Upgrading Atheros to Intel 5300 on AMD Gateway laptop

I have a Gateway NV53:

Gateway Official Site: Shop - Notebooks – NV5387u Laptop Product Details

My wireless works fantastically at home - but drops out constantly at school and only at school. It MIGHT be related to hibernation/sleep mode; I've tried maybe 4 different drivers (v8) from Windows and Gateway, one newer v9 driver for Acer or Asus - nothing's working. So I wanted to replace it with an Intel 5300 or other Intel card, since they seem to be the top card in benchmarks.

I just want the headaches to end - I've been fighting with this thing for half a year. Will this card work on my AMD Gateway laptop? If not, what other options do I have? I just want a solid card with strong reception. Thanks.

 

AFAIK Acer/Gateway do not whitelist WLAN cards, as long as it is mini PCI-E half height or full height and you get the right drivers.

Typically Gateway will use Atheros for WLAN, but their drivers page is pretty poor. Intel cards are generally some of the best wifi cards, very stable connections, and the same money as those other WLAN cards.

 

It should work, but I can assure you Intel hasn't bothered to fully test or optimize their drivers and software for AMD hardware or CPUs. They've got a history of deliberately crippling their software for AMD CPUs, although most of this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

The good news is that slots are identical on Intel and AMD hardware and Windows shouldn't have a problem recognizing it. I can't find anything about Intel tying their cards to the chipsets so I bet it will be recognized just like any old mini PCIe device. It is possible that Gateway has whitelisted specific WLAN cards which means the BIOS will only recognize ones that they've approved, but again I can't find any information about your model of system confirming if it does this or not. You'll have to test it out for yourself.

Also I happen to have an Intel half-height mini PCIe 6300 (OEM version) which is nearly brand new if you'd like to give it a shot. $35 shipped and I have plenty of positive feedback on eBay and Heatware. PM if interested.

 

LOL What?

Drivers have nothing(really) to do with the processor, only the version of Windows.

 

"LOL." Except Intel designed their compilers to create code which couldn't run or ran poorly on AMD chips, and they were sued for it and have been investigated for antitrust violations because of it (not just this, but other things they did to stifle AMD). Because Intel doesn't design their hardware to work in AMD machines, it's very possible that the driver has either optimized code specific to Intel's architecture or was compiled with optimizations for Intel CPUs which may run on AMD chips but wouldn't perform as well. They might also take advantage of features only available or implemented on Intel hardware. Depending on how sloppy they were, it's quite possible it might not run at all on competitors hardware.

Native code can very well contain special optimizations and instructions that only run on certain vendors hardware or runs best with how the hardware is designed, and is dependent upon the compiler and special ASM used, etc. Compilers also have flags you can set to build the code for specific architectures such as Pentium 4 or AMD CPU and it will optimize the instructions, their order, and what functions are used to build the resulting binary, which doesn't run as well on architectures other than the target (if at all).

 

Do you have any links to this?

 

Let me.. Google that for you.
Intel's compiler cripples code on amd and via chips- The Inquirer
Intel to pay AMD $1.25 billion in antitrust settlement | Business Tech - CNET News
Intel Compiler Reimbursement Fund
i386 and x86-64 Options - Using the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC)

Don't have any good references on designing code for specific architectures, but this gives you an idea of what's possible. AMD and Intel CPUs also don't always support the same instructions or same implementation, which means the same code won't run the same or at all.