Qualcomm is working to make Wi-Fi connectivity as good as an ethernet connection for gaming. A Windows 11 feature called Wi-Fi Dual Station will help reduce latency and jittering when connected through Wi-Fi. Windows 11 PCs with Qualcomm FastConnect will be able to use Wi-Fi Dual Station to connect to multiple Wi-Fi bands and antennas concurrently.
Qualcomm said in the testing conducted by it, with off-the-shelf retail Wi-Fi 6 Access Points, Wi-Fi Dual Station with Qualcomm 4-stream Dual Band Simultaneous consistently delivered sustained jitter-free wireless gameplay similar to ethernet latency under the same conditions. Further, in head-to-head wireless comparisons with Single Station Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Dual Station yielded 4x lower latency and sustained jitter-free gameplay.
Qualcomm’s 4-stream Dual Band Simultaneous (DBS), as we know, is a feature that’s unique to the Qualcomm FastConnect mobile connectivity system. It can harness multiple bands and antennas to deliver low-latency and high-speed mobile performance for gaming and other applications. By simultaneously utilizing the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands (or 6 GHz where available), OEMs will be able to deliver highly reliable connections for gaming. The latency issues in one band can be easily resolved at a system level.
“Microsoft is pleased to bring ‘Wi-Fi Dual Station’ to the Windows 11 ecosystem, enabling our Windows OEMs and ecosystem leaders to deliver low-latency performance on the latest Wi-Fi hardware,” said Ian LeGrow, vice president, program management for windows platforms and services, Microsoft. “Games and other latency-sensitive applications can now leverage two concurrent Wi-Fi connections providing best-in-class user experiences.”
Value is making it easier for game developers and publishers to deliver low latency experiences to games by adding support for Wi-Fi Dual Station to the Steamworks SDK. The company’s popular online titles like Dota 2 and Counter-Stike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), both of which utilize the Steamworks SDK for networking, will now benefit from the improved responsiveness. This will obviously only work on Windows 11 gaming devices with supporting Qualcomm FastConnect connectivity systems.
AMD also plans to utilize the technology on enterprise platforms. “We are excited to work with Qualcomm Technologies to deliver best-in-class connectivity solutions on AMD enterprise platforms,” said Jason Banta, corporate vice president and general manager, client OEM, AMD.
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