Tuesday, December 12th 2023
GIGABYTE Intros AORUS GC-WIFI7 PCIe WLAN Card Supporting up to 5800 Mbps Bandwidth, Comes with a Hardware Lottery
GIGABYTE released the GC-WIFI7, a WLAN card in the PCIe add-on card form-factor, which, as its name suggests, gives your desktop the power of Wi-Fi 7. Given how the new wireless networking standard is exotic and provides a more than 2.2x gain in Wi-Fi bandwidth over Wi-Fi 6E, GIGABYTE decided to give this accessory its coveted AORUS Gaming branding and product design. The card supports tri-band, and a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 5800 Mbps, with support for 320 MHz and 160 Hz channels. The card also supports MLO, in which it simultaneously connects to a 2.4 GHz and 5/6 GHz network. The card comes with a stylish antenna array that supports up to 5 dBi signal strength. Besides Wi-Fi 7, the card also provides Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity.
The most interesting aspect about this product is that it has three hardware revisions at launch. The Rev 1.0 card is based on a Qualcomm chipset; Rev 1.1 is based on a MediaTek chipset, and Rev 1.2 is based on Intel, all three offering identical hardware specs and performance levels. Rev 1.0 is based on a Qualcomm QCA FastConnect 7800 controller; Rev 1.1 rocks a MediaTek MT7927 controller; while the Rev 1.2 uses an Intel BE200. All three revisions are sold under the same SKU, and it's only in a brick-and-mortar store that you can figure out what you want by looking closely at the barcode sticker, where the revision is mentioned. The company didn't reveal pricing.
Source:
MEGAsizeGPU (Twitter)
The most interesting aspect about this product is that it has three hardware revisions at launch. The Rev 1.0 card is based on a Qualcomm chipset; Rev 1.1 is based on a MediaTek chipset, and Rev 1.2 is based on Intel, all three offering identical hardware specs and performance levels. Rev 1.0 is based on a Qualcomm QCA FastConnect 7800 controller; Rev 1.1 rocks a MediaTek MT7927 controller; while the Rev 1.2 uses an Intel BE200. All three revisions are sold under the same SKU, and it's only in a brick-and-mortar store that you can figure out what you want by looking closely at the barcode sticker, where the revision is mentioned. The company didn't reveal pricing.
13 Comments on GIGABYTE Intros AORUS GC-WIFI7 PCIe WLAN Card Supporting up to 5800 Mbps Bandwidth, Comes with a Hardware Lottery
Until all 3 versions have been tested, no one will know which is the big prize
Be sure to cover your eyes/ears when they publicize the price tag, cause it's gonna be uber-massive-ultra-mega HIGH.. hehehe..:fear:..:eek:..:roll:
I practically have nightmares about trying to get the right Rev. Wi-Fi card guessed w/o pulling the (PCI/PCIe) card. Gets even better with some of the USB units, where the markings wear off or get lost.
Some WiFi 6E cards used only PCIE 2.0.
The QCA FastConnect 7800 offers the best Bluetooth audio capabilities, assuming there are Windows drivers provided for aptX and LE audio. There's also support for Snapdragon Sound, for those that have suitable headphones/earphones.
The MT7927 (Filogic 380) is only Bluetooth 5.3 whereas the Qualcomm and Intel parts are Bluetooth 5.4. MTK mentions MRU support, which the others don't, not sure it'll matter or if it makes MTK's card stand out.
The Intel BE200 doesn't stick out in any way and there's a cut down version called the BE202 which is hard limited to 160 MHz wide channel support and 1k QAM.