About wireless card options

For Clevo laptops the options listed are:

Internal 802.11B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Intel® 6230 Advanced-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN and Bluetooth Card
Intel® 6300 Ultimate-N 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card
Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 802.11A/B/G/N LAN Card

Now the last two options are more expensive, but do they not include bluetooth? If not do they have an important advantage to make up for that?

 

I think they both have a 3x3 antenna so it increases the amount of bandwith they can have

 

Here's another post about it that might help:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...e-n-6300-3x3-vs-advanced-n-6200-2x2-x201.html

 

The throughput on the last two cards is potentially higher than that of the first two.

The stock card is a 1x2 antenna card I think.

The 6230 is a 2x2 card. Lots of routers are 2x2.

The last two are 3x3. They can connect at a faster speed if the router is also a 3x3 antenna configuration.

 

Here's the main differences:

Stock = 1x1 antenna, 150Mbps, bluetooth
6230 = 2x2 antenna, 300Mbps, bluetooth
6300 = 3x3 antenna, 450Mbps, no bluetooth
1103 = 3x3 antenna, 450Mbps, no bluetooth, improved QoS software (better latency and speeds).

The increased speeds only matter if you have a router that can support them. A slower N router will see basically no benefit from the faster cards. You will see a potential range benefit out of extra antennas, but it's not significant.

 

It's plenty significant, the distance advantage of the 3rd antennae was major in anandtech's tests.

In the first one for example you can see the 3 antennae's range is almost double that of the 2 antennae intel.
I'm guessing the 3 antennae bigfoot would show a similar improvement

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

 

It wasn't really major, only ~15 ft different on the max 200ft range between the 2 antenna and 3 antenna models. I'd say it's pretty minimal based on that.

You'll see their results vary greatly based on the router in use, as I stated above.

 

You can see clearly on this image in particular the range difference is almost double (100%) between the 2 antennae and 3 antennae intel.

Not only is the difference significant, it is HUGE!

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4590/2.4GHz Range - Netgear.jpg

The authors of the study noted this benefit in their conclusion, saying --
"If reception at the limits of your wireless signal is important to you, the Intel 6300 appears to be the best bet (though potentially other 3x3:3 solutions might post similar results)."

 

Most of my laptops have been upgraded to the 6300 from Intel. It's just the fact it's that much quicker and you can use the 5MHz as well, which has a longer range and not much interference dealing with the 2.4MHz.

As stated above though, you need the router capable if it as well though.

 

The 6300 looks like it does really well. Shame it doesn't have bluetooth as well. Thanks for the info guys.

 

There is this review as well... Worth checking out.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/networking-wireless/655425-killer-wireless-n-1103-review.html

 

Indeed, just read it all a must read IMO if you consider a Killer card.