Best WiFI cards for Windows XP, Vista, and perhaps beyond

[the_r3dacted]

I was going to make a cool post about comparing WiFi cards on Windows XP with benchmarks and cool comparisons, but it basically only ended being one best card that worked by a margin large enough that testing is just not required. Maybe I'll do comparisons for curiosity sake, but not at this time. Everything else that I can find, Intel, Realtek, Qualcomm, are all 802.11n, while these Broadcom cards are all 802.11ac. This also means these Broadcom cards could also be the best cards for Windows 7 and 8 or equal to the other competition.

I had figured there was going to be more cards, but I discovered that even though the drivers install, both the DW1820A (BCM94350ZAE), and DW1830 (BCM943602BAED) just do not work on XP. They just give a Code 10, and in the case of the DW1820A after installing the drivers and rebooting, the device just disappears from device manager. Leaving behind an unknown PCI Device that also doesn't accept the driver. The card works fine in later operating systems though. These might be good for Vista+ if you know your system is not going to use XP.

This leaves the DW1550 or AW-CE123H (BCM94352HMB) for mPCIe and the DW1560 or 04X6020 (BCM94352Z) for M.2, both being standard two antenna or dual band cards. For three antenna or tri-band, there's the AW-CB160H (BCM94360HMB) for mPCIe.

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The BCM94360Z3/BCM94360Z4 for M.2 may also work, but I haven't tested it on account of the Z3 being three antennas for dual-band, and the Z4 being four antennas for tri-band, and the base cost for even the Z3 being $40 direct from China.

The DW1550 and DW1560 are for all intents and purposes the same card but different form factor, so there should be no noticeable differences in operation between them. If you have three antennas available though, the AW-CB160H may be the best option.

For obtaining the cards, I suggest getting them from AliExpress for the best price. Although you might be able to find them locally if you want a faster shipping time. These can be had for as cheap as $7-8, although it's rare to find the AW-CB160H for less than $20. At least in the US and of time of posting, the AW-CB160H is actually a better deal on eBay rather than AliExpress.

For the driver, I just use the default SDIO drivers. Here are the raw drivers for XP-10 since they are really hard to find outside of using SDIO. To install them, follow this guide. I recommend going with highest version number and have disk method.

The inf seems to suggest Broadcom kept NT5 support for longer than the last NT5 driver in the folder. Maybe this could get the DW1820A and DW1830 working, but I have no idea where to find such driver as the NT6 drivers use NT6 specific files. The latest NT5 driver appears to have been pulled from the ASUS PCE-AC56/68 and works on these cards, identifying them as the PCE-AC56 for 1550/1560 and PCE-AC68 for the AW-CB160H lol. Maybe could ask Broadcom themselves if they have the last NT5 driver idk.

Hope this helps, because this information was very hard to find, and I had to obtain the hardware myself to test it.