Centrino vs intel chip + minicard

This question will expose my ignorance but will you get better performance and better value for your money by buying an Intel centrino for wireless or a non centrino Intel chip + mini card for wireless?
Ron

 

As a general rule, you will get the same performance. The one variable is the antenna. A well designed laptop will actually have slightly better performance with a built in wireless solution because they can provide a better antenna than the tip on the end of a PC card but unfortunately most don't take full advantage of that ability. The PC card solutions have the advantage that several of them support connecting an external antenna, though pretty much no one takes advantage of that ability. Really though, you'll see pretty much no difference so do whatever is most convenient (which is normally the built in solution)

 

Right, don't get sucked into the Intel marketing machine with Centrino unless it makes sense.

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Thank you for the advice.

Ron

 

Hi, I raised a similar topic on Dell forum. In the process I found out a lot about wirless cards and Centrino. There is a difference between the Intel chips and the other brands that make wirless chips such as Atheros and Broadcom. It is more than just marketing as some would have you believe.[8D]

Remember these guys are in competitoin so they are constanly bringing out new toys, so I will deal with the Broadcom BCM4309 that Dell sell as their Dell 1450 a/b/g.(this can go into a lot of other brands) and the Intel chip that Intel sell as thier Centrino chip commenly called the 2100 b or 2200 b/g in Dell products also can go into a lot of other machines.

The Broadcom 1450 will save power so that a notebook running an Intel Pentium M processor and a Broadcom wireless radio chip will last 20 minutes longer than a notebook running an Intel Centrino wireless chip set.

Broadcom cannot outmarket Intel so they must out perform them instead. [ ]

Another chip to consider outside Intel is Atheros . They are of the most vocal chipmakers to the press during this week of Centrino news has been Atheros, but not about its chips. The company sent out an executive summary to the press called "Centrino vs. Pentium M: The Battle for Wireless Notebooks" which (correctly) reiterates that Wi-Fi is not truly embedded in a Pentium chip for Centrino, as some people believe.[ ] Atheros points out that the Pentium-M can be coupled with anyone's 802.11 chips, whether from Intel, Atheros, Broadcom, etc. [ ]

However the only way for a PC maker to get the Centrino brand name on its PC or for overall marketing purposes is to use the Pentium-M with Intel's own Wi-Fi solution -- which, in the initial 11b-only release, are actually a mix of chips: an "Intel-developed dual-band MAC, an 802.11b baseband manufactured by Texas Instruments that is the result of a joint development between Intel and Symbol, and a 802.11b radio supplied by Philips," according to Intel .

Of course, the reason laptop manufacturers will want that Centrino brand name is the marketing they won't have to do -- Intel's $300 million "Unwire" ad campaign should be taking care of a lot of that for them.

Hope this helps[^]

 

Thanks NotYetNoob for your detailed response. This helps in decision-making when selecting components for my new computer.

Ron

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by NotYetNoob