What wireless card should I purchase with my new laptop?

Hello. I am currently planning to purchase a MSI GS70 2OD-002US Stealth Ultra Thin i7-4700HQ 2GB NVIDIA GTX 765M 17.3" Super RAID. (See here: LINK) I plan on adding an IC Diamond on the CPU and GPU for lower system temperatures, having Windows 7 Ultimate edition installed instead of Windows 8, have a LED Backlit Antiglare Type 72% NTSC Color Gamut Display, add a Kingston HyperX 16GB Dual Channel DDR3L at 1600MHz (2 x 8GB), add a Samsung 840 EVO Series SATA3 6Gb/s 1TB SSD for a hard drive, and am now trying to decide on a wireless card.

Here are the options for wireless cards:

Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO for Gaming & Video
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230 2x2 MIMO Technology - installed by HIDevolution
Intel® Advanced N + WiMAX 6250 a/g/n 2x2 MIMO Technology - installed by HIDevolution
Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology - installed by HIDevolution (2 antennas only) +$15.00
Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video - installed by HIDevolution (2 antennas only) +$20.00
Intel® Ultimate N WiFi Link 6300 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO Technology - installed by HIDevolution (with 3rd antenna install) +$35.00
Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 a/g/n 3x3 MIMO for Gaming & Video - installed by HIDevolution (with 3rd antenna install) +$40.00
Intel Wireless-AC 7260 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2x2 - installed by HIDevolution +$40.00


My question is which is the best choice? The price difference does not matter and will not affect my decision. If it makes a difference multiple people use the WIFI in my apartment, so take that into consideration if it makes a difference. Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to provide!

 

I would choose either Killer 1103 with 3 antennas or Intel 6300 with 3 antennas. My sole reason is due to the 3rd antenna being installed. If you purchase the 7260AC, I bet you wouldn't get the 3rd antenna. The 3rd antenna will basically take advantage of future 3x3 WiFi AC cards that allows up to 1.3 Gbps of link speed as opposed to 867 Mbps for 2 antenna setup. BTW, you can't go wrong with either Killer 1103 or Intel 6300. Both are excellent not just in speed but also range.

 

3x3

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I'd also go with a 3x3 card, just because it'll be of benefit if you run into any 3x3 routers. Now, out of those choices, I'd go for the Intel ones since at least you get better networking hardware than with the Killers, which are nothing more than rebranded Atheros (ie, generic) WiFi cards with "special drivers" (just simply QoS tweaks that you can do on your router).

AC is all new and nice, but you're still going to be limited by the bandwidth of your ISP connection, and if you're in America your ISP connection will almost always be much slower than what your router and WiFi card can actually handle, so N should still be more than enough for a few more years at least. Unless, that is, you have a decent home network with a home server that you use quiet often over said network, and you happen to have an AC router already.

 

I've used the Killer 1102,1202 and 1103(3x3) with excellent 5ghz performance in my MSI notebooks while pairing with Netgear 3700v2,4500 and R6300 routers

The 1103 with 3rd antenna was a solid 450Mbps with WNDR4500 and R6300 routers on 5ghz

The AC-7260 on 2.4ghz may not have good notebook performance but for smartphones it's OK.Varies with driver versions.

AC-7260 paired with a Netgear R6300 and Netgear R7000 has yielded very good to excellent 5ghz performance with driver 16.6.0.8

I didn't have very good results using Intel N-13x,2230 and 6230/6235

Which router are you going to use with the wireless card?

Which primary OS?

How far from router will the notebook be used mainly?

Consult with a few MSI notebook resellers.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I've narrowed my decision to either the Intel 6300 or the Killer 1103 (both 3x3 with the 3rd antenna installed). My follow up question is, which between these two would you suggest and is there a specific router you'd suggest that I should upgrade to? Price isn't huge issue unless it's just outrageous.

 

My experience with the Intel 6300 was overall very good but I did occasionally suffer some connection lag.

Looking forward to an AC wireless card purchase when a 3 antenna model is available the Netgear R7000 router stands out above the rest

Router Ranker - Ranking - SmallNetBuilder

 

I would go with one of the intel cards for sure. However, the downside to the 6300 or something similar is that you can't get bluetooth on the card as well. I would call/email and ask about the third antenna to see if they would give you the antenna just in case you wanted it in the future. I had a killer 1103 in my previous laptop, and I did have some trouble with it, so I would go intel if I had it to do again. However, the times I felt that the extra speed from the 3rd antenna was worth it (almost never) were far outnumbered by the times I wish that I had bluetooth on the laptop for controllers, speakers, phones, etc. I would probably go 7260, as with an AC router you're going to get better speeds than even a 3x3 wireless n card can give you, and get bluetooth as well.

