M17xR3 question regarding Intel Ultimate N 6300 wifi

Hi guys!

I got a Dell DW1501 card in my laptop, but I noticed that it doesn't support 5Ghz and very limited performance compared to other wifi cards.

So... I'm thinking about changing to a Intel 6300 card instead. And from what I have read it uses three antennas. I'm not sure about how many antennas the DW1501 has connected.

Does anyone here know it? If it has less than 3, how do I get a full set of antennas in there?

 

The Intel will work with two antennas too, check to see if you have the third antenna wire/connector in there.
You should have a white, a black, a grey(this is the 3rd) and blue(Bluetooth) wires in there.

And the DW 1501 uses two antennas only.

 

The M17xR3 should have all 3 wires present even if your original wifi card was a 2 wire card. Atl least m17r3 is that way even though my wifi card was a dell 1501.

 

I just swapped out my stock DW1501 for the Intel 6300. The third antenna wire (gray) is taped down under the keyboard.

You do need to take quite a bit of the laptop apart to swap it out though; but, it isn't that hard. I swapped out the wireless card and the optical drive for a Bluray drive and it took me just under an hour. Swapping out the optical drive is a little more involved as you have to remove the screen. I'd say it would probably take about 30 minutes to swap out the wireless card.

 

katalin_2003 if you have a 3 antenna wifi card (like 6300) and you hook only 2 antennas, the card will perform very poorly.

I've personally tested this with my 6300 and the bandwidth was ~550 kb/s. With the 3 antennas I managed to push it over 10 mb/s

 

I know that, my point was that it'll still work.

 

Just installed mine. 3 wires, no worries there. Upgraded from the stock Centrino 1000 card, the 3rd wire was taped down to the system board right next to the card.

 

Thanks for all the replies! I've just installed the new 6300 wifi card, and it works like a charm, and while I was at it, I changed to 16GB 1600 MHz ddr3. But I can't get the memory modules up to 1600... They're still at 1333, And I also followed the "overclocking" guide.

 

You'll love the 6300. When my wifi goes down because the cable company is an unreliable shyster, I can leach from almost a 1/4 mile 1/2 km away. It's fabulous! Usually the Starbucks on the corner or the old lady 4 houses down who never seems to be online anyway. It's awesome. Just be sure not to use "mywifi" until you get your system sealed up tighter than an astronaut's underpants.