The MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC motherboard is built for the Haswell-E architecture, and Morry did a review of it just a couple of week ago. He liked it, giving it a gold award. Now MSI has released a new model, the X99S GAMING 9 ACK, which is basically identical except for its wireless adapter. While the original AC-variant had Intel 802.11ac with dual antennas, the ACK comes with Qualcomm Killer-branded 802.11ac.
Again, for the rest of the motherboard, I will refer you to Morry's review. The only real difference is the Killer NIC and Wireless-AC combo, which is actually more than it seems. If I understand it correctly, "Smart Teaming" will monitor the specific applications using the network and split them between LAN and WiFi, with the more latency-dependent programs getting the wired connection. In theory, this is interesting except that both streams would need to merge in order to get out the internet, which will be your bottleneck. On the other hand, if this works with multiple internet connections, then I could see a use case. For instance, someone has a solid DSL connection alongside their high-bandwidth Cable ISP.
Or, of course, that could not work at all and the outbound internet will, in fact, be your bottleneck.
Pricing and availability is also not available. You can find the original X99S GAMING 9, with the Intel wireless network controller, for about $405. An upgraded wireless adapter should not increase the cost much at all.
I don’t see much of an
I don’t see much of an advantage for the general public. Mainly due to uncontrolled bottlenecks (ISP, Firewall, Filters, WAN, VLAN, Throttle).
I see more issues, if it’s not setup correction. Also, this is possible with the Intel NIC. Maybe Qualcomm Killer optimized this feature.
However, I could see some advantage at locations where they throttle your data per port (i.e. Universities). The wireless could be your friends’ computer connected to a different wired port.
Scott > If you get your hand on one of those, I’m curious to see realistic results.
I had a X99S MSI Gaming 9 ACK
I had a X99S MSI Gaming 9 ACK that had a bad CPU socket, so I bought a used X99S AC board which looks exactly the same, however it did not come with the Intel wireless module.
I’d like to know if it’s possible to just use the Qualcomm Killer module from my damaged ACK motherboard or do I have to purchase the Intel one?
Thanks for any help