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Thread: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

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    Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    Hi, I have been experiencing a pretty poor wireless connection to my router. I'm pretty sure its due to my cheapo "plusnet" or something PCI card.

    I have sky broadband and have to use their router. I was looking around and seem notice different speeds 54 108 300 etc. Mine currently is 54mpbs.

    Would upgrading to a faster one make any difference and which ones would you recommend?
    Compatibility with 64bit vista is also essential thanks, Max.

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    I think sky's routers only got up to 54Mbps
    □ΞVΞ□

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    my Sky router went upto 108mbps with my Netgear PCI card..
    that's with the old Netgear DG834GT router though. dunno if they have a new one though.

    always best to get a PCI card that's the same brand as your router though. my Netgear card barely picks up my mam's connection whenever i take my PC round there cos they have a Belkin router, but it picks up my Netgear connection here, 90+% connection strength all the time.

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    To get a higher network speed, you would need to get a different router aswell as a different card. Usually, wireless G is sufficient for the majority of users. The higher speeds you have seen are G+ and N, which offer 108mbps and 300mbps respectively.

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    Doesn't seem good news then, the router is sky's sagem version- the black one lol. Is there no PCI card that would improve the connection?
    another odd thing is the connection differs around 78% - 40% I guess this may be electical devices or blockages

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    have you tried simply just moving the aeriel around?

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    yeah the only other option is to put the pc on top my desk, the connection improves a bit but the neon lights from the antec 900 are off putting up there.

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    The best wireless PCI card to get is the cheapest! There are a limited number of chipsets on PCI cards (e.g. TI, Broadcom, etc), the companies buy chips from a manufacturer and make PCI cards with them, shipping them with manufacturer supplied drivers. The cheapest chinese no-name cards have the same chips on them as the big name expensive ones and come with the same drivers.

    Buying from your wireless card and router from the same brand doesn't guarantee compatability because manufacturers don't just use one brand of chipsets in their cards and routers and they also change chipsets, sometimes different versions of the same product have completely different chipsets.

    Quoted from Wikipedia about the Netgear DG834G
    The DG834G comes in five versions, the DG834G (also referred to as the DG834Gv1), the DG834Gv2, DG834Gv3, DG834Gv4 and the DG834Gv5 (aka DG834GNA for North America). The first three versions have an TI-AR7 (MIPS32) processor and 16 MB of SDRAM and 4MB of flash memory. The DG834Gv4 has a Broadcom BCM6348 V0.7 chipset.
    Poor wireless speed has two causes, one is signal attenuation due to walls and the like, the other is interference from electrical / electronic things e.g. the PC with the wireless card in it. There are two things you can do to improve your reception, one is to move the aerial away from the PC to a better location, you can get an extension lead for your existing aerial or get an aerial with a lead. The second is to get a bigger aerial, the one in my PC is 40cm long (i.e. 4x the length of the original aerial). You can do the same with the router, i.e. move it or move/change its aerials if they're removable.

    I had a Linksys router that had unreliable wifi on it, upgrading the firmware to the latest version made the wireless stable and faster than it had been, see if there is any later firmware for your router.

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    Thanks KowShak, Were can i buy these extenders, do places like scan/ebuyer sell them?

    Are they pretty much all compatible?

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    Re: Best PCI Wireless Card for me?

    Quote Originally Posted by maxwilson View Post
    Thanks KowShak, Were can i buy these extenders, do places like scan/ebuyer sell them?

    Are they pretty much all compatible?
    Yes both of them sell extension cables e.g.

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Newli...se-SMA-Antenna

    You probably should get a 7dBi or 9dBi aerial to go with it e.g.

    http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Newli...-(NLWL-ANTSMA)

    Most cards use the same connector, its an "RP-SMA" connector. I am told that some use other connectors, but I've never seen one that wasn't RP-SMA.

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