Question Wi-Fi 7 m.2 cards

[jaydub868]

I am looking to purchase an Intel BE200NGW Wi-Fi 7 m.2 card for my motherboard. My question is, does Intel only make the chip that wireless device manufacturers incorporate into their m.2 cards, or does Intel also sell their own version of m.2 cards. All of the m.2 cards I see say Intel BE200NGW on the main chip but I don't think that means Intel makes the m.2 card, only the main chip on the card. All of the m.2 cards I've seen don't show who any branding. See link for an example of what I'm talking about on a card from Nicgiga. So how is a person supposed to determine the provenance of these cards....it is not apparent to me.

https://www.amazon.com/Wireless-BE2...31664355107021063-B0CPPHCQXD-&hvexpln=73&th=1

 

[dwd999]

IDK I don't think there has ever been a photo of a genuine BE200 on Intel's website or anywhere else that can be verified as genuine. Nor has there ever been any indication if Intel manufactures the chips themselves or if they contract the chip itself out to another fab. There's that website DongKnows where he reviews one which seems to match the Nicgiga picture. If you search through every review site where they review the BE200 you might find a picture of the card which you could check against the others.

Wi-Fi 7 Upgrade: How to Turn Your PC Cool | Dong Knows Tech

Here are the real steps to perform a Wi-Fi 7 upgrade on a Windows computer. Make that happen today!

dongknows.com

 

[bill001g]

If you buy from temu or aliexpress you expect a lot of fake stuff but it is scary the amount of fake stuff you find on amazon. This seems to be a common issue on all wifi cards.

This is where maybe paying a bit more if amazon themselves sell it. The really suspect ones are the ones that do not even say intel on it.

It would be a massive undertaking to manufacture their own chips and people would be complaining if the chipset did not identify correctly. This is most likely some device that is in violation of intels sales rules but is likely a real intel chip. I suspect intel could in their driver identify devices that are not 100% legit but I have not seen them do it.

In any case I am still on the fence about wifi7. There have be lots of issues getting some feature to work like bonding of frequencies. I have yet to see a m.2 card that actually has mulitple radio chips even though it is commonly feature on a router.
There also seem to be issue really getting 320mhz channels to work outside the same room. Seem the 6ghz signals have even more trouble when you try to use lots of bandwidth.

wifi6e still seems good enough for a while....but there is very little difference in the price so you buy wifi7 and use it as wifi6e. I am sure when they make a m.2 card with 3 radio chips it will increase the costs a lot.

 

[dwd999]

Part of the problem is that if you select Amazon as the seller, there aren't any chips like that for sale, so you have to go with a 3rd party seller. The best you can hope for is fulfillment by Amazon. As for wifi 6E and 7, I've given up on 6E for now and gone back to 5 since I was getting really poor file transfer speeds between my computers with 6E and 5 is much better. The real challenge for 6E and 7 appears to be the wan device, e.g. motherboard or pcie card, having enough transmitting power to send a strong enough signal to the router or mesh network base to achieve the claimed throughput. So unless the computer is really close to the router wifi 7 may be a flop.