Intel 5100 vs Broadcom 4321

I have a dv4z and wanted to upgrade its wifi capabilities. Right now it has a Broadcom 4321, and because of the HP whitelist, I can only change to a Intel Wifi link 5100.

From anybody's experience, is the Intel 5100 better or worse than the Broadcom?

 

I have them both on two different notebooks and they are just about the same, give or take. Especially with Wifi-G. For Wifi N, I give the Intel 5100 a slight advantage. Generally higher connection speeds at the same distance. But not by much. Average 10-20 Mbps higher. Which means nothing as far as internet speeds since wifi-N is faster than any ISP's bandwidth. So is G for that matter.

Neither has any dropouts. If you are getting drop outs, you might want to look at your router configuration.

I'm using both a Dlink DGL-4500 (802.11N) and an Actiontec MI424WR-GEN2 (802.11G). ISP is FIOS 20/5.

 

i would get intel 5100 ... intek wireless products are the best and also u can use 5300... even with 2 antenas....

 

I don't know of a specific combo, but I do know that the 5100 has gotten pretty much sihtty reviews all 'round. Would a 5300 fit in your system? That card's much, much better than the 5100.

 

I checked the manual for the HP dv4 and the 5100 and the 4321 are the only options, so I assume the 5300 is not on the whitelist.

 

Broadcom has really crappy driver support. The 5100 is a poor choice as it uses only a single spatial stream in at least one direction of data transfer (I think the transmit), so that limits speed considerably even with current technology.

You can still throw a 5300 in the dv4. They may state that because the dv4 may only have 2 wireless antennas (you would need to confirm this yourself, this is just my assumption as to why) You can easily add a third, however. Even still, with just 2 antenna, the 5300 is a better choice over the 5100 as it will use 2 spatial streams in both directions even with just 2 antenna.
My opinion about avoiding Broadcom at this point still stands due to their poor driver support policy.

If you are buying an aftermarket wifi card, make sure you buy one specifically for HP. Lenovo is known to whitelist Intel wifi cards. Like a Dell card would not work in a Lenovo. I think HP is the same. Also watch out for eBay card purchases. A lot of unscrupulous sellers exist, selling fakes or inferior engineering samples, or both.. In fact most of them seem to be doing this.

 

after 16 months of using the 5100 ..... and cursing at every minute i opened up my laptop.... i have finally begun to enjoy the benefits once the belkin ppl update the fw for the n1 (no not the one with the screen) now i am able to go upto 216Mbps or as low as 120Mbps connection (sharing the wifi with an iphone and an atheros based acer atom) so yeah...i pretty happy

 

Hm, anyone know of a good seller of 5300s then?

 

Update: The 5300 is whitelisted on the dv4z. Gonna try a 5100 now.

 

Got a 5100 that doesn't work either. Meh.

 

By doesn't work, you mean, your notebook won't boot up? Did you get a 5100 for an HP or a Dell? Dell ones won't work in HP notebooks.