New Laptop: Does the Network Card Matter?

Hi guys, I'm getting a Sager 8170 built for me real soon. While going through the lists of things that i can have added to my laptop, network cards caught my attention:

-> Integrated 802.11 b/g/n + Bluetooth V3.0 Combo

-> Intel Advance-N 6230 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo [add $25.00]

-> Intel Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi [add $35.00]

-> Bigfoot Networks Killer Wireless-N 1103 (3x3) [add $60.00]

Are any of these more expensive cards worth the extra cash? My research thus far has essentially come up with the possibility that its all just snake oil and all that is needed is the basic one, but I'm still not to sure about that. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated! =)

 

It's hard to tell since the basic one is not really named. There are good and bad cards so it's definitely not all the same but it's hard to tell if it's worth upgrading if you don't know what are we upgrading from.

Anyway- price difference between Bigfoot 1103 and Intel 6300 is way to big so Bigfoot is not worth it. Intel 6300 is a good card although its only advantage over Intel 6200 is that it's capable of 450mbps which requires a 450mbps capable wireless router.

As for the 6230- there are some mixed opinions on that one- 6230 is in fact 6200 + Bluetooth and while 6200 itself is a good card some people have experienced serious throughput issues with 6230 possibly due to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth sharing the same antenna.

If you don't need BT and don't mind spending $35 Intel 6300 is a good an safe choice.

 

Do 450mbps networks even exist? The consumer market, from what i've seen thus far, is like 100mbps max, heck, mine is 6mbps. The only place I could think of with a 450, and it's a stretch, would be my university's.

Do these more expensive network cards decrease lag (latency)? Or decrease the probability of getting dropped from a network? Or have increased range? Relative to the basic card, that is.

 

It's about LAN speed not Internet speed- 450mbps is what you achieve transferring files between computers or NASes on you LAN.
And when I say "you achieve 450mbps" what I actually mean is "you achieve ~100mbps" because it's what the real throughput is (in the same way that 802.11g achieves 20mbps out of 54mbps of theoretical throughput)

 

Ah ok, sweet, that makes sense. I'll go with the N 6300 then, if its a safe bet (and for future proofing). Thank you, Downloads =)

 

People have been buying 450Mbps routers for a while now, such as the Linksys E4200 or Airport Extreme N 5th Gen. You would have to have a fast Internet service in order to take full advantage of it. Also, it's a theoretical 450Mbps...they always say in the tech specs, "UP to 450Mbps". It's usually a lot lower, and mostly stated for file transfers. However, 450Mbps N routers will give you the best performance with an Intel 6300 or Bigfoot 1103.

I say stick with the stock wifi card if you can have a wired connection most of the time. I think mine comes with an Intel N 130, and is good. However, the reason I'm upgrading to a 6300 is because I recently got a Linksys E4200.

 

Yeah it really all depends what that base card is, but you can't go wrong with any of those upgrades.

 

Well, i need to set up a wireless network at home, i may as well get a N 6300 and a NETGEAR WNDR4500-100NAS IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n N900 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router. I really hate wireless networks, but maybe this beefy duo will change my mind.

 

I wouldn't buy WNDR4500 at this point. I'm not saying it's bad, but it has not been proven to be good either.
Since you won't be able to use 450mbps on 2.4GHz band anyway I'd recommend either a Linksys E4200 or a Netgear WNDR4000.

It's all my fault for not having published a buyer's guide on routers so far- I know that and I promise I will (eventually).

 

Really? Newegg has ~10 reviews on them, i think all are 5/5 stars. Seems like it's decent

 

With all due respect to the people who wrote those reviews you need a proper review not merely an opinion that states that the router really works.

That's what I call a review: Linksys E4200 & Netgear WNDR4000

 

AnandTech - Bigfoot?s Killer-N 1102 Wireless Networking vs. the World

That article is based on the bigfoot killer 1102, but also has benches from the 6300 and other competitors. It also included range tests with different routers. They also recommend the E4200 or Airport Extreme N. I agree with downloads that while customer reviews can be insightful, they don't offer a full review.

 

According to that that link, E4200 + Bigfoot = amazing.

 

I use user reviews to look for trends, like the one with the
Buffalo WZR 300N series, which had a pretty high incident of "after a few months it started dropping connections regularly then died" reports. When 1 in 4 reviews says the same thing like that over and over, then I worry.

But the other way around, yeah, lots of "it's great and fast" with no numbers is useless. And very common.

 

Actually I do the same thing- if there are common reports of failures I do pay attention to those- you don't have to have any specialized knowledge to tell your router is a brick.
I do however ignore most of the "works great"- so far I wasn't able to work out how to convert great into throughput

@Blurry

Anandtech's review has issues to say the least. I wrote about then here.