Why do PCI-e wifi cards not work so well with my motherboard?

[John55]

My motherboard is the Asus Rog Strix z270e. It has built in wifi. The built in wifi is stable but the ping is always high. I tried using over 8 different PCIe wifi cards and all of them give me faster ping in games(decreases the ping by 20-30) but I get a big lag spike every 5-10 minutes. I also make sure to disable and delete the built in wifi card every time I try to use a PCIe wifi card. On CMD, if you type the command "netsh wlan show interface", the PCIe wifi cards ALWAYS show 90 percent or lower and the transmit rate and receive rate are never at max. This command shows 100 percent signal strength when I use the built in wifi card. 

So the question is, why does my built in wifi card, which is weaker, seem more stable than a more powerful, updated PCIe wifi card? Do motherboards with built in wifi just only work with the built in card? 

[Pickles von Brine]

There are a number of factors at play. How far your router is, what is in the way of the signal, what kind of wifi network you are connecting (2.4Ghz travels farther than 5GHz!!!!) and much more. Not all wifi cards are made equal either. 

[Falcon1986]

12 hours ago, John55 said:

My motherboard is the Asus Rog Strix z270e. It has built in wifi. The built in wifi is stable but the ping is always high. I tried using over 8 different PCIe wifi cards and all of them give me faster ping in games(decreases the ping by 20-30) but I get a big lag spike every 5-10 minutes. I also make sure to disable and delete the built in wifi card every time I try to use a PCIe wifi card. On CMD, if you type the command "netsh wlan show interface", the PCIe wifi cards ALWAYS show 90 percent or lower and the transmit rate and receive rate are never at max. This command shows 100 percent signal strength when I use the built in wifi card. 

So the question is, why does my built in wifi card, which is weaker, seem more stable than a more powerful, updated PCIe wifi card? Do motherboards with built in wifi just only work with the built in card? 

WiFi is never the best connection to have when gaming online. A wired connection, preferably over ethernet will always give you the best speed, reliability and least latency when compared to wireless. As previously mentioned, the poor performance of your wireless experience is not only dependent on your wireless adapter, but every device in the chain leading up to the ISP. So it helps to optimize each step of the way. Please read the FAQ sticky to get a general understanding.

 

That's not to say that a bad WiFi card isn't to blame. Remember, the cards included in many motherboards might be several generations behind current technology. Current adapters would be much better optimized for WiFi 5 (and now 6) performance, so it's not surprising to see that your 3rd-party adapters work better. Meanwhile, you can access your WiFi adapter's properties and disable any power-saving features, downgrade roaming aggressiveness to medium/low, increase transmit power to maximum and specify a preference for the 5GHz band if your wireless access point broadcasts on a 5GHz radio.

 

Next, you should run WiFi Analyzer (free on the Microsoft app store) and how us how the 2.4GHz and 5GHz are being utilized. Then tell us what router/gateway/wireless access point you're using and the WiFi configuration (exclude passphrases) you have it set to.