Upgrading Intel 3945ABG to Intel 4965AGN possible?

Is it possible to upgrade the wireless portion of my laptop by just swapping out the Mini-PCI-E card from the 3945ABG to the 4965AGN? I have searched it for cheap so I figured if I can do it, screw Santa Rosa.

 

The Chip will fit yes. However draft N needs 3 antenna which is one more then wireless G. I know a few notebooks with the old cards have 3 antennas with one unused. It is mostly the models that have the option of draft N by some other wifi card.

Putting in a 3rd antenna yourself is possible but might need a bit of takeing apart.

 

BIOS will probably not support the new card. If the system only knows 3954ABG than 4965AGN will not be recognized as a Centrino part, but the newer card will still work. Your POST logo may become plain Intel or plain Core 2 Duo instead of Centrino or Centrino Duo

 

Good point but if it works who cares about the logo. Most Notebook companies would have release bios updates.

 

If you read a lot of the support forums (Dell's comes to mind), you'll see there are mixed results with the N cards. Some people have great success -- it all depends on your wireless router's chipset.

 

Yes its possible.
I have done it on my Samsung Q35. You do not need a 3rd aerial, it works fine with two!

 

Sweet. Where do you reckon I can find one to buy? I can't find it on the Canadian market yet. BTW, do you must have Vista? I'm running on XP Pro because I had too many bluescreens with Vista. I'm waiting until SP1 comes out then I'll try Vista one more time.

 

Ebay is a good place to start.

 

bal`thaz is selling those for lowest price.


What's ur opinion about the range.. is it any longer than the previous one 3945? I'm sick of those Atheros Card, such a scam .

 

The range depends more on the antenna than the card. You can sometimes configure the cards to transmit at a higher power than normal. But Atheros cards are far from a scam... they've got one of the more stable and featureful chipsets that I've found, and they also work well under Linux.

 

Amen to that. Atheros is light years better than any intel card. Intel should just license Atheros chips for their Centrino platform.

 

So does the 4965AGN work with Windows XP Pro?

 

The range on the 4965 is better.. but its negligible, ur looking at probably 5-10% maximum improvement.
I have found it uses less power though, seem to get about 15 mins more battery life now.

I got my 4965 AGN card off ebay for about £30, so $60... gotta love that exchange rate!

 

I have only tried it with Vista but there are XP drivers as far as I know.

 

And the Intel chips are better than Broadcom's I actually haven't had a problem with Intel's chips so far... they work pretty well for everything I've wanted to do with them, including kismet and network sniffing and such.

 

I just saw the picture of the 4965AGN card. I notice that there are 3 "nipples" for the 3 sockets leading to the antennas. Someone said that you only need 2 antennas to use this card. In my situation, I have the 2 sockets so which 2 of the nipples do I hook the antennas to?

 

Time to be a guinea pig and test it.

I got a 4965AGN card as well and my notebook only has 2 antennas... however I bought a 3rd antenna that I am going to snake around the body of the laptop. Figure some form of 3rd antenna is better than none.

 

Ick Broadcom! At work we have 1 HP that has one and it has problems using WPA. All the other machines can support WPA2 and uses it fine but that one machine can barely use WPA it's dog slow to use WPA. We can't use anything else in it because HP has that damn BIOS lock.

 

Unlock the bios, check out biosmods.com and there are other sites that list all of the def passwords used. Most are replaceable by removing a small cover on the bottom.

 

Uh you're confused. Not that the BIOS has a password (not like it would matter I'm the admin so I made it). HP and others like Lenovo implemented a BIOS lock so that you have to use their brand of card. Since it's a work horse I can't take the risk of modding the BIOS and reflashing it.

 

Thanks for the info, I did not know they were still doing that. Another reason to buy an Apple.

 

remember that anything more than 802.11b is worthless unless you actually share files within your network. if this is just for browsing the internet, you dont have to stress over N as most residential internet connections do not exceed 5mbps. Fios is a different story though, but even then, 802.11g will be ample

 

I've got the xps m1210 (dell wireless-n is an option, so it should have 3 antennas).

Now let me get this straight. In terms of quality here is the breakdown from best to worst:

Atheros --> Intel --> Broadcom

Right?

Am I correct that the Dell-N is a broadcom?

Where do I get the atheros?

On another note, it seems that the dell N comes with only 2 antenna nipples, so I'd imagine I dont have the 3 antennas in my machine..... oh well..maybe I'll wire it up together with the broadband antenna that I paid $79 for together w/ the webcam.

Update: I checked my machein - I've got 3 wires! yay! Now I can buy the atheros N and hook it up.... question is where to buy?

 

Hi, I have the 4965AGN and I would like to add a third antenna, Im just wondering which antennas I should use and where I could get them from.
Thanks

 

I switched out my 3945ABG wireless card in my Tosh Equium for the Intel 4965AGN and the two antenna's simply connect up just fine. Using the Intel ProSet Wireless Client, I'm getting a connection of 144Mbps instead of the 300 that wireless-N indicates I should be getting, so I'm guessing this is due to the lack of the third antenna.

