Which are better...Atheros or Broadcom Drivers?

Which are better drivers for built-in wireless?

I have the Atheros installed, but wondering if broadcom is any better?

 

Atheros and Broadcom are different manufacturers. You can't use atheros drivers on broadcom cards, and vice versa.

If you are asking about the cards themselves, I would say atheros has overall better performance.

 

Atheros is just the chipset, they don't make the cards, manufacturers like Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI, makes the cards.

Not having owned a Broadcom card, I can't say but if its not an Intel card, it shouldn't be that bad

 

well i have an aspire 3680, and the wireless is managed by atheros, my friend has the stock setup and his is set to broadcom.

both work i guess. im online and happy with the connection

 

...dude. Atheros makes one wireless chip, and their drivers work only for their chips. Your friend has a different wireless chip in his computer, one made by Broadcom. Which is why he has Broadcom drivers. That's like asking "What is better, modem drivers or video drivers?"

 

if you read what i posted, he has the same exact model number as me, bought it the same day as me, and the only difference is that i formatted it to ntfs and win xp pro. his is broadcom, mine is atheros.

 

Doesn't matter. If he chose a different network card option, or if they decided to put a different card in than yours before they shipped, it could be completely different.

 

javamaniac where do you live? where'd you purchase them?

acer does manufacture the same model(s) with different wireless options (intel, atheros, broadcom, etc.)

usually the is a notation on the model number. for example:

i have a sony vaio vgn-fs570 it is refered to as the vgn-fs series or fs500 or fs5xx series. you both make have the same laptops but they could be configured differently.

here is another example. i was over in japan visiting my navy friend and he bought a sony vaio vgn-fs6xx series (can't remeber the exact model number) over there that has ddr 2. here it only has ddr.

so there is a difference just not a noticable one.

here is another example sony make the fs series notebooks in 2 flavors one with intel gma and the other with nvidia graphics (release later).

so i mean it is possible.

as for is which is better???? thats like asking do you like to be on top on bottom? it's comes down to preference.

laptop manufacturers change change what hardware they ship ship at anytime and still have the same model number. though rare it happens mostly when the laptop was pre-configured by seller for a customer or by request.

as long as you can get online does it matter?

 

well my friend bought it from a computer guy who sells them brand new in box, aspire 3680-2574, and i bought mine at microcenter...i chose to reformat and install winxp pro, and installed the atheros driver first, not knowing it was the atheros or that i even had the choice on the website.

mine shows up as atheros, his shows up as broadcom...just thought it was weird that they both ar the same computers running 2 different drivers. and i thought maybe on was better than the other lol.

 

IMHO atheros is the best for wlan. i'm sure others will dispute.

unless your a wireless power-user you would not notice the difference.

say like being in a building with think walls or a big apartment complex.
most card have 200mw. this controls the transmission power for maximum range, throughput speeds and signal strength.

so in theory more is better. the highest on the market 400mw.

but it doesn't stop there. the different type of networks need transmit power to connect for example:
transmit power upto on 400mw:

* 26 dBm +/- 2dBm 802.11b
* 26 dBm +/- 2dBm 802.11g
* 20 dBm +/- 2dBm 802.11a

and 200mw:

*22.5 dBm +/- 2bdm 802.11b/g/a

an external antenna mod will also increase signal reception and your card won't roam to the keep the connection.

more power = increase range to find signals
external antenna = better signal reception.