How much of 300m wifi can I get with a usb 3.0 adapter

je1983

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Jul 17, 2016
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I currently use a 300m PCI card with my pc paired with a tplink 300m (both 2.4ghz N) router on a 1000M connection which is really more like 400-500M. Speedtests via wifi show 50-60M which is fine right now. I plan on getting a faster router later in the year.


I'm getting a new pc, but I don't currently have the budget to go with the 1900ac pci-e adapter i would like to use along with the updated router I plan on getting. The new motherboard won't have pci support so I can't use my current one.
I was thinking of getting a 300M usb adapter for the time being but I don't know what kind of speeds that would get me via usb 3.0 with my current router configuration.

I know usb 3.0 is supposed to be faster than 2.0 but I'm not sure it will allow me to maximise my wifi the same way a pci or pcie would.
 
Solution
The max throughput on a 300Mbit WIFI adapter will 150Mbit or less. WIFI is half-duplex so it can only transmit OR receive at a given time. That cuts the throughput in half. USB 2 or USB 3 won't matter at that rate.