Which PCI-E wireless card is best

sdyson31 · Jun 18, 2014

Hi,

Which one of the following pci-e wireless card is best?

TL-WDN3800
TL-WN881ND
TL-WN951N

My wireless router support N Technology but i have been thinking about getting one with dual band.

Would i still get the better performance if i use TL-WDN3800 (dual band) with N Technology wireless router as compare to using TL-WN881ND or TL-WN951N?

Dark Lord of Tech · Jun 18, 2014

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833156457

TRENDnet TEW-726EC N600 Wireless Dual Band Adapter IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n PCI Express 1.0 WPA2

bill001g · Jun 18, 2014

First the speed of the wireless only needs to be fast as the slowest thing in the path. If all you are doing is surfing the net and you only have 20m or less internet from your ISP all cards will likely perform exactly the same since the ISP will limit you before you hit any other limit.

So if you need more speed because you are doing something like copying file to server you have on a wired port on the router then there is some difference.

Again it only goes as fast as the slowest thing you have. Just because your router is N does not mean it can run 300m or 450m or whatever. Also you have to be very careful about the speeds. A dual band router claiming it can run 600 is twisting the truth a bit it can run 300m at 2.4g and 300m on 5g. So 2 different users combined can run 600m to the router. A NIC card for a PC only has a single radio so a dual band nic card can run 300m at 2.4g OR 300m at 5g not both at the same time. Ones that claim 600m or 900m are outright telling lies.

So really with any of these cards you list you will get a maximum of 300m. The key advantage to 5g is that it is less crowded than the 2.4g so you likely will get more data through without errors. The huge downside of 5g though is that it has much poorer coverage in your average house since it is much more easily blocked by walls and such. Again if you router does not have a 5g radio having 5g on the nic card will not help you anyway.

A slight update. Be very careful about any of the claims of speed. In real world situation you get only a tiny fraction of the speed. Even the very fastest 802.11ac devices that claim numbers like 1.3g are only testing at 300m download rates.

sdyson31 · Jun 18, 2014

bill001g :

First the speed of the wireless only needs to be fast as the slowest thing in the path. If all you are doing is surfing the net and you only have 20m or less internet from your ISP all cards will likely perform exactly the same since the ISP will limit you before you hit any other limit.

So if you need more speed because you are doing something like copying file to server you have on a wired port on the router then there is some difference.

Again it only goes as fast as the slowest thing you have. Just because your router is N does not mean it can run 300m or 450m or whatever. Also you have to be very careful about the speeds. A dual band router claiming it can run 600 is twisting the truth a bit it can run 300m at 2.4g and 300m on 5g. So 2 different users combined can run 600m to the router. A NIC card for a PC only has a single radio so a dual band nic card can run 300m at 2.4g OR 300m at 5g not both at the same time. Ones that claim 600m or 900m are outright telling lies.

So really with any of these cards you list you will get a maximum of 300m. The key advantage to 5g is that it is less crowded than the 2.4g so you likely will get more data through without errors. The huge downside of 5g though is that it has much poorer coverage in your average house since it is much more easily blocked by walls and such. Again if you router does not have a 5g radio having 5g on the nic card will not help you anyway.

A slight update. Be very careful about any of the claims of speed. In real world situation you get only a tiny fraction of the speed. Even the very fastest 802.11ac devices that claim numbers like 1.3g are only testing at 300m download rates.

If the price is same then its worth getting dual band than n ?

bill001g · Jun 18, 2014

If you would ever upgrade your router you would be ready to use the 5g band. As you have found the price is very close between the 2 devices and this is true for routers also. I tend to recommend anyone who buys new equipment to consider dual band.

You just wouldn't want to go out and buy a dual band card if you current card works ok and your router does not support dual band. You might as well save your money until you have a real reason to upgrade and maybe by then the 802.11ac equipment will have dropped in price again.

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Which PCI-E wireless card is best

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