eton975 wrote on 2022-09-04, 19:22:

Every single one I've used whether USB or PCIe has randomly dropped out, dropped speed to sub 1Mbps MCS scheme, refused to wake up from computer sleep (especially the RTL8192EU in the TP-LINK WN-723N USB dongle) or even crashed the OS when behind an ASmedia PCIe switch on my ASRock X370 motherboard (PCIe RTL8812AE, RTL8192EE).

Linux was even worse with these chips - half the time, they would not respond to the driver and would totally disappear from the system until a reboot.

What gives? Is this down to the incredible difficulty of implementing the rather complex WiFi standards? Are the hardware/software engineers at Realtek incompetent? Is cost-cutting playing a role here? Or some combination of the three?

I have generally found them to be quite reliable, both in terms of system stability and connection reliability .

Just five days ago, I installed a TP-Link Archer T4E ( Realtek RTL8812AE ) for a friend . System runs Windows 10 x64 on an i5 2400 and gets used about 10 hours a days (with at least 2-3 hours of that being video streaming) and there are no issues so far . The T4E replaced an Atheros based PCI WIFI card that hard locked the system every 5-30 minutes since it was installed in it (the Atheros based card ran fine in their older Q8200 based Win 10 x64 until that system was decommissioned).

I had a laptop with an RTL8188CE that was unusually slow (around 14Mbps on 802.11n to a cheap "N150" router, while I could get around three times that with Intel cards), but I didn't have any other problems with it.

I keep running into driver bugs on Intel cards, but they're the most consistent. Qualcomm/Atheros are inconsistent - some work well with more stable drivers than Intel cards, but I have an AR9271 USB dongle that randomly disconnects from the network under Windows (Linux is fine).

darry wrote on 2022-09-04, 19:51:

I have generally found them to be quite reliable, both in terms of system stability and connection reliability .

Just five days ago, I installed a TP-Link Archer T4E ( Realtek RTL8812AE ) for a friend . System runs Windows 10 x64 on an i5 2400 and gets used about 10 hours a days (with at least 2-3 hours of that being video streaming) and there are no issues so far . The T4E replaced an Atheros based PCI WIFI card that hard locked the system every 5-30 minutes since it was installed in it (the Atheros based card ran fine in their older Q8200 based Win 10 x64 until that system was decommissioned).

I guess our mileage varies. When I moved the RTL8812AE card to a CPU PCIe lane (the 2nd x16 slot) it mostly worked under Windows 10 x64 but still dropped out when doing heavy uploads. Speed was also slightly poorer than the Intel equivalent (Wireless-AC 9260). Under Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and 22.04 the story didn't change though, still random dropouts. Maybe I should test again?

I had a laptop with an RTL8188CE that was unusually slow (around 14Mbps on 802.11n to a cheap "N150" router, while I could get around three times that with Intel cards), but I didn't have any other problems with it.

I keep running into driver bugs on Intel cards, but they're the most consistent. Qualcomm/Atheros are inconsistent - some work well with more stable drivers than Intel cards, but I have an AR9271 USB dongle that randomly disconnects from the network under Windows (Linux is fine).

Intel (AC 9260, AX200) have not been perfect for me, but have been miles ahead of Realtek at least when it comes to WiFi. I have experienced connection dropouts (SSID attachment reset?) on waking the system from sleep when power saving modes are disabled.

What also gets me is that Realtek Ethernet controllers have been fairly stable in my experience. Why such the difference?

eton975 wrote on 2022-09-04, 20:04:

I guess our mileage varies. When I moved the RTL8812AE card to a CPU PCIe lane (the 2nd x16 slot) it mostly worked under Windows […]
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darry wrote on 2022-09-04, 19:51:

I have generally found them to be quite reliable, both in terms of system stability and connection reliability .

Just five days ago, I installed a TP-Link Archer T4E ( Realtek RTL8812AE ) for a friend . System runs Windows 10 x64 on an i5 2400 and gets used about 10 hours a days (with at least 2-3 hours of that being video streaming) and there are no issues so far . The T4E replaced an Atheros based PCI WIFI card that hard locked the system every 5-30 minutes since it was installed in it (the Atheros based card ran fine in their older Q8200 based Win 10 x64 until that system was decommissioned).

I guess our mileage varies. When I moved the RTL8812AE card to a CPU PCIe lane (the 2nd x16 slot) it mostly worked under Windows 10 x64 but still dropped out when doing heavy uploads. Speed was also slightly poorer than the Intel equivalent (Wireless-AC 9260). Under Ubuntu Linux 20.04 and 22.04 the story didn't change though, still random dropouts. Maybe I should test again?

I had a laptop with an RTL8188CE that was unusually slow (around 14Mbps on 802.11n to a cheap "N150" router, while I could get around three times that with Intel cards), but I didn't have any other problems with it.

