"Killer 1103" wifi card vs Intel 6230, 6300: is it the Holy Grail?

I think I'm late to this party, but recently have read that the Killer 1103 wifi card is as much as 3X higher throughput than the Intel 62XX series and also picks up a weaker signal and gets full bandwidth out of it. A few questions:

1. Is the above largely true?
2. Other things better about the 1103?
3. Downsides of the 1103?
4. Does it have a Bluetooth radio as well?
5. Does it need 3 wires? Can I just connect the three in my Z13 to it?
6. If I have built in mobile broadband, is there any problem using the Killer 1103?

Thanks. I can't be the only one who hasn't realized this card may be a great upgrade (only costs around $50!!), because I haven't seen anyone show it in their sig. By this I mean, your help will benefit many more than me. Thanks

 

You haven't opened up your current VPCZ1, have you? If it were me and the Intel card was "doable" I'd probably just leave it, though I haven't tried the Killer cards...

 

No, I haven't opened this one; how did you know? And yes, the Intel card is working fine, but there are times I wish I could get higher throughput over wifi. I would wait until I had a reason to have to open this Z

 

I'd say the Intel antennaes could work with the Killer card, so the switch would be quite easy.

However I have a hard time believing that you will get more throughput using another card... I'm getting 15 Mb/s when close to my router, and about 5 Mb/s when around the apartment, behind a few walls and doors. Not sure you can do better with any card (switching the antennaes I think would have a far greater effect).

1) What do you mean by low throughput? How much are you actually getting? I'm talking LAN transfers, don't let your DSL Line into account on that.
2) What kind of router / wifi-type / band / security are you running?

I'm on a Netgear WNDR3700 on a WPA2 (MAC-adress locked) 5Ghz Wifi-n.
Top speeds are around 17 Mb/s effective speed.

 

I rarely use my router for lan transfers, but I get up to 40 Mb/s on FIOS downloads and 15Mb/s up, but my service is supposed to be up to 60 MB/s down. I have a Belkin N+ router with WPA2 security. (And yes, the router is old!)

Where I lose throughput is when I go two floors below my router, throughput drops by 75%. Also, I've read that the latency performance of the Killer is on the order of 10X faster. Not clear how much of that you perceive with standard Internet access, but can't suck . I also here they come with excellent network management software, to override your router's software. I believe they are an option on all Alienwares, so that tells you something.

 

This is why I said effective speeds... You mean Mbps, not MB/s .

@ 40 MB/s means 320 Mbps.. Wifi N tops out at 270 on 2.4Ghz and 300 on 5Ghz.

What I was trying to say is that I approach the theoretical limits of WifiN using the intel card...
Wtvr.

As for the Killer cards, I'm SURE they make a HUGE difference if you are a world class CounterStrike or CoD player, on a 4k$ rig with a fiber optics connection.

In networks what is important to keep in mind is bottlenecks. No point in improving the Wifi Card if the you don't have top end gear behind it. I'm sure the laptop specs hurt waaaay before the intel card.

Because keep in mind that this is for gamers and maybe stock traders at home. Thats it. And if you are gaming seriously on the Z, its not a Killer NIC thats gonna drastically change your experience. Just my 2c.

 

Thank you very much. I stand corrected, and a little stupid. It makes sense that they would be standard options on Alienwares. I do notice increasing delays in web sites loading; this is not related to latency?

 

On my Intel card i get 22 MB/s on 5 ghz with asus rt-n56u (300Mbps) connect-rate so it's quite fast for a small card. but i am guessing the advantage of the killer card is it has its own little cpu to take hardware processing of some networking aspects so freeing the main cpu of some load

 

Of course the Killer card must make a difference, but I do not think it can make a noticeable difference in page loads. While getting the packets might be 20 ms faster (huge difference btw), displaying the page is a different story (go through SSD, then RAM, then GRAM, and through CPU). The way in which a PC downloads and displays a webpage is programmed, knowing that the NIC can take its time getting it, so the other components used in Web rendering aren't optimised for such a fast NIC. In other words, I think on a Vaio Z (not a desktop mind you), the only difference you'd see would be a few ms of latency in Counter Strike. Games like CoD with P2P servers won't even notice the Killer NIC I think.

As for studying lan speeds: @lovelaptops not trying to make you look stupid at all just giving my 2c. When monitoring network speeds unless your connection is some kind of 10Gbps military fiber optics line, do your testing on lan transfers. Even then, when I test a connection speed through LAN transfers, remember your bottlenecks: a 5400rpm HDD writes at 65-75 Mb/s tops, so even then Gigabit ethernet can be throttled...Remember your bottlenecks ^^

Cheers.

 

Thanks for all the education, killer. It's probably good for me to feel stupid sometimes; keeps me humble.

This may further demonstrate my ignorance, but are you saying the Killer NIC would only have demonstrable benefits if you had a military grade fiber optic connection, massively powerful desktop computer components and bandwidth/low latency-voracious games or apps?

Or, in other words, are 99% of the people buying this NIC getting zero benefit from it vs. the Intel 6XXX series?

 

Not necessarily. If it picks signal better where Intel card is mediocre, you have more freedom in moving around the house/premises and more reliable connection.

Personally, I still stay wired as much as possible.

 

I'd say that depends more on the router/wifi access point than the wifi card. In other words: connection quality may be vastly improved by upgrading router and only marginally improved by upgrading wifi card.