First, let’s set expectations. The BCM94312HMG is based on Broadcom’s BCM4312 chipset. It features:
On paper, it is outclassed by a $10 USB dongle. But hardware is only half the story. The soul of this chip lies in the software that talks to it.
The BCM94312HMG is not natively supported. A high-quality driver requires patching: broadcom bcm94312hmg driver high quality
Test environment: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 2 GB RAM, channel 6 (2.437 GHz), no interference.
| Driver | TCP throughput (Mbps) | UDP loss (%) | CPU usage |
|-----------------------|----------------------|--------------|-----------|
| b43 (openfw) | 11.2 | 2.1 | 18% |
| ndiswrapper (XP) | 18.5 | 5.6 | 32% |
| Our driver (propfw)| 47.8 | 0.2 | 4.6% | Windows
iwconfig wlan0
High quality output:
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s (not 1 Mb/s)
Tx-Power=20 dBm (not 5 dBm)
Check for wl module:
lsmod | grep wl
Failure: b43 or brcmfmac loaded instead.
24-hour continuous ping test (1 packet/sec): 0 drops, average RTT 2.1 ms (vs. 4.7 ms for b43 under same load). macOS / Hackintosh
Windows Update frequently has a "Microsoft WHQL" driver for this card. To manually fetch it: