<< Solved >> Slow Wi-Fi Speed on Monterey

[freedomxrj1995]

Hi All,

I am using Fenvi HB1200 card on my Hackintosh. In the meantime, I am also using this card on my Windows 11 PC which is installed in the same desktop with Hackintosh. During the network speed test on my Windows 11 PC, it shows 300+ Mbps. However, on the hackintosh Monterey 12.4, I am only able to get around 50 Mbps after each restart and the speed keeps getting slower and slower sometimes less than 1Mbps if I keep using the Hackintosh.

I verified I am connecting to 5 GHz and 802.11ac on Hackintosh. And because this wireless card is natively supported, I don't have any Brcm kext used.

My Desktop Setup
CPU: i7-8700k
GPU: RX 5700XT
Motherboard: ASUS Z370-A
RAM: 32GB

Any help is appreciated

 

[Edhawk]

Have a read of these two threads, the second thread linked below may be more relevant than the first.

Speed test in macOS Monterey:

macOS Built-in Speed Test: Post your Network Speed

Did you know there's a built-in speed test in macOS? I didn't until just now- saw this tweet by Luke Holder (@lukeholder) and tried it. Apparently it was added in macOS Monterey. Just open Terminal and type the following: networkQuality -v What's your current network speed? Here's mine: ====...

www.tonymacx86.com

Improve WiFi Signal in Tower system:

[PRO TIP] Get better WiFi/BT Signal when using PCIe BT/WiFi Card in a Tower Case

A few months back I added a PCIe WiFi & BT card to my desktop Hackintosh system. The card I bought was based on the BCM943602CS chipset which is a 3x3 MIMO device and is natively supported by MacOS, these cards can be found cheap on eBay for around £30.00 (approx $37): The card included three...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[freedomxrj1995]

Thanks for the reply. I will try buying this Antenna to see if it will help improve the signal and speed.

However, in the meantime, I have concern that this Fenvi Card works great on Windows 11 with consistently high speed. I have both Monterey 12.4 and Windows 11 installed on this same desktop. How could it perform differently on my Hackintosh with the same Antenna setup.

Another concern is that the network speed is above 100+ Mbps at the start and reduced to below 10 Mbps a few minutes later on Hackintosh.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Thanks for the reply. I will try buying this Antenna to see if it will help improve the signal and speed.

However, in the meantime, I have concern that this Fenvi Card works great on Windows 11 with consistently high speed. I have both Monterey 12.4 and Windows 11 installed on this same desktop. How could it perform differently on my Hackintosh with the same Antenna setup.

Another concern is that the network speed is above 100+ Mbps at the start and reduced to below 10 Mbps a few minutes later on Hackintosh.

I agree with your logic. If on the same hardware Windows Wi-Fi is faster than on macOS then clearly there is a driver or software issue at play. So ...

As you state the wireless speed is already slow on macOS but also gets slower as you use the system, then that points to some other software "hijacking" the system. Not necessarily malware or anything like that, but something must be "getting in the way" and apparently hogging more resource as time goes by.

So I'm saying review what else you have installed on macOS that runs most of the time - a DRM dongle to activate software, or a third-party Firewall etc. etc. W.H.Y.

Generally Macs and Broadcom wireless work very well together. In fact it is often the case that finding a decent Windows driver for Broadcom chipsets can be tricky and we resort to the BootCamp ones.

Sorry that's probably not much help, but I'm suggesting you look at the problem from a different angle, before you go spending money you don't need to.

 

[freedomxrj1995]

This is a good assumption. Let me check if there is software eating up my network resources automatically.

Let me correct what I said before. The network speed on Hackintosh is similar with my Windows 11 at the beginning (not much slower) with the test I just ran.

I ran the network speed test when Monterey just loaded and got the speed listed on first screenshot.
And I ran the network speed test 3 minutes later with the same tool and got the speed listed on the second screenshot

 

[freedomxrj1995]

I agree with your logic. If on the same hardware Windows Wi-Fi is faster than on macOS then clearly there is a driver or software issue at play. So ...

As you state the wireless speed is already slow on macOS but also gets slower as you use the system, then that points to some other software "hijacking" the system. Not necessarily malware or anything like that, but something must be "getting in the way" and apparently hogging more resource as time goes by.

So I'm saying review what else you have installed on macOS that runs most of the time - a DRM dongle to activate software, or a third-party Firewall etc. etc. W.H.Y.

Generally Macs and Broadcom wireless work very well together. In fact it is often the case that finding a decent Windows driver for Broadcom chipsets can be tricky and we resort to the BootCamp ones.

Sorry that's probably not much help, but I'm suggesting you look at the problem from a different angle, before you go spending money you don't need to.

Thanks for the reply!!

It looks like I find out the software which is eating up my network resources. My OneDrive is uploading some video files in the background, and once the upload finished, the network speed went up to around 70Mbps. Even though it is still not the same as the speed of the beginning, at least it won't impact my daily use.

 

[UtterDisbelief]

Thanks for the reply!!

It looks like I find out the software which is eating up my network resources. My OneDrive is uploading some video files in the background, and once the upload finished, the network speed went up to around 70Mbps. Even though it is still not the same as the speed of the beginning, at least it won't impact my daily use.

Well glad you discovered something going on.

It is still annoying that the general network speed is so much slower on macOS.

It is possible to flash Broadcom firmware on each boot using the BRCM*.kexts. This might bring the speed up to Windows levels, because this is exactly what the Windows drivers do themselves:

GitHub - acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM

Contribute to acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[freedomxrj1995]

Well glad you discovered something going on.

It is still annoying that the general network speed is so much slower on macOS.

It is possible to flash Broadcom firmware on each boot using the BRCM*.kexts. This might bring the speed up to Windows levels, because this is exactly what the Windows drivers do themselves:

GitHub - acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM

Contribute to acidanthera/BrcmPatchRAM development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Thanks for the suggestion. I will take a try and update in this thread!

 

[freedomxrj1995]

Sorry for the long wait. Update from installing BRCM*.kexts
I have included the following three patches into my EFI
BlueToolFixup.kext
BrcmFirmwareData.kext
BrcmPatchRAM3.kext

I can see my network speed can get up to 200Mbps consistently bumping from 60Mbps.

Thanks for the support! It works great right now!