Despicable WLAN performance N73SV.

Okay it was time to upgrade to a newer laptop. So I ordered an Asus N73SV, cause it seems to have decent to good specs and a nice design.

However the WLAN perfomance is really, really bad...

After trying several different drivers for WLAN, the performance remains crap, especially comparing to our old Acer laptop!

Apparently there a several versions of the N73SV, with different WLAN-cards. Some have Intel (=good) and some have AzureWare (=bad).

Now you probably can guess which one we have. Yeah, that's right AzureCrap!

I already contacted Asus about this, this morning and hopefully I get a solution back for this problem. Otherwise I will have only 2 options:

Option 1:
Replace the current AzureWare WLAN-card with an Intel Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 WLAN card. I don't know if this will fit and work without to many modifications (for example antenna's and such)? It should give better Wifi performance though.

Option 2:
Send the laptop back to the shop and start looking a different laptop. Which is kinda hard in this price range. Sigh.

I really hope Asus comes up with a good solution. After all, even our old Acer laptop has better WLAN perfomance than the N73SV with AzureWare WLAN card.

For your information; if I am correct, our Asus N73SV has the AzureWare NB-037 WLAN card).

Can anyone confirm if the Intel 6300 WLAN card would fit without problems in the Asus N73SV and what about the current antenna's? Can I use those, or do I have to replace them (not hoping though). I understand I will be losing Bluetooth, however WLAN performance is way more important to me.

 

I agree those atheros cards can be bad in windows, but they are really pretty decent on linux. It's not the hardware - it's the drivers. Have you tried disabling power saving on your wifi card?

You can replace it with a 6300 and throw another antenna in there behind the LCD, or use it with only 2 antennas. Your existing antennas will do fine. Alternatively you could get the 6200 or 6205.

 

Okay at least I know I am not the only experiencing this... I even started thinking that I may have a bad build of the card. Cause really internet is terribly slow. It takes literally seconds to open a website.

Anyways, I have ordered an Intel Card 6300 Centrino card. New for only 24 Euro's including shipping. And ordered antenna's from Tyco (or whatever the name is). Gonna try to add the 3rd antenna as well, doubt I will add it into the screen though. Might a bit to much work.

I will lose Bluetooth, but that's not a problem. Cause I don't use BT at all and if I do, in the near future, than I can always purchase a BT dongle.

Hopefully this change will increase our WLAN performance with the laptop, cause seriously, it's really bad at the moment...

Thanks for replying. Highly appreciated.

 

If you needed bluetooth, you should have gotten an Intel WiFiLink 6230, which is a 2x2 Wireless-N dual band card with bluetooth 3.0. It would have saved you the hassle of fitting another antenna too

BTW, is the card that you got an ES card or a retail card? ES cards do not have unique MAC addresses and can conflict and cause huge problems if there is another device with the same MAC ID as your ES card.

 

I never said I needed BT! And if I needed BT I will use a dongle instead and that's what I said. Apparently you misread.

Fitting another antenna is not a problem with the N73SV.

Retail card of course. And it's working flawlessly! Excellent performance. Finally can get the maximum performance out of my internet connection and local file transers from my NAS are much, much faster than before!

I can recommend everyone to ditch the crappy WLAN + BT card in his laptop, if they suffer from a bad connection or performance.

Difference between night and day.

I already ordered 3rd antenna and looking forward installing that one in combination with my new Centrino 6300 card. Should be even a bigger performance increase / coverage!

 

atheros cards suck when using completely wireless network.

all my laptops have atheros wifi N, and they can't transfer to each other more than 1 MB/s, in the same room as the router, no matter what router I use. That's damn slow.

 

Glad to hear it made such a big difference for you!

Does anybody know where I can buy the antennae and the retail version of either the Intel 6300 or the Bigfoot 3x3 card in the U.S.? I too am not concerned about blue-tooth.