# Wireless adapter recommendations?



## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 9, 2013)

I am moving off to finish school. I will be living in an apartment with a few friends, and my room won't have the wireless router and modem in there to do direct connections so I will most likely have to settle with a wireless connection. I have never had very much luck with wireless adapters in the past, so I need some help choosing the best possible one. Price isn't too much of an issue. Can't imagine these adapters getting too expensive. 

If you guys think for online gaming that wireless wont be that great, I might be able to settle with running a massive cat5e Ethernet cable.


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## Jstn7477 (Aug 9, 2013)

I've had good luck with Intel wireless adapters, but I really haven't used them beyond laptops. In actuality, the desktop ones they sell are laptop Centrino cards on a PCIe riser.

I just recommended this to a friend who is in a similar situation, seems like it's pretty decent. Intel  Centrino Advanced-N 6205 for Desktop IEEE 8...


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 9, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> I've had good luck with Intel wireless adapters, but I really haven't used them beyond laptops. In actuality, the desktop ones they sell are laptop Centrino cards on a PCIe riser.
> 
> I just recommended this to a friend who is in a similar situation, seems like it's pretty decent. Intel  Centrino Advanced-N 6205 for Desktop IEEE 8...



That does look pretty good indeed.

Looks like some people had issues with Windows 8 though. Ill look into that a bit more.

EDIT: Okay they have recently released Windows 8 64 bit drivers. 

Has your friend got it yet? I want to hear what he thinks about it.


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## Nordic (Aug 9, 2013)

Wireless has been a hassle for me when gaming. Would powerline adapters be an option?


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## Jstn7477 (Aug 9, 2013)

My friend just ordered it today, but I'll see if I can get an answer for you soon. Not sure when college starts for him, but seeing as I go back on the 19th, it should be soon. Hopefully it works well as I essentially have the same card modded into my laptop (Centrino 6200) and it has never given me any trouble. I also had a 4965AGN tri-antenna in an older laptop, worked great as well.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 9, 2013)

james888 said:


> Wireless has been a hassle for me when gaming. Would powerline adapters be an option?



No idea what those are.



Jstn7477 said:


> My friend just ordered it today, but I'll see if I can get an answer for you soon. Not sure when college starts for him, but seeing as I go back on the 19th, it should be soon. Hopefully it works well as I essentially have the same card modded into my laptop (Centrino 6200) and it has never given me any trouble. I also had a 4965AGN tri-antenna in an older laptop, worked great as well.



Sweet deal. I move Monday, classes start the following Monday on the 19th. 

If these intel adapters are just the Centrino ones that are in laptops, but on a PCIe buss, I don't think there could be many problems, since laptops wi fi works pretty well.


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## Jstn7477 (Aug 9, 2013)

MxPhenom 216 said:


> No idea what those are.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Powerline adapters are Ethernet devices that use your home's electrical system as the transmission medium. I have no idea how good they are these days, but I had a friend a couple of years ago say he pretty much had to turn off everything in his house to get decent throughput.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 9, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Powerline adapters are Ethernet devices that use your home's electrical system as the transmission medium. I have no idea how good they are these days, but I had a friend a couple of years ago say he pretty much had to turn off everything in his house to get decent throughput.



yeah, no thanks haha.


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## Nordic (Aug 9, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Powerline adapters are Ethernet devices that use your home's electrical system as the transmission medium. I have no idea how good they are these days, but I had a friend a couple of years ago say he pretty much had to turn off everything in his house to get decent throughput.



They are good now. I was having trouble with wireless internet not being enough for gaming and causing ping spike. I then got a powerline adapter. I was two floors below the router/modem. I got the throughput advertised. It does depend on the wireing of the house too. I was in a newer home, built 10 years ago. Older places might not work so well.


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## Jetster (Aug 9, 2013)

Ive got a Trendnet USB 3.0 AC1200 Ill sell you for $35  shipped.


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## remixedcat (Aug 10, 2013)

I am getting excellent speeds so far with my Amped Wireless ACA1 USB3.0 adapter. 

median 5Ghz actual transfer rate (reported by windows) is from 12Mbytes/sec to 22Mbytes/sec  in 5Ghz about 30 ft away thru a chimney (brick) and two thick walls and a VERY VERY BIG CAT!!!!!
There's also a big all wood (very hard wood) dresser in the way too

I'll do another test with her sitting right next to it. Poor cat.