I keep running into driver bugs on Intel cards, but they're the most consistent. Qualcomm/Atheros are inconsistent - some work well with more stable drivers than Intel cards, but I have an AR9271 USB dongle that randomly disconnects from the network under Windows (Linux is fine).

Intel (AC 9260, AX200) have not been perfect for me, but have been miles ahead of Realtek at least when it comes to WiFi. I have experienced connection dropouts (SSID attachment reset?) on waking the system from sleep when power saving modes are disabled.

What also gets me is that Realtek Ethernet controllers have been fairly stable in my experience. Why such the difference?

Realtek wired stuff is rather reliable indeed. Their early RTL8129 was rather pedestrian, but their newer designs are quite good. I used a Gigabit RTL8153 USB NIC for a while on my home laptop and I have been using one embedded in a Lenovo TB dock with my work laptop for almost 3 years.

For some reason, WIFI NICs seem more flaky than most other peripherals. I have had repeated crashes and occasional performance issues with various Intel WIFI NICs (including the AC7260 and at least one 6000 series member, the 5000s series worked well for me). Nowadays, I only use WIFI when I have to and, if possible, I use WIFI routers running DD-WRT as a WIFI client bridges to connect to my main WIFI access point . Those have proven extremely reliable.

Mine have been fine. Whether cheapo usb ones or moderate-o PCIe cards, they've been no better or worse than my phone, ps3/4/5 over the years in various houses. I wouldn't have a problem buying a realtek card again (although I use home plugs now).

If you haven't used any other brands yet the problem could be the building(s) rather than the realtek cards!

I've used two laptops with Realtek Wi-Fi cards. One laptop would occasionally fail to connect to any network for several minutes at a time, while the other would randomly lose and regain Internet access. Using a recent Linux kernel solved my issues with the latter laptop.

I've had problems with like all wifi manufacturers at some point. And it's a variety of different problems. But the 802.11ac Realtek chips have so far seemed ok on Windows at least. I have used quite a few of those.

For modern things, I've made it a point to not use wired or wireless Realtek stuff if I can avoid it. For the most part they work ok for a while, then either the hardware has issues, or some driver release causes an issue. I've had everything from completely failed chips not picking up any networks, down to little microstutters/lag that kills the ability to online game. I stick with Intel for wired LAN, and Intel or Qualcomm/Athreros for wireless.

That said, I did experience my first Intel NIC partial failure in my pfSense firewall. All four ports would just drop about once a month, requiring a reboot. Jetway JNF9HG-2930 with 4 x Intel i211AT. However, it had about 7 years of uptime, passively cooled, so that's a pretty good lifespan IMO. I just migrated everything over to a VM with an Intel PRO/1000 PT in pass-through.

For PCI based 10/100 network, I'll usually default to a Linksys LNE100TX, which has a LC82C115 (I believe Lite-On) chipset.. great driver support and very reliable. Works on tons of OS's, not just Windows. DOS, Warp, Solaris, BSD, Linux, etc. They're usually less than $10 on ebay.

For ISA, I'll still stick with the 3com 3C509B-TPO. It just works. A wide variety of platforms support it across various operating systems.

I have a TP-Link TL-WN821N USB WiFi adapter with a Realtek chip. It has massive issues with Windows 10 ever since build 2004 - randomly loses connectivity, takes way too long to reconnect after the PC resumes from sleep or even long idle. Sometimes it recovers within a minute, sometimes it requires manually disconnecting/reconnecting or, in rare cases, disabling/enabling the device.

Strange thing - it works just fine both on my Win7 PC and, briefly when I tried it, on a Win11 machine as well. I would have chucked it up to hardware incompatibility with my motherboard, or something - but I don't recall the issues were so terrible on earlier Win10 builds. Or my memory might be deceiving me.

So, yeah, chalk another not really happy Realtek customer, but then again, this is true:

I've had problems with like all wifi manufacturers at some point.

My Surface Book has Marvell Avastar and it has problems with wake from sleep and also generally low 802.11ac performance compared to even Realtek. I've had Intel WiFi with sleep issues too, particularly with Intel 7265. And some Intel 7260 cards were rock solid while others needed special driver releases to be reliable. I used to swap out Atheros Wifi cards in notebooks fairly often because they seemed touchy about which access points they approved of. You just have to hope for the best heh.

Which brings up another point. Maybe your access point is part of the problem. Sometimes adapters and access points don't interact well. Good luck figuring out which access point WiFi chip is the best.

My motto is to try to avoid WiFi if possible. It's a convenience for mobile devices.

wiretap wrote on 2022-10-14, 19:04:

I stick with Intel for wired LAN, and Intel or Qualcomm/Athreros for wireless.

