Broadcom vs Atheros

Why is Atheros the king of the hill in wireless cards? Is it that much better than the intel or Broadcom solutions? Would it be worth it to switch from my broadcom to the atheros?

 

Unless the one you have is giving you problems, I wouldn't switch. I have heard great things about Atheros cards, particularly in Fujitu notebooks. Is the Broadcom one problematic?

 

Agreed, unless you are having issues swapping it out is not worth effort and $$$.

 

Well I have a friend with a z70va and he put the atheros card in it. he was saying it's a very powerful card. I work in a concrete building and the WAN is very faint at my desk. My broadcom pretty much always tells me that the signal is low or very low and it often cuts off. I find that it will always cut off if i'm using it by a running microwave.

 

Atheros do seem to have more signal reception than intel, but I really doubt that the difference is great, that is if it exists at all. Maybe you would want to invest in some pcmcia card with an antenna, or an external USB with an antenna, they might make your reception better.

 

And most notebooks have antennas built into the frame of the notebooks, if you don't already realise.

 

I heard were atheros cards worked more flawlessly instead of the broadcom. I had that card and i switched to a linksys card and it has been great to me, so maybe there is a malfuntion in the card but i dont really now. Yes there are intennas too that would help it work better.

 

yes I did realise it .... thank you for pointing out the obvious!

But if you haven't realised some externals can be fitted with high gain antennas or moded to increase reception. While internal antennas are usually just a piece of wire running around the frame of the screen. Slight difference, don't you think!

 

I had a BroadCom 802.11b/g card in my last notebook. I never had a problem with it - strong and steady connection throughout the house. I also had a low latencie when I played games online.