(still doing more tests on this as well... )


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## Aquinus (Aug 10, 2013)

Jstn7477 said:


> Powerline adapters are Ethernet devices that use your home's electrical system as the transmission medium. I have no idea how good they are these days, but I had a friend a couple of years ago say he pretty much had to turn off everything in his house to get decent throughput.



I'm living in my in-law's while the apartment is getting renovated and they were kind enough to let me setup shop in the basement. Problem is, even though they have a pretty nice router (Netgear R6300) there is absolutely no signal down here. My solution was to get a box with two Netgear Powerline 500 Nanos. So far it worked pretty well. I haven't tested how fast it's going but the internet is response and my wife can stream HD video from the laptop off the wireless, 2 floors up.

The one thing worth noting is that the latency on them is a little higher than wi-fi, but you tend to get more consistent response times but more often than not, pings to the router have been single digits (3-9ms).


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## remixedcat (Aug 10, 2013)

On my Amped PLA2 (HomeplugAV) I had an average of 8Mbytes/sec transfer rate.


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## Nordic (Aug 10, 2013)

Aquinus said:


> The one thing worth noting is that the latency on them is a little higher than wi-fi, but you tend to get more consistent response times but more often than not, pings to the router have been single digits (3-9ms).



That there I believe depends on the wiring of the house. In my testing I got better latency with the powerline adapter.


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## MxPhenom 216 (Aug 10, 2013)

Aquinus said:


> I'm living in my in-law's while the apartment is getting renovated and they were kind enough to let me setup shop in the basement. Problem is, even though they have a pretty nice router (Netgear R6300) there is absolutely no signal down here. My solution was to get a box with two Netgear Powerline 500 Nanos. So far it worked pretty well. I haven't tested how fast it's going but the internet is response and my wife can stream HD video from the laptop off the wireless, 2 floors up.
> 
> The one thing worth noting is that the latency on them is a little higher than wi-fi, but you tend to get more consistent response times but more often than not, pings to the router have been single digits (3-9ms).



That actually looks pretty cool. If the distance from my room to the modem/router setup in the living room is to long for straight up cable connection or if I cant seem to get good wireless I might try that, and run an Ethernet cable from that to my rig.


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## micropage7 (Aug 10, 2013)

mostly they are the same. only return to what you need? some may have limited coverage but if your room just about 2 or 3m from router i guess it wont matter


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## Jetster (Aug 10, 2013)

With powerline adapters it all depends on the circuit. Same circuit low latency. Cross circuit or three way and much higher. Another fault is most 500mbps adapter only have 10/100 RJ45 so 500 is not really posible. So your looking at 8MB/s max. Any quality wireless can beat that. Unless you get the Gigabyte powerline adapters which are $100+


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## Aquinus (Aug 10, 2013)

Jetster said:


> Another fault is most 500mbps adapter only have 10/100 RJ45 so 500 is not really posible.



The Netgear 500 Nanos have Gbps ports on them. I'm about to go on vacation for a week so I'm not sure if I have time to test it right now to see if that actually makes a difference or not.


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## Jetster (Aug 10, 2013)

Not all of them do. And the one that does is $140

I actually e mailed them about this issue. I asked "How can you advertise 500mbps when it only has a 10/100 connection". They said the rated speed is threw the wall on the electrical circut. Not the network


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## remixedcat (Aug 10, 2013)

Which company said that Netgear?


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## Jetster (Aug 10, 2013)

Actually it was TP-LINK but they all do the same thing.

I check Netgear and the some Nano adapters do have a gigabyte connection. But the XAVB5201-100PAS, and XAVB5602 does not so you really have to look at the details. The price jumps $50. And the speed difference is big but both labeled as 500mbps


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## Ikaruga (Aug 10, 2013)

Asus routers with Asus sticks are good to go for gaming, but TP-LINK is also nice if you are on the budget. Intel ones are also great. 
Actual performance varies based on several location specific factors (number and width of the walls, other interfering wifi signals, distance, etc), so no one can really tell without trying. 