That said, I did experience my first Intel NIC partial failure in my pfSense firewall. All four ports would just drop about once a month, requiring a reboot. Jetway JNF9HG-2930 with 4 x Intel i211AT. However, it had about 7 years of uptime, passively cooled, so that's a pretty good lifespan IMO. I just migrated everything over to a VM with an Intel PRO/1000 PT in pass-through.

I have heard of major issues with all revisions of the infamous Intel I225-V 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller. Dropouts, etc. So maybe watch out for that one.

Sadly I get the feeling that Intel has gone downhill majorly with their verification and validation of their non-WiFi products at the consumer level. So perhaps expect more bugs in their Ethernet, CPUs, graphics cards, etc going forward.

eton975 wrote on 2022-11-10, 23:01:

wiretap wrote on 2022-10-14, 19:04:

I stick with Intel for wired LAN, and Intel or Qualcomm/Athreros for wireless.

That said, I did experience my first Intel NIC partial failure in my pfSense firewall. All four ports would just drop about once a month, requiring a reboot. Jetway JNF9HG-2930 with 4 x Intel i211AT. However, it had about 7 years of uptime, passively cooled, so that's a pretty good lifespan IMO. I just migrated everything over to a VM with an Intel PRO/1000 PT in pass-through.

I have heard of major issues with all revisions of the infamous Intel I225-V 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller. Dropouts, etc. So maybe watch out for that one.

Sadly I get the feeling that Intel has gone downhill majorly with their verification and validation of their non-WiFi products at the consumer level. So perhaps expect more bugs in their Ethernet, CPUs, graphics cards, etc going forward.

A lot of the Intel NIC problems I see (at least as reported on ServeTheHome and other sites) are from the chinese counterfeits that look almost identical to the real Intel ones. They're sold as legitimate Intel or Dell/IBM/OEM on places like Ebay, Amazon 3rd party sellers, and Aliexpress. People think they're saving $15-20, but it is nothing but headaches after a few months. When I was shopping for them, it was pretty difficult to find a real one. 🤣 I ended up sending two fakes back, and they were even pretty closely priced to the real ones.

wiretap wrote on 2022-11-10, 23:06:

eton975 wrote on 2022-11-10, 23:01:

wiretap wrote on 2022-10-14, 19:04:

I stick with Intel for wired LAN, and Intel or Qualcomm/Athreros for wireless.

That said, I did experience my first Intel NIC partial failure in my pfSense firewall. All four ports would just drop about once a month, requiring a reboot. Jetway JNF9HG-2930 with 4 x Intel i211AT. However, it had about 7 years of uptime, passively cooled, so that's a pretty good lifespan IMO. I just migrated everything over to a VM with an Intel PRO/1000 PT in pass-through.

I have heard of major issues with all revisions of the infamous Intel I225-V 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller. Dropouts, etc. So maybe watch out for that one.

Sadly I get the feeling that Intel has gone downhill majorly with their verification and validation of their non-WiFi products at the consumer level. So perhaps expect more bugs in their Ethernet, CPUs, graphics cards, etc going forward.

A lot of the Intel NIC problems I see (at least as reported on ServeTheHome and other sites) are from the chinese counterfeits that look almost identical to the real Intel ones. They're sold as legitimate Intel or Dell/IBM/OEM on places like Ebay, Amazon 3rd party sellers, and Aliexpress. People think they're saving $15-20, but it is nothing but headaches after a few months. When I was shopping for them, it was pretty difficult to find a real one. 🤣 I ended up sending two fakes back, and they were even pretty closely priced to the real ones.

I presume the cards you are referring to use actual Intel manufactured chips but are either badly designed, use substandard components or the actual Intel chips are marginal ? Or are the Intel branded chips clones themselves ?

In other words, do you know why these counterfeit cards work badly and how do they differ from authentic ones visually ?

darry wrote on 2022-11-11, 02:50:

wiretap wrote on 2022-11-10, 23:06:

eton975 wrote on 2022-11-10, 23:01:

I have heard of major issues with all revisions of the infamous Intel I225-V 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller. Dropouts, etc. So maybe watch out for that one.

Sadly I get the feeling that Intel has gone downhill majorly with their verification and validation of their non-WiFi products at the consumer level. So perhaps expect more bugs in their Ethernet, CPUs, graphics cards, etc going forward.

A lot of the Intel NIC problems I see (at least as reported on ServeTheHome and other sites) are from the chinese counterfeits that look almost identical to the real Intel ones. They're sold as legitimate Intel or Dell/IBM/OEM on places like Ebay, Amazon 3rd party sellers, and Aliexpress. People think they're saving $15-20, but it is nothing but headaches after a few months. When I was shopping for them, it was pretty difficult to find a real one. 🤣 I ended up sending two fakes back, and they were even pretty closely priced to the real ones.