 

You bring up great points. I think this thread has definitely swayed me towards one of the Intel cards, but here's my question (as I'm very uneducated on wireless cards and routers). If I did go with the Intel 7260, what router would I need to purchase? Would the Netgear R7000 be equipped to support it, or what router would? Also will my roommate and people who visit me be able to connect access the WIFI? They tend to be on Macbooks. I'm sorry for the very basic questions. Like I said I'm very uneducated on the subject, so I'm learning as I go through all of your posts.


EDIT: Is there anyway I can add Bluetooth capability onto either of those 3x3 choices? If not, how big of a nuisance will not having Bluetooth be? Because like others in this thread have brought up, having a 3x3 will benefit me if I run into any 3x3 routers.

 

Hi Joker,

While it's true that current 3x3 N cards don't have Bluetooth as of this year, it's easy to get a USB Bluetooth module from stores. If you order the 7260, You may not have the 3rd antenna installed which means that you won't be able to reach 1.3 Gbps speed when a 3x3 WiFi AC card with Bluetooth shows up on the market. If you order the one with Intel 6300 or the Killer, you will definitely have the 3rd antenna and then you go to online stores to purchase the 7260AC for a mere $35. Then you swap your 3x3 card with 7260AC and you enjoy both AC and internal Bluetooth plus you have the 3rd antenna already installed in case a 3x3 AC card with Bluetooth shows up in the market. Well, unless your comfortable with disassembling laptops to attach the 3rd antenna or you're happy with a 2 antenna laptop, then going to 7260AC right away is good as well.

 

Luckily a wireless card upgrade or change is cheap compared to other notebook hardware.

More expensive are the choices of CPU,graphics card,screen and SSD upgrades.

I now have a 240GB SanDisk Extreme II SSD(best consistency) Windows 8.1.1 Pro x64 as my primary boot drive and the newly released 1TB Crucial M550 with Windows 7 x64 as alternate boot drive and storage.

Gotta love that HyperX memory.

The MSI GS70 is a great looking machine.Lots of Luck with it.

 

Regarding the 6300 and lag, I've had that under Windows 8 on more recent drivers, which makes me not recommend Intel NICs as heartily as I used to. From what I've seen on NBR, the killer cards are either excellent or terrible depending on the driver which seems to follow a bad/good/bad/good release cycle.

The 6300 may not be as "fast" as the 1103, but mine has been rock solid in terms of getting data at a consistent performance level over my network. If you are mostly going to play games rather than stream content, then I'd have no problems going with either the 1103 or 6300.

 

Not always true, actually. I remember there were some asus models in particular that came with some broadcom generic card from the factory, and the vendors (xotic and others) would add in a 3x3 card. However, the laptops didn't have the 3rd antenna, so it functioned like a 2x2 card. On some of those models, they would also have a 35$ ish charge that was to install a third antenna. I don't know if that happens any more, but it for sure used to, and may well still.

Reguarding 2x2 vs 3x3 AC cards. You're looking at ~867Mbps Vs ~1300Mbps in ideal circumstances (close to the router, no interference, etc). Unless you do a lot of heavy transfers between devices on the network, both of those are going to be blazing fast and you won't really notice a difference. cbautis2 pointed out that the third antenna is nice to have. However, that intel 6300, even though it is a 3x3 card, is only wireless n. So best case, you'll get 450Mbps max from it assuming those same ideal circumstances. Under real world use, I would wager that the 7260 will be faster than the 6300 on any network that supports wireless AC, and only slightly slower (300Mbps vs 450Mbps) on N only networks. Again though, unless you do a lot of stuff over your local network (transfering files, steam home streaming, etc) you will be hard pressed to notice a difference in speeds.

As for the router, that netgear will work wonderfully for either wireless card, though you would need a wireless N card like the 7260 to get the most out of it obviously. I have the Asus "equivalent" myself, the RT-AC68u, and it's been great. It's 20 bucks more, but is also a very solid choice, and comes with a few extra features, and IMO better firmware as far as looks and ease of use go.

Amazon.com: ASUS (RT-AC68U) Wireless-AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router: Computers & Accessories

 

I've seen people having problems getting consistent performance on AC, it's still in its infancy afterall. Performance in ideal situations will be better and I'm sure NBR members will chime in that they have stable performance.

Personally, I'm stikcing to N for the foreseeable future, I'm getting over 20 MB/s on my home network with the 6300 during file transfers and that is already pretty good.

 

Hi everyone,

I would recommend AzureWave AW-CE132H card based on Broadcom BCM4352 chip. I'm getting around 45-47 MByte/sec when copying big files (>5 GByte) to my laptop from an HDD drive connected to the Asus RT-AC56U router via USB 3.0. The router is overclocked (1000/800), BTW.