Wi-Fi Card Reconmedations Y500

[William Shadowruby]

So I've been considering getting a upgrade for my Laptop's wireless card. I would like to have 2.4 ghz 5 ghz and bluetooth. The one that I have been considering is the Killer Wireless-N 1202.

So any recommendations?

[h=2][/h]

[KraZy_SkitZy]

Gotta unlock your bios first, I'd either go Intel 6230/6235 or the Intel Wireless-AC 7260 personally.

[William Shadowruby]

Gotta unlock your bios first, I'd either go Intel 6230/6235 or the Intel Wireless-AC 7260 personally.

Any particular reason why?

I wanted to go with the Killer because it has very good throughput for games.

[KraZy_SkitZy]

I'm not a firm believer you'll notice the improvement in games, unless you're a "hardcore gamer" but if you were a "hardcore gamer" you wouldn't have bought a Lenovo (more budget minded casual gamer imo) The high end intel card have been good to me, consistent driver updates and long life support. I'm not a believer the killer series will be supported for as long as an intel card (unless the killer series gets more mainstream) heck the intel 4965agn is still supported and gets driver updates. I also find the intel cards "usually" have a better price point.

(the intel 2230 is by far the worst of the entry level intel wifi adapters I have ever used)

[jester_socom]

If you use Intel adapters.

Make sure to disable Fast boot or hybrid boot. Because you will have bluescreens of crashing bluetooth adapters. I have this with my Atheros as well.

Killer Wireless N is best choice latency wise.

Like he said. If you are not a hardcore gamer it's not really worth it. Atheros is just fine for counter strike.

Skill matters. Not hardware. trust me

[KraZy_SkitZy]

If you use Intel adapters.

Make sure to disable Fast boot or hybrid boot. Because you will have bluescreens of crashing bluetooth adapters. I have this with my Atheros as well.

Killer Wireless N is best choice latency wise.

Like he said. If you are not a hardcore gamer it's not really worth it. Atheros is just fine for counter strike.

Skill matters. Not hardware. trust me

On top of that to fully take advantage of a better wireless card, you need to have a descent router, and service provider. Better wireless cards won't give you latency and speeds that your isp and router can't provide.

[TheNoobyOne]

I would not go with the killer wireless n, one thing is that you are playing on a laptop, if you really wanted low latency you would use a Ethernet jack rather than wireless, and it would be just a waste of money, try going with a intel wireless n or wireless ac adapter, because paying a premium on a product you probably wont fell a improvement on and still having more latency than a wired connection I fell that you should no get the killer "nic" type of wireless care

P.S remember to unlock your bios due the the whitelist on the y500 series

[William Shadowruby]

P.S remember to unlock your bios due the the whitelist on the y500 series

Unlocked Bios

And also impulse bought the wireless N

[jester_socom]

Benchmarks ? can you do a speedtest.net for us?

[William Shadowruby]

Got it in today, will post review with speed test.net and ftp to nas comparisons vs desktop on ethernet

[Kamnnoriel]

Got it in today, will post review with speed test.net and ftp to nas comparisons vs desktop on ethernet

[KraZy_SkitZy]

with my intel 6235 speedtest gave me Speedtest.net - My Results

and pingtest gave me http://www.pingtest.net/result/83313830.png

[William Shadowruby]

You bought the Killer Wireless right? If that's so did you have any troubles with it?

No trouble so far, just needed to install the Bigfoot drivers.

And to get the Bluetooth to work I needed to uninstall the Intel Bluetooth drivers

My at first glance benchmarks are here : http://forum.techinferno.com/lenovo-ibm/3983-bigfoot-killer-wireless-n-1202-y500-first-glance.html

[chad2625]

/sigh unless your internet speed is faster than your routers speed a speedtest.net will not prove anything.

why buy the N? I Dont see the advantage, Right now if your going to upgrade Any Wifi Adapter wait until 802.11 AC standard gets finalized (or buy a draft). It will raise your wifi through to 1.69 Gb/s wich is by far the biggest and most beneficial upgrade to your wifi network. All wifi devices share your routers maximum speed, so if you have one device connected to a Full N router, then your one device gets 300 Mb/s if you have 10 devices ( think about how many phones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops might be connected) each device only gets 30 Mb/s... you will have to upgrade your router and your wifi adapter. Alot of dual band Wifi Cards seem to be able to have there firmware upgraded and work with a 802.11ac router.

http://wikidevi.com/wiki/Intel_Dual_Band_Wireless-AC_7260_(7260HMW)

IEEE 802.11ac - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[chad2625]

FYI I have a Centrio N 2230.