I presume the cards you are referring to use actual Intel manufactured chips but are either badly designed, use substandard components or the actual Intel chips are marginal ? Or are the Intel branded chips clones themselves ?

In other words, do you know why these counterfeit cards work badly and how do they differ from authentic ones visually ?

Not OP but I do know that on the Intel Gigabit CT (82574L-based) ones, typically the faked Delta isolation transformer has printed rather than embossed text with the Delta logo. On the I210-T1 and i350s, etc the Intel logo itself on the card PCB may be missing or look wonky, but from my understanding fakes do exist with the proper or very well faked logo, so this is no guarantee of a genuine card.

Definitely the supporting components are faked on these counterfeit cards, there is no doubt. As for the main chip itself, I do not know. There is some speculation that these are poorly cloned chips but I do not have a reliable source to prove this, just rumours.

I double checked the RTL8812AE card that I have and it sorta works in Debian 12 or latest Ubuntu but keeps cutting out, on an AM3+ system.

I’m of the impression that Realtek makes shit based on all the problems I’ve had with them over the years. Supposedly some models are better than others, but I must have the best luck because I always get the lemons. Admittedly I don’t buy expensive laptops. My last one was an Asus E202SA. Whatever Realtek was in there was cream of the crap.

I'm currently using an Realtek RTL8156 based 2.5G USB NIC . I have had zero issues in the few weeks since I started using it in Windows 10.
Bidirectional Iperf3 results, are fine, AFAICT . I also have a PCIE 2.5G based Realtek NIC (Realtek RTL8125B), which I was I previously using and which also worked fine and which I will likely be putting back (needed a PCIE slot temporarily) .

My NAS also has an Realtek RTL8156 based 2.5G USB NIC (under Debian Linux) and it works fine too .

Honestly, I have had way more issues with the 1G Intel NIC in my Dell M4800 notebook and Intel AC 7260 based WIFI NICs .

YMMV

It seems like Realtek learned to make decent Ethernet NICs after the RTL8139, but Intel is generally still better for more demanding stuff (as long as you didn't get the 2.5Gb chip). Their audio codecs have been decent (better than Conexant) for a while, but the actual limit of your PC's audio quality is the computer or motherboard pack-in audio "enhancement" software that randomly enables effects and can't be removed (if it isn't bundled with the driver, there's some kind of flag where Windows will reinstall it automatically).

I've never heard good things about Realtek WiFi, but they aren't the worst around. You could have that Atheros USB dongle I mentioned earlier.

eton975 wrote on 2022-11-11, 03:25:

Not OP but I do know that on the Intel Gigabit CT (82574L-based) ones, typically the faked Delta isolation transformer has printed rather than embossed text with the Delta logo. On the I210-T1 and i350s, etc the Intel logo itself on the card PCB may be missing or look wonky, but from my understanding fakes do exist with the proper or very well faked logo, so this is no guarantee of a genuine card.

I didn't know that anyone would make counterfeit 1Gb NICs. My idea of a counterfeit NIC for all this time was an old card relabeled as a much faster one. I've seen mini-PCIe WiFi cards labeled "Intel AX200" on Amazon (real AX200 cards are M.2 only), and they cost the same as a real AX200.

lti wrote on 2024-09-25, 02:22:

It seems like Realtek learned to make decent Ethernet NICs after the RTL8139, but Intel is generally still better for more deman […]
Show full quote

It seems like Realtek learned to make decent Ethernet NICs after the RTL8139, but Intel is generally still better for more demanding stuff (as long as you didn't get the 2.5Gb chip). Their audio codecs have been decent (better than Conexant) for a while, but the actual limit of your PC's audio quality is the computer or motherboard pack-in audio "enhancement" software that randomly enables effects and can't be removed (if it isn't bundled with the driver, there's some kind of flag where Windows will reinstall it automatically).

I've never heard good things about Realtek WiFi, but they aren't the worst around. You could have that Atheros USB dongle I mentioned earlier.

eton975 wrote on 2022-11-11, 03:25:

Not OP but I do know that on the Intel Gigabit CT (82574L-based) ones, typically the faked Delta isolation transformer has printed rather than embossed text with the Delta logo. On the I210-T1 and i350s, etc the Intel logo itself on the card PCB may be missing or look wonky, but from my understanding fakes do exist with the proper or very well faked logo, so this is no guarantee of a genuine card.

I didn't know that anyone would make counterfeit 1Gb NICs. My idea of a counterfeit NIC for all this time was an old card relabeled as a much faster one. I've seen mini-PCIe WiFi cards labeled "Intel AX200" on Amazon (real AX200 cards are M.2 only), and they cost the same as a real AX200.

'Enshittification' can happen to any company, really. Intel is by no means immune as we have seen with their 2.5GbE controllers.

We've seen it with Boeing, HP, Lexmark, maybe even Philips.