Just order it online from a nearby shop and return it if it's not working as expected, and try an other one or go with a cat6 cable if everything fails;]


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## newtekie1 (Aug 10, 2013)

Jetster said:


> Another fault is most 500mbps adapter only have 10/100 RJ45 so 500 is not really posible.



The reason is that the 500Mbps is shared between all the adapters in use.  So with only 2 yeah the 500Mbps can be wasted, but if you have 3 or 4 in use at the same time the 500Mbps comes in handy.

And in my experience, even with just a 100Mbps ethernet port, these still outperform wireless.  My TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N adapter is noticeably slower than my powerline setup, and the 150Mbps wireless N card in my laptop is also noticeably slower.  Most of the time Wireless N doesn't even manage 100Mbps unless I'm in the same room as the router, which is pointless since at that point I'd use a wire.


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## Kursah (Aug 10, 2013)

Rosewill RNX-N180UBE Wireless Adapter IEEE 802.11b...

Roswill Wifi USB adapter with +5db antenna. You can use the stand or just plug the thing into your PC/laptop. Works great! One of the best USB adapters I've ever used, and I've spent upwards of $60 on USB wifi adapters. This one connects to everything and I've never had dropped issues, driver issues, etc. Always worked flawlessly and for the price I can't find a fault! I used mine until I got the Asus Z87 pro which comes with wifi...worked great for gaming, data xfer, streaming, all of it.



Edit: I should mention, the BF3 servers I played in with that and the Asus adapter I was still able to attain 60 or lower ping, and some so-so servers around 100ms ping. I was worried going from cable to wifi....but both the adapter I recommend and the asus adapter work just fine for MP gaming for me on our 15meg cable basic package. Good to go!


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## remixedcat (Aug 10, 2013)

newtekie1 said:


> The reason is that the 500Mbps is shared between all the adapters in use.  So with only 2 yeah the 500Mbps can be wasted, but if you have 3 or 4 in use at the same time the 500Mbps comes in handy.
> 
> And in my experience, even with just a 100Mbps ethernet port, these still outperform wireless.  My TP-Link 300Mbps Wireless N adapter is noticeably slower than my powerline setup, and the 150Mbps wireless N card in my laptop is also noticeably slower.  Most of the time Wireless N doesn't even manage 100Mbps unless I'm in the same room as the router, which is pointless since at that point I'd use a wire.



What were the speeds on the wireless vs the homeplug?


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## newtekie1 (Aug 10, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> What were the speeds on the wireless vs the homeplug?



The 300Mbps USB adapter gave file transfers around 1MB/s, the 150Mbps internal adapter gives around 2MB/s transfers.  The powerline adapters gives file transfers about 4-5MB/s.


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## remixedcat (Aug 11, 2013)

distances/house details??


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## Mussels (Aug 11, 2013)

i'm reading back through this now, and i better see a link to the thread i did all those speed tests in, or you regulars are gettin a spankin.



edit: uhh, you lot suck!


http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=188256


as far as homeplug goes i also run that, its usually got some erratic jitter to it, making it worse for gaming. my wifi is heaps faster than my old 85Mb homeplug, but the ping is lower and more stable on wifi.


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## newtekie1 (Aug 11, 2013)

remixedcat said:


> distances/house details??



Router is in the basement, the computers are in a bedroom on the 2nd floor directly above the router.  So the signal is going through 2 un-insulated floors.  The 300Mbps adapter says it has an excellent signal and the connection speed jumps between 270Mbps and 300Mbps.


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## Aquinus (Aug 11, 2013)

newtekie1 said:


> Router is in the basement, the computers are in a bedroom on the 2nd floor directly above the router.  So the signal is going through 2 un-insulated floors.  The 300Mbps adapter says it has an excellent signal and the connection speed jumps between 270Mbps and 300Mbps.



At my in-laws, between the computer in the basement and the router there is a lot of duct work that blocks the wi-fi signal. So far, the powerline option has worked pretty well. I've downloaded off the internet at 2.3MB/s so far, but that's a limitation of the internet. I haven't tried machine to machine and won't be able to for a week.


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