Replacing Intel 5100: Intel 6200 or Bigfoot N1102

My Vaio came with an Intel 5100 card in it. I have not payed allot of attention to it until lately. I am down for repairs myself. I am watching Netflix on the same network and the other two computers one with a realtec wireless card and the desktop with a wireless N dongle have smother playback and less problems with buffering. I have heard that the 5100 can be problematic so is it possible to get better stable wireless with either the Intel 6200 or the Bigfoot N1102.




Sony Vaio VGN-BZ560P22 Windows 7 Pro

 

Either should work fine. Bigfoot seems to be very good but it's hard to tell if driver updates are going or be easily available. On the other hand Intel is pretty good with driver support (at least the frequency part of it).
Plus 6200 has been tested multiple times while 1102 is a bit of an unknown at this point. There are some reviews but with all do respect for those reviewers these are not very credible sources.

 

Thanks for the info on this. I was already somewhat partial to the Intel cards because I like the My Wifi program and believe compatibility is more likely. I just want to see if I can get better streaming and less drop offs. The 5300 is still available on Amazon. Would it be as good with only two antenna hooked up to it as the 6200.

 

I think it would be as good as 6200 and would still have the potential to run @ 450mbps if you choose to upgrade your setup.
Apparently 5300 uses less power than more recent Intel Wi-Fi cards- I can't vouch for it but I saw that in a research paper one of our members posted here.
(I'm not 100% sure of that though- It seems counter-intuitive. I might have misread something too- unfortunately it's hard to find anything here these days)

 

I only see two antenna wires in the area where I can access the ram and wireless card. I have built in bluetooth. Does the bluetooth have its own antenna or is it somehow built on my 5100 chip and using the same antenna. I would like to keep my built in bluetooth.

 

Bluetooth should be separate.
The Bigfoot, if you can find it cheap, isn't going to be bad, but don't believe the hype around it. The biggest advantage I see over it, is that you know what you are getting when you buy one. Intel cards have often been plagued with people selling engineering samples. Make sure you are getting a normal Intel and you will be fine.

As for Downloads claims of the 5300 using less power, I can confirm it is better on power than the 4965 and some of the newer Ralinks. I would buy it again, no problem. Just be sure that if you have an HP or Lenovo(?) that you get a matching card, and if not, that you don't buy an HP or Lenovo card. Those are locked to the bios. Also watch out for engineering samples (they are probably gone by now).

 

How can you tell if it is an engineering sample. I was looking at purchasing from Newegg but they are currently out of stock.

 

The Es samples usually have a blurry sticker, and just don't quite look right on close inspection. Search around a bit, you will see what the real stickers look like. Also, buy from a reputable seller, preferably not in China.

 

Anandtech is not a credible source?

 

I've touched that subject here. There are several things about this review that are simply impossible which seriously undermines the whole thing outcome included.

 

You say they get a 4ms ping for ethernet, read it again, that chart is in ms, not s. so it's actually .4ms

 

It's not Internet ping but local ping (pinging the gateway=router)
All pings in this test are local and quite a few cards supposedly achieved local pings ranging from 4 to 6 ms.
My point was that it's impossible to achieve local pings that are this high and that Internet is responsible for most of your overall latency (local+ outside) so even if you reduce your local ping it won't have much effect on the overall latency.

On top of that throughput supposedly achieved by WNR3500L is impossible to achieve in best conditions let alone in real life.

<STRIKE>All of that summed up makes this review worthless.</STRIKE>
EDIT:
I've overdone it with "worthless" since they actually admitted that the effect of reduced latency is negligible so they're not hyping things up mindlessly like I thought they were.

 

To back up what Downloads is saying...

The internet is where most of the lag is felt.
If your normal ping while gaming is around 100ms, dropping 4ms on your home network is a 4% difference in total. Much faster doesn't help gameplay because too many others are on a higher ping. So yes, while at 50ms, a 4ms is an 8% improvement, other players negate the whole purpose of it. Even Anandtech flat out states in the article, that realistically, most users will never notice a difference.

Here is another problem with their test, if your local ping is high enough to shave off 4ms, you need to take a look at your network. Something is wrong. My 300 wireless ping is 3ms and my wired ping is less than 1, there is no possible way to shave 4ms off of that.



This sums up what we are talking about perfectly...

From the Anandtech article itself

 

I have an 1102, but I don't notice any difference between it and other good cards I've used (the Intel 1000 I pulled out of this PC was one of the worst pieces of junk I've ever had the displeasure of using).