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I'm thinking of throwing out the old PCI wireless receiver in my desktop computer because it isn't great, and it doesn't support 802.11n which I can see myself upgrading to in the near future. With a spare PCI free I imagine using a PCI card will give better results than a USB receiver, however I never really liked the antenna sticking out of the back of my computer and I have seen small USB receivers such as the Edimax EW-7811UN which boast good performance. Any suggestions to a particularly good brand? Or a specific product? |
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I like the USB ones because you can move them around. The draw back is the antenna suck on usb. some don't include nor support external antenna. If you get a PCI card that supports wirelessN get one that has the antenna seperate from the card, again so you can move it for best results. Most wireless N are on PCIx (PCIe) not standard PCI cards because of their speed since wireless N can go faster than the PCI buss. one like this one :: http://www.amazon.com/HP-FH971AA-Wireless-PCIe-Card/dp/B001GV2320 notice that is PCI-E (not PCI) since wireless N may only be on PCI-E I'm not a 'brand' person but dlink, linksys and belkin have always worked for me. best to weight the options. USB wirless N, weak signal, PCI costing more, or go wired since its a desktop and take advantage of 100/1000mbs full duplex. good luck. Ah, I didn't realise that wireless N ran faster than the PCI bus. It's a shame because my mobo only has one PCIe and that's being used by my ASUS EAH5450. The first version of the standard PCI slot did 127 MB/s megabytes while USB 2.0 only does 60MB/s The second version of the standard PCI slot does 508MB/s PCI express is even faster either way, wireless N will not max out a PCI slot or a USB slot 802.11n allows for up to 300mbit/s thats a max of 37.5MB/s Given this, 802.11n will often fail to hit it's full speed on USB 2.0 as even though on paper USB 2.0 can handle 60MB/s, in real world test with SSD's connected via USB, they often max out at about 33MB/s while on USB 3.0 they will hit over 200MB/s http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-firewire-esata,2534-4.html |
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PCI wifi cards often perform better as they can have higher transmit power and also use faster and more higher powered parts (usb ones are designed to be much more lower powered) While the USB can be more convenient to use, a PCI wifi card will work better, all you need for best performance is a good external antenna that can be connected using a wire. that way the antenna can be placed in a good location. |
