Rivet Networks recently announced its latest wireless adapter, the Killer Wireless-AC 1535, for gaming systems. Initially, this new wireless adapter will be available as a built-in component on upcoming versions of two of MSI's gaming laptop series, the GT72 and the GT80, but it will also be available on MSI's new top-of-the-line gaming board, the X99A Godlike, just announced at this year's Computex conference in Taipei.
Designed to cut down on lag and latency, the foremost feature on the new Killer Wireless-AC 1535 adapter is Rivet's ExtremeRange technology that boosts the systems' wireless signal enough to push 150 Mbps at ranges beyond 10 meters. The longer range is a benefit gained by the adapter's two external 5 GHz amplifiers, one being a power amplifier and the second a low noise amplifier. Both are designed to work together to maximize the adapter's Wi-Fi range.
The Killer Wireless-AC 1535 is a dual band networking component that supports 20/40 MHz channel bandwidth at 2.4 GHz and 20/40/80 MHz channel bandwidths at the 5 GHz band. For the adapter version on the laptop, speeds can reach up to 867 Mbps, helping the adapter handle the demands of today's levels of network traffic.
Also, the Killer Wireless-AC 1535 is MU-MIMO compliant, meaning that the adapter is able to take advantage of the 802.11ac Wave 2 spec, which provides faster, more efficient access to a network when using a MU-MIMO based router. These new MU-MIMO routers are recent additions to the home networking market, with several of the routers having been announced at this year's CES in January.
Additionally, for the MSI X99A Godlike motherboard, Rivet threw in an updated version of DoubleShot Pro, a network card feature that not only helps prioritize traffic for Ethernet or Wi-Fi, but also combines wired and wireless networking speeds from all three onboard network interfaces. Together, this configuration produces networking throughput of up to 2.867 Gbps using the two onboard Killer E220 interfaces and the Killer 1535 2x2 11ac interfaces.
Other new features on the Killer Wireless-AC 1535 include:
- Transmit beamforming that helps better direct traffic from the targeted router to the Killer Wireless-AC 1535;
- The adapter is backwards compatible with 802.11ac a/b/g/n wireless networks;
- Integrated Bluetooth 4.1 can potentially add more connected devices over Bluetooth;
- Push button control for update detection for easier update deployment via the cloud;
- User controlled bandwidth management helps adjust throughput on per application basis;
- Real-time bandwidth and historical monitoring.
Both Killer Wireless-AC 1535 powered MSI GT72 and GT80 gaming laptops and the new MSI X99A Godlike motherboard will be available in early July 2015. Pricing for these items was not announced at this time.
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Corrections: Typo corrected "2.867 Mbps" to "2.867 Gbps". Added "at ranges beyond 10 meters".Update, 6/9/15, 12pm PT: Added image.
