USB wireless card vs mini pci-e

Hi all.
If I wanted to free up an extra mini pci-e slot in my notebook I'm assuming that i am able to remove the wireles card and hack in a usb wireless adapter somewhere inside the notebook. will the USB adapter only be limited by its specs? for example would I still be able to stream HD video if the wireless card provides enough bandwidth?
This seems like a bit of a dumb question but I thought I would ask before go ahead with it

Answer this assuming that both cards would be using the internal antennas of the notebook.
My guess is the only limiting factor would be the bandwidth of the usb spec compared with that of mini pci-e

Thanks

 

Assuming antennas are the same (which BTW may be hard to achieve) there will be no difference.
USB adapters use the same radio chips that internal ones use- so if you buy a good one you'll have the same possibilities.

 

Thanks for the response downloads, answered my question perfectly

 

I was once told that it requires several watts to properly transmit a MIMO signal properly because a dedicated DSP is needed to process the data... In the old days 400-500mW was enough for 54Mbps, but now alot of time sensitive MIMO data processing is offloaded to the host thru drivers which can't handle the data w/ near perfect timing which causes low speeds.

I guess we can only "hope" USB 3.0 wireless adapters that had onboard DSPs gets released soon.

I guess in the mean time I may HAVE to buy a mini-PCIe to PCIe adapter, a 3x3 or 4x4 mini-PCIe card AND a set of 3-4 antennas... This is definitely going to be expensive and a BIG hassle.... Anyone with a better alternative??

 

Buy a new notebook with that stuff designed in?

 

And the winner is pci-e by far.

Fortunately with wifi networks you will probably never notice since they are a couple orders worse on latency and even the best bandwidth standard is not really very tasking.

Its further complicated in that the minicard standard allows a device to have pci-e and usb connections and its not always obvious which is being used. In fact intel wimax cards use both, the wifi mode is pci-e and the wimax mode is usb, with some shared hardware so only one works at a time.

BTW, they do not always use the same chips even if from the same family, some vendors only put out the more advanced types as pci-e.