So, off I go hunting for that elusive third antenna, and believe you me, buying what I thought was the right one on eBay was not successful - it simply wasn't compatible.

After quite a lot of research, I found out that the 4965AGN's interface connector is a Hirose U.FL-R-SMT and that you'll need a U.FL-LP-066J1-A-200 (the -200 being the antenna's length in mm).

Googling this didn't really help with my quest in finding a UK seller. Anyone with any further info for this, I'd be most grateful. Hope this info help for others also.

 

Hi, ok, you stumbled into some basic problems. The 144Mbps is normal, when you are using a atheros based router which is not dual band...There is no solution to this, either change the router or the minipcicard.

There are plenty of antennas on ebay

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/tyco-MiniPCI-...ryZ61816QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

here is a shop http://www.oxfordtec.com/uk/index.html

any further questions?

 

I think the intel would work best for an intel mobo would you agree? buying the card now off of amazon. 36 bucks... YES...

 

I have the same question. I am not getting N speeds but I have the connections going to 1 and 2. not the 3 in the middle. Will I not get N unless I have the third Antenna?

 

*bumpage*!

 

Well it depends. Do you have a draft-N compliant router? I do believe that you need to connect all 3 though. A link that may be of slight interest.

And what do you mean by "draft-n speeds"? You aren't going to notice a bump in browsing speeds. Maybe if you try transferring files over the network wirelessly. What you will note though, is that you get a better range and you see networks that you've never seen before (and connect to them if the situation is such that you can, ie, no encrypted networks). All it improves is connectivity, and not connection

 

I have the dlink 655.

 

You guys that are indicating that people won't see increases in web surfing and download speed by switching to an N router, don't forget, b/g (and n also) equipment doesn't run anywhere near it's 'rated' speed. You are going to get a fraction of that and particularly with 'b' equipment, even a solid/strong connection to your router isn't going to produce enough bandwidth to have your 5Mbs cable service running at full speed, and likely not even enough to have your 3Mbs DSL connection running at full speed. Most of the time, you are going to have thruput at 1/3 of it's full capacity or even less.

Also, if you've got really OLD 'b/g' equipment, your WAN port may only be 10Mbs, which again, even that wired connection to your modem might not be running at full speed enough to give you access to the full capability of the modem's connection speed to the internet.

The processor in the router is another factor, and all the 'N' stuff has newer internal processing than all 'b' and most 'g' equipment...again, a potential performance boost for web and internal thruput.

Upgrading to a cheap 'N' router, even running it in 'mixed' client mode, will in most cases, give your better range (in most cases), thruput, and performance...with most any client that you might be running, as long as that client can actually connect to the n router.

Chris

 

B is too slow (~3Mbps), and G is just fast enough (~20Mbps). I have a Linksys WRT54G and a D-Link Airplus Xtreme G. Through two walls (about 30 feet), I can download off the internet at just under 15Mbps, and local file transfers are about 20Mbps. It's really annoying how wifi speeds are only ~1/3 of the advertised speed in real-life use. I don't think even Intel has created a network running at a solid 54Mbps.

 

You said it, it's my major beef w/ all this equipment out there. I have to do EXTRA research w/ every piece of wireless networking equipment I buy just to verify what it's really capable of before I get home and become totally disgusted w/ it.

Up until the last few weeks, I've been running a Belkin Pre-N router (basically G MIMO, Airgo 1st gen TruMIMO chipset), which would barely get me 15Mbs, but at least it was solid at that speed all over my house and part way down my street (seriously, it has some crazy range). My environment is a stick built house w/ siding, no brick. But inside, I could go thru 2-3 walls and up to 2 floors w/ that router, standard Intel 2200bg client adapters in my notebooks...still would get 15mbs actual speed.

I recently got new notebooks with Intel 4695AGN cards, so I wanted to get at least some of the benefit of N w/o spending a ton of $. I went w/ the DLink DIR615, and swapped out to the DIR625 a couple weeks later b/c of a defective 615 unit. Anyway, both units would give me consistent 35-40Mbs transfer rates anywhere in my house. I'm looking forward to a good (and reasonably priced) dual-band router so that I can get the full benefit of these N cards and shoot up to the 75-80Mbs rate (hopefully).

I think some combinations can exceed 54Mbs consistently, but you've got to match everything up w/ the same underlying chipset (Broadcom, Marvell, Atheros, etc.).

I've really been hoping to see a 4th gen chipset from Airgo...they are the only ones that I think have really figured all this stuff out w/ a good implementation...but w/ the recent aquisition of Airgo by Qualcomm, I think we may never see another generation of Airgo equipment...too bad!

Chris

 

I get 130 with my Intel 4965 and 300 with my Thinkpad ABGN card which I think has the Atheros chips and both connecting to my DIR-655.

I did a write up with pics when I swapped out my Intel ABG for the ThinkPad ABGN here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=209534

Both speeds are great, though the 300 was bit more then what I expected to get.