gaming with a wireless card

I just ordered the Sager NP5793 which comes with a Intel® PRO/Wireless 5300 802.11 card. Will this card hold up well with online gaming? If I buy a Linksys WRT54G 802.11 Wireless Router and hook it up to me dsl, should I expect to get about the same latency from the wireless as would directly from the wall?

 

That card is the newest and fast wireless card currently available and it's more than enough for online gaming. The card itself delivers up to 450 Mbps of bandwidth so your bandwidth will probably be limited by your dsl connection.

 

Actually I think I'm gonna go for the D-Link Wireless N router...I didn't even realize what "a/g/n" meant up until a few minutes ago.

 

yeah, you'll be good whatever you go, g or n... both are plenty fast with a good wireless connection

 

i use a Dlink DIR-625 with my 4965 and game a lot and the router works great.

 

Your connection will most likely not be bottlenecked by your wireless setup. Its usually at the level of your internet provider.
Go here to measure your upload and download speed if you're curious:
http://www.speedtest.net/

 

here's my results


that any good?

 

Thats fine, to get that 450mb/s you need a dual band N router and optimal conditions btw.

What will be most important is that latency number (ping) 113ms is OK in a game, but thats supposedly a server less than 50miles away from you. Once you go into a further server it will go up, and I dont know what most people consider good, I suppose it depends on the type of game but I would like to stay under 150ms.

 

I've played CS 1.6 on servers located in Seattle (about 2000 miles away) and my ping usually hovered around 70-80. It's probably just the DSL around here...it has good days and bad days.

btw I just ordered this ...is that a dual band router?

 

Looks good to me, mate. How large is your house/apartment, though, and will you have many walls/doors between your notebook and your router?

 

3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms-If I left my door open the signal would actually have an unblocked path to my laptop

 

For D Link the only ones that can do the dual band I think are these:

http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=548
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=681
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=663
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=570

5ghz is supposed to be better than 2.4ghz in general. Im not an expert on this stuff so maybe a single band can still give you the full 450mb connection with a wifi link 5300, it just has to have 3 spatial streams.

 

The more distance/obstacles you have in the way of the router the higher your latency and overall internet response time will be, if you haven't figured that out yet. 110 ping is terrible if the server is under 50 miles away, but i'm sure that was just an error with the server you tested, or, you were just too far away from the router. If you start to get a delay of around 800ms or it takes a second or two just to start loading webpages, then I suggest a better draft N router, I don't know about those dual band ones, but make sure you log into your router, and have the N band enabled, and the frequency is allowing the 40Mhz range. If it's set to only 20Mhz you'll only be limited to half the speed (144MBps) and range that your N router can support.

If you're getting a constant Excellent signal, the router should only be introducing about 1 or 2 ms of extra latency over using a purely wired connection, and won't be noticable in online gaming at all.

 

I tested it again with a different server and got these results...is it possible that cpu speed or spyware can affect the ping?

FYI: these tests are coming from my old Dell Inspiron 4550 desktop...I haven't received the router or the notebook yet

 

I don't see how an N router would help except that it would give a stronger signal if you are further away. I run a g router and get 10-15kb/s download, and 2kb/s up. Try plugging your laptop directly into your router with an ethernet cord, and compare those results with the wireless. This should tell you whats going on.

(Those speeds should be fine for gaming, as long as you're not hosting a server or game)