs normally as it should.

Thank you for your time and reading this, have a beautiful day/night!

Did you do a clean Windows install with the new motherboard?

 

[bill001g]

That is the first motherboard I have seen with the new wifi6e. It might be a driver issue since these devices are very new. I would try to see if you can find drivers from the chipset manufacture. It could be some strangeness mixing wifi6/wifi6e and your router which is likely 802.11ac.

I would also check that you are on the same radio band. If you were using say 5g before and now connect to 2.4g there will can be a very large performance difference.

 

[okjak808]

Did you do a clean Windows install with the new motherboard?

Yes I did, in fact I had too because I know you could change parts and still use windows previously installed with the parts you were using before. But for some reason it wasn’t being detected so I had to do a clean install. The previous windows was installed on my TOSHIBA Q PRO SSD and now on my WD BLACK NVME SN750.

 

[okjak808]

That is the first motherboard I have seen with the new wifi6e. It might be a driver issue since these devices are very new. I would try to see if you can find drivers from the chipset manufacture. It could be some strangeness mixing wifi6/wifi6e and your router which is likely 802.11ac.

I would also check that you are on the same radio band. If you were using say 5g before and now connect to 2.4g there will can be a very large performance difference.

still even though 5ghz is connected it’s still super slow compared to my USB wireless adapter WIFI.

Strange enough I went to device manager and onto the Intel 6 wireless adapter, under advance there was this setting which I forgot what it was. But I chose 5ghz only and strange enough 5ghz connects to my pc because it could work for some reason didn’t mention that above sorry.

previously it was selected on dual band something with that 5ghz WiFi wouldn’t connect it kept saying “couldn’t connect to this WiFi”, other options had like 2.4 ghz and another dual band. Still now that it connects with 5ghz WiFi it’s super slow compared to my old wireless WiFi USB adapter.

 

[bill001g]

This is one of those the chipset is so new there likely is not a lot of information from end users to know of any common problems. In general problems with wifi on the motherboard are mostly releated to poor antenna placement but your chipset is so new it could be bugs in the drivers.

It is very rare to have bad chips on a motherboard and it is not like you purchased some unknown brand of motherboard from alibaba in china.

All I can think of is some kinda of incompatibility between wifi6e and 802.11ac on your router. Maybe look at the status on the 2 different wifi nics and see what connection "speed" you see. This number is actually what is called a MCS value and you can tell by that what the nic and the router have negotiated the encoding to be. Maybe try to run your phone as a hotspot and see if the MCS numbers are different.

 

[okjak808]

This is one of those the chipset is so new there likely is not a lot of information from end users to know of any common problems. In general problems with wifi on the motherboard are mostly releated to poor antenna placement but your chipset is so new it could be bugs in the drivers.

It is very rare to have bad chips on a motherboard and it is not like you purchased some unknown brand of motherboard from alibaba in china.

All I can think of is some kinda of incompatibility between wifi6e and 802.11ac on your router. Maybe look at the status on the 2 different wifi nics and see what connection "speed" you see. This number is actually what is called a MCS value and you can tell by that what the nic and the router have negotiated the encoding to be. Maybe try to run your phone as a hotspot and see if the MCS numbers are different.

So I went to intel and downloaded the drivers from there not sure if it done anything to improve this situation. But I went to Device Manager again and chose "Dual Band 802.11a/g", while the other one I had selected was Dual Band 802.11a/g/b, and somehow it's working better now and 5g wifi works too, but ping is soo much lower at 90, while my wifi usb adapter always hover at 120 to 200.

 

[bill001g]

Not sure what to even say on this.

This history from very old to newest is

802.11a/b
802.11g
802.11n
802.11ac
802.11ax.

Your card is wifi6 which is also 802.11ax. I have no clue why there would be setting talking about 802.11g unless somehow you have a very old router. Note we are talking more than 10-15 yrs old.

 

[okjak808]

Not sure what to even say on this.

This history from very old to newest is

802.11a/b
802.11g
802.11n
802.11ac
802.11ax.

Your card is wifi6 which is also 802.11ax. I have no clue why there would be setting talking about 802.11g unless somehow you have a very old router. Note we are talking more than 10-15 yrs old.

What really I'm sorry I don't know much about types of wifi connections. But I do know that my wifi router is from spectrum and my router looks like this.

https://imgur.com/a/fLTBkjK

View: https://imgur.com/a/fLTBkjK


and here are the settings I have under my Intelax210 WIFI adapter.

https://imgur.com/a/gQmFshw

View: https://imgur.com/a/gQmFshw

 

[bill001g]

I suspect that the setting related to a/b/g etc do nothing in your case. They would only be used by someone who had a very old router.

There is another setting that I have no idea what does that says n/ac/ax. These are newer and the ones your router actually uses. You might get different results changing that. Most times the default is the highest setting that supports the most options.
You could try to set it to not support AX and see if that makes any difference. It shouldn't because I don't think your router supports AX anyway and the card will just drop back to AC.

In general you are better off not messing with this stuff if you do not understand what you are changing. Although the software gets stuff wrong it tends to get it right more often than not.

What you want to do is look at the status panel and see what connect "speed" you are getting when you run the onboard Wifi compared to your USB wifi. Unfortunately you have very little control over wifi. The government has required that all the really interesting options on wifi chips not be available to end users because of the chance of violating the radio frequencies interference rules.

My solution to wifi has always been to not use it if I have any other option. On devices like cell phones or tablet that do not work any other way they also have so little memory that extremely high speed doesn't matter to me since all it means is my storage is full faster. Any new money spent would likely be better spend on MoCA or powerline networks. In your case you could be a tester for the rest of us and buy a wifi6e router. You would pretty much have the 6g radio band all to yourself since it is unlikely any of your neighbors have wifi6e equipment yet.

It is a hard choice if you think the motherboard might be defective to return it. That is a painful process even when the company does not fight you.

 

[okjak808]

I suspect that the setting related to a/b/g etc do nothing in your case. They would only be used by someone who had a very old router.

There is another setting that I have no idea what does that says n/ac/ax. These are newer and the ones your router actually uses. You might get different results changing that. Most times the default is the highest setting that supports the most options.
You could try to set it to not support AX and see if that makes any difference. It shouldn't because I don't think your router supports AX anyway and the card will just drop back to AC.

In general you are better off not messing with this stuff if you do not understand what you are changing. Although the software gets stuff wrong it tends to get it right more often than not.

What you want to do is look at the status panel and see what connect "speed" you are getting when you run the onboard Wifi compared to your USB wifi. Unfortunately you have very little control over wifi. The government has required that all the really interesting options on wifi chips not be available to end users because of the chance of violating the radio frequencies interference rules.

My solution to wifi has always been to not use it if I have any other option. On devices like cell phones or tablet that do not work any other way they also have so little memory that extremely high speed doesn't matter to me since all it means is my storage is full faster. Any new money spent would likely be better spend on MoCA or powerline networks. In your case you could be a tester for the rest of us and buy a wifi6e router. You would pretty much have the 6g radio band all to yourself since it is unlikely any of your neighbors have wifi6e equipment yet.

It is a hard choice if you think the motherboard might be defective to return it. That is a painful process even when the company does not fight you.

I see well I try and see how my connection goes with my WIFI adapter and I'll let you know. Although I still have till May 25th to return the board, I think I rather have a Z490 since most of the features on the Z590 I have are wasted since I have a 10th CPU. I completely forgot that my local GameStop sells mobos too and they have the Asus Z490 Tuf gaming board for 189 dollars, I think I should go for that instead.