Most of these tests are going to be based more on your internet connection your best bet is to run a ping (open a command promt and run ping <IP> -n 100) on your router to see the pings from your router to test your wifi. I ran on average 3 ms to get to my router, and back. You could run a NAS like he did in his benchmarks. Intel's drivers by default are not really N Freindly. I have had to customize my Wifi Card settings to run N speeds. I bet that with some tweaking of settings you could get similar performance out of the 2230 minus the dual band of course. But unless they patch the Firmware the Killer is a $60 N card that is super low latency, but a $30 AC card has 5 Times the bandwidth, which is what more people want, hence more requests for speed tests than ping tests. Besides this is all router dependent, a cheap router will make or break any WIFI test.

Speed test

Speedtest.net - My Results

Ping test

http://www.pingtest.net/result/83384911.png

[KraZy_SkitZy]

<ip>. But unless they patch the Firmware the Killer is a $60 N card that is super low latency, but a $30 AC card has 5 Times the bandwidth, which is what more people want, hence more requests for speed tests than ping tests. Besides this is all router dependent, a cheap router will make or break any WIFI test.

I agree, that why I ordered an intel ac-7620

</ip>

[XXBrain]

The part list in the maintaince manual of the Y500/Y400 contains the "WLAN, 3*3 Intel 6300N MOW M PCIE NB HMC (LI) 20002323 **".

Is it possible to use this card without moddes bios? Do the Y500 have 3 antennas to connect it with that card otherwise it makes no sense to use it. The card has no blutooth support. I guess that means if using it the y500 have no bluetooth anymore. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[85daytona]

There are only 2 antennas in my Y500 with the Intel 2230. I have read about people adding a 3rd though.

[Kamnnoriel]

The part list in the maintaince manual of the Y500/Y400 contains the "WLAN, 3*3 Intel 6300N MOW M PCIE NB HMC (LI) 20002323 **".

Is it possible to use this card without moddes bios? Do the Y500 have 3 antennas to connect it with that card otherwise it makes no sense to use it. The card has no blutooth support. I guess that means if using it the y500 have no bluetooth anymore. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[XXBrain]

That card listed in the manual has an specific FRU which is the only card model that's allowed to work with your Y500/Y400, it means that if you buy a normal 6300N it probably won't work because it'll be a generic 6300N and not the "Lenovo Allowed" 6300N, so either way you'd have to mod your BIOS to make it work.

Also the 6300N uses 3 antennas; you can use it with 2 antennas but that'd be wasting the card's full potential, so the idea is to buy a 3rd antenna and place it where it doesn't touch anything or make any interference with the notebook's hardware. And Yes, it does not have Bluetooth, if you install that card you'd loose Bluetooth, but in the other hand you'll have a greater connection and range.

Very detailed information. Thank you for that. Lenovo forces me to break my warrenty to get it.Installing a third antenna is no alternative for that reason. Installing the bios is acceptable as long I can rebuild my backup in a warrenty case.

[wed_wabbit]

I just installed the Intel Centrino 7260 last night. The only issue I had was the old drivers would not fully uninstall. I think if I had to do this again, I would have uninstalled the software prior to installing the new card. The updated drivers (16.0.5 or something like that) would not install over the old software and drivers. Even after using the uninstall (programs and features) and deleting the adapter from device manager. I had to go though the Registry to delete anything related to the ProWireless and Bluetooth associated only with the Intel adapter. After this, the new drivers would install. Otherwise a pretty easy and useful update.

[sccrgoalie1]

I just installed the Intel Centrino 7260 last night. The only issue I had was the old drivers would not fully uninstall. I think if I had to do this again, I would have uninstalled the software prior to installing the new card. The updated drivers (16.0.5 or something like that) would not install over the old software and drivers. Even after using the uninstall (programs and features) and deleting the adapter from device manager. I had to go though the Registry to delete anything related to the ProWireless and Bluetooth associated only with the Intel adapter. After this, the new drivers would install. Otherwise a pretty easy and useful update.

[Florin]

I read this thread but I am missing something, I am a Y500 owner and how can you change the Wi-Fi card? is it that easy? dissemble the laptop and buy one and replace it?

[Zuois]

Should be relatively straightforward: just remove the bottom panel like all laptops. You will need to install an unlocked BIOS with a white-list.

[Florin]

I did flash, everything went smooth, I did this so that I can OC the 650M's. My question is, why do people want another Wi-Fi card? is the one built-in so bad? I haven't experience issue with it. I mean buying a new one would bring 2x-4x speed boost? (ofc if access point or router is near you)