Same laptop - very different wireless performance

Hi all,

Liking my Asus N56VZ so much, and having tried other models in search of improvement to no avail, I bought the updated model (N56JN), which differs, so far as I'm aware, only in having a newer 4th gen. Core i7 and a GT840M GPU. The only problem is wireless performance: the new laptop has a much worse wireless signal reception - e.g. right now is getting 2 bars for my main wireless network, where my N56VZ is getting 4 bars sitting right next to it.

What could be causing this situation, and is there anything I can do to fix it?

Thanks in advance

 

Does it have the same wireless card?

 

I had thought they were both Intel, but it turns out not: the better performing one is Intel, but the worse performer is a Ralink card. Could this be the culprit? It seems odd to me that they would elect to fit a card with such garbage performance to their expensive machine.

 

Ahh, don't even start me on that. They will select whatever is cheaper. Anyway - Ralink and Realtek are rather poor chips as far as consumer Wi-Fi cards are concerned.
On another note - those bars you are referring to are based on SNR ratio which is not comparable between different manufacturers (as odd as it might seem), so the fact that one card seems to have batter reception than the other might not actually mean that is the case (although it probably is in this particular case).

 

Yes, the best way of comparing would be comparing transfer speeds and what distance you can actually get data.

 

Cheers - for the purposes of upgrading, can anyone recommend a card that is likely to give me a good signal. The N56VZ has an Intel N2230 in it, which I can get quite cheaply. But is there a better option? (I only seem to have 2 wires to plug into it, not 3).

 

Went for an Intel 7260 in the end - didn't want to spend too much, and range is most important to me, so didn't bother with the dual band (range) or ac (expense) variants. Not sure if I made a good decision.

 

Depends on your router, but if you are sticking with 2.4ghz it would not have really made a difference, no.