Encore 802.11n PCI Wireless Adapter

[db36]

i've used 2 of these cards for over a year now and, while its true it works 'out of the box', that's only in g mode. trying to get it to run in 802.11n was a pain. i managed to do it under ubuntu 9.10, but since upgrading to 10.04, i haven't had any luck. i can get it to connect using n (270Mbs), but that connection rate rapidly drops below 54Mbs once the network is utilized. i've since removed the card and just connect by lan....

[Panix]

I would choose between these:

http://www.bestdirect.ca/products/138607/D_Link/DWA_552/

or

http://www.directcanada.com/products/?sku=11280NW5136&vpn=DWA-556&manufacture=D-LINK

D-Link 552 (PCI) or D-Link 556 (PCI-e)

I mention these because they have an Atheros chipset. Atheros is well supported in Linux?

I am considering the two above but not sure I want to pay the extra for PCI-e although it's appealing because many motherboards only have 2 PCI slots. I might not need the PCI slot if I ever upgrade my sound card to a PCI-e sound card and right now, I'm not using the other PCI slot.

[AdamW]

As mgc8 says, PCI rt2860 devices are not a great choice, as the Ralink driver is not well maintained. Particularly it uses the old wireless stack, which the kernel developers and userspace networking guys are very keen to get people away from. As as mgc8 says, there is a 'proper' driver but it's not workable yet.

I have a card like this. It works okay with rt2860sta, but even on an 802.11n network, not very fast - barely faster than g. (I notice your screenshot shows yours running at 802.11g speed, not 802.11n...) I'd much rather have one with a decent driver.

[doorknob60]

The first (and will probably be the last) Encore card I bought barely worked. I got mediocre speeds, lots of connections dropped, in both Linux and Windows. It was probably just a defective one, but sorry, not gonna risk getting another one. I've used two of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833166021 and they work great in Linux and Windows. Only $14.99 too.

[jhansonxi]

A lot of RaLink changes are happening in the 2.6.33 kernel.

[monraaf]

Stores local carry no pci-e wireless and they're still rare in the wild. Same can be said for tuner cards, sound cards, etc.

Yeah, that's one thing that's really bothering me. It's very common to have like 5 PCIe slots and only 1 or maybe 2 PCI slots on a mobo. But most hardware around is still PCI.

[vwtch]

Low Profile Bracket

To me any device that goes into any slot is useless unless it comes with a low profile bracket.

If they want to sell me one of these cards they better include a low profile bracket in the package.

[bnolsen]

Most of the mini-itx motherboards I've been looking at still only have a PCI slot, and don't have PCI-express.

Besides the few mini-itx boards out there that have PCI-express x16 slots instead of a PCI slot, I haven't seen any other motherboards on sale recently that don't have at least one or two PCI slots.

I'd say probably half now have pci-e, half pci.

The i7 860 matx I recently built has 3 pci-e and 1 pci.
I built a dual i7 with atx. 5 pci-e and 1 pci. Last year I built a dual core2 quad, 4 pci-e, 1 pci (can't access in the case I have).

Stores local carry no pci-e wireless and they're still rare in the wild. Same can be said for tuner cards, sound cards, etc.

[Ant P.]

I got a laptop with a PCI-E RT2860 recently and the experience is the exact opposite of what the article suggests.

The driver's flaky and half-finished at best. It drops the connection randomly every so often, or instantly if I do certain things like attempt to run powertop. The dmesg log gets flooded with debug messages even though I'm certain there's no wifi debugging compiled into the kernel. I've had wicd completely freeze a few times requiring a reboot too.

All in all, Ralink's linux support is a joke.

[Veerappan]

Unfortunately things are not as rosy as the article suggests... First of all, the card is using PCI, which is slowly dying and it started to disappear on many new motherboards (especially mATX/ITX which would be useful for a HTPC, which this type of card seems to be geared for).

Most of the mini-itx motherboards I've been looking at still only have a PCI slot, and don't have PCI-express. The 780G-based mATX board in my HTPC has 2x PCI slots, 1x 16x PCI-express, and 1x PCI-express x1 slot. I've got a TV tuner in the 1x slot, a wireless card in a PCI slot, and I've got one each of free PCI-express and PCI slots.

I have seen a gradual shift from PCI to PCI-express, but PCI isn't quite dead yet. given that this card is limited to 802.11n speeds (300 Mbit/s?), it's not even close to capping out the max bandwidth of the PCI bus (133 MB/s).

Besides the few mini-itx boards out there that have PCI-express x16 slots instead of a PCI slot, I haven't seen any other motherboards on sale recently that don't have at least one or two PCI slots.