Asus pce-ac66 driver download

Pros: PCIe interface - I've been waiting for a PCIe ac card since 5G WiFi devices started being released in Spring of If you look at other ac adapters that are available, you'll notice that most of them use the USB interface. Many reviewers point out that the theoretical maximum throughput of the ac standard is mbps, which is higher than the maximum capabilities of USB (mbps). We all know that there is a big difference in theoretical throughput and real-life throughput (especially when it comes to wireless devices), so I didn't know if this would be a real limitation or not, but I suspected that a 5G WiFi device with a stable connection would likely bottleneck a USB port. Also, previous USB wireless devices I've used have not been able to keep up with sustained high-speed file transfers on a high-performance network, and tend to slow down over time. I opted to wait until I could buy a good PCIe device. Using an ac bridge is something that I considered, but buying a dedicated bridge or another router to configure in bridge mode is more expensive (bridges from Linksys or Buffalo run $+). A bridge might make sense if you have multiple devices needing to connect, but I only have my HTPC. Also, if I'd like to share its connection with another device, I'm able to bridge the WiFi connection from the PCE-AC66 to the wired LAN port on my computer and provide an ethernet connection to another device. Separate antenna stand - It's easy to get a big jump in performance by moving your wireless adapter to a good position higher off the ground, away from other electronic devices, and with better line-of-site to the access point. With USB adapters I typically use a USB extension cable to connect the adapter on top of nearby bookshelf. Bridges make this easy since you are already using an ethernet cable to connect it. In the case of the PCE-AC66, the included antenna base achieves this goal and has the added benefit of being magnetic so you don't need to use any adhesive when mounting it to a metallic surface.

Cons: None that I have found yet. Some reviewers have posted some negative comments about the included ASUS software. I'm not a big fan of needing to run additional software to use a wireless adapter, but I haven't had any problems with the ASUS software in Windows 7 x I like that it has the option to increase Tx power (I've upped mine to mW but haven't done any extended testing yet to test what the best setting is for Tx power in my environment. Note that increasing this value too much will result in dropped packets and I don't advise going over mW, but your mileage may vary). In everyday use there is no reason to interact with the ASUS utility and I simply use Windows settings to manage my wireless networks. Upon initially setting up my adapter, it took a week or two to find the best configuration for my router to get the best speeds and reliability. I'm in the US, so the available channels for 5GHz are and Using the higher channels would usually yield great results for me, but I was having intermittent issues and would periodically have lower signal and lower speeds. I suspect that there is some interference from my neighbors. Perhaps they are using 5GHz cordless phones; these sometimes overlap with the higher 5GHz WiFi channels. After moving to channel 48, performance has been pretty rock-solid. The lower numbered channels are broadcast at a much lower power due to FCC regulations, but ended up offering the best performance in my case.

Overall Review: My goal was to have a wireless network capable of reliably streaming high-bitrate HD video content and I plan on building a network attached storage device to hold all of my media and act as a repository for backups of my machines. This NAS will be wired directly to the router, but the clients that will backup to it operate wirelessly, so having something like the the PCE-AC66 to give the fastest connection possible is important. My router is the ASUS RT-AC66U. On to the performance: My HTPC with the PCE-AC66 is on the first floor of my house with the router being on the second floor on the opposite end. The signal must pass through the floor as well as two walls. When moving files, I see between 30 and 40 MB/s from the PCE-AC66 to a gigabit wired client. This equates to almost mbps. Technically USB is capable of mbps, but in real life I find file transfers maxing out around 25MB/s. After seeing this, I'm certainly glad that I chose to go with this PCIe card as opposed to a USB option, because it would have been a bottleneck. Previously, the highest performance I was getting out of devices was between 10 and 15 MB/s. Now I'm getting double or triple that. All-in-all I've been very happy with this adapter, and while it's certainly not "gigabit wireless", this is as close as we can get for now.