1x1, 2x2, Intel 3160, Intel 7260 for my laptops ?

[enr00ted]

Hi there everyone,

I recently wanted to upgrade my two family laptop's wifi card to the 5GHz frequency. The 2.4GHz is useless in my area and I only have disconnections and packet loss. My laptops are a Sony Vaio Fit and an Asus both not very expensive. So they came with this adapters:

ASUS:
http://s28.postimg.org/5wpadrsl9/IMG_20150114_120526.jpg
http://s30.postimg.org/933figgq9/IMG_20150114_120544.jpg

SONY:
http://s24.postimg.org/qy0qhmcud/IMG_20150114_120604.jpg
http://s21.postimg.org/7gpzbac13/IMG_20150114_120619.jpg

They both only have two wires that connect to the antennas. I did not do my research completelly before upgrading, and got the Intel 3160 + Bluetooth. I can now see that this card maxes at 150Mbps, link speed and not 300. But reading and reading, I am unsure if I did the wrong choise after all, because there is a possibility that even if I would've got the 7620, they wouldn't've worked eitheir at full capacity ?

How do I know this for sure ? for a future upgrade ? I don't think contacting the manufacturer helps becuase their incompetence is , I can't evend find a word to describe it. They even told me I can't upgrade my wireless card ! And they work flowlessly with the new one.

PS: After tons of reading on the internet, and what I remember when opening the case, I am convinced that I have two cables, one black and one white, am I wrong to asume that a 2x2 is compatible after all ?

 

[RMerlin]

"7260" does not tell the whole story. There's a 7260N, and a 7260AC. You have to carefully check which of the two is in there.

Personally I just bought the card online and upgraded my laptop with it (it previously had an Intel 6230, which was another manual upgrade over the craptastic single band, 150 Mbps Azurewave that shipped with my laptop).

 

[enr00ted]

Definetly interested in the AC one just for future proof. I've got a very good deal for the 3160 but it's not what I wanted. But now I am convinced that I have a 2x2 configuration and I can put one of these 7260.

 

[jegesq]

I've upgraded my HP DV6-7221 with the AC7260 and it works great. It's a 4+ year old laptop, but it has an i7 processor, 16GB memory, 1gbit lan, a nice screen, I love the keyboard, and it and came with a decent Realtek 802.11 b/g/n card installed that worked great until Realtek (which was purchased by someone else a couple of years ago) completely borked the driver and simply gave up supporting the card. And when I got my AC66U routers, I figured it was time to upgrade.

I bought an Intel AC7260 from Amazon here in the U.S. for about $35.00 (free shipping with Amazon Prime) and got it, amazingly, the same day I ordered it (bought it at 8:00 a.m. and had it delivered by 7:00 p.m.). The card was extremely simple to install (two screws, take out the old card, disconnect the antenna wires, connect them to the new card, put the new card in place, put in the two screws to hold it down, and all done) It worked immediately.

The only issue I have ever had with it, is the same issue that apparently hundreds of thousands of others have had, and that is finding the right combination of driver version that doesn't cause the card to not be recognized when the computer comes out of "sleep/hibernation" mode. Sometimes it's fine and other times, I have to go into device manager, disable it, and then re-enable it. Otherwise, it works great and I get terrific throughput and consistent speeds with none of the "drops" or speed plummeting that some others here have complained about when they go beyond say 10 or 20 feet away from their router. I have excellent coverage and great speed all over my house and property (two story house on about 1/3 acre).

The only issue you might encounter with the AC7260 is that most computer manufacturers have "whitelists" in the bios which are set to accept only certain wireless cards (and other components). For example, I tried to upgrade my wife's DV6 laptop (a year older model), and it would not even boot with the AC7260 card in it. It only liked the card that came with the laptop, so I had to resort to using an Asus AC600 dongle in her's instead of an internal card. Probably not a whole lot faster than a good 802.11n card, but at least it prevents the routers from dropping down to a lower speed/channel width on 5ghz when she's logged into the wireless...so there's that to consider as well if you have others who will be using your network.

The AC 7260 is a very solid performer provided you get the right driver from Intel or from your laptop manufacturer and provided it's not whitelisted out of your bios. And as Merlin notes, you need to make sure you're buying the AC version and not the N version if you really want an AC card.

Keep in mind that it's also a Bluetooth card, so if you don't need BT, you can just disable that part of the card in Device Manager and then you never need to mess with that again. My personal belief is that those who complain about speed and dropped connections probably also have the BT feature turned on and either don't have the right drivers for it, or it's causing some interference with the wifi.

 

[enr00ted]

I got this info from manufacturer website under the specs but I don't know if this is what the factory card had or is the actual limitation. It says:

Maximum wireless lan tranfer (Mbps) : 150 (TX) / 150 (RX)

http://www.sony.es/support/es/content/cnt-specs/SVF1521M1E/list (it's in spanish but you can get the point visually)

 

[jegesq]

The Sony Vaio model you're referring to supports a 2x2 card (it supports two streams and has two antenna wires), so at least physically, it should support the AC7260. Whether the AC7260 is on Sony's "whitelist" and will be accepted by your bios is another matter altogether, and you won't know until you try it out by installing the card and trying to boot up.

Given the possible whitelist issue, I'd recommend you only purchase the 7260 from a source that will accept returns in the event it doesn't work in your laptop.

This is a picture of the card that is installed by Sony as OEM in your Vaio. You can clearly see that it is a two-wire card and thus supports two streams. The AC7260 also has two antenna wires.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/34_wlan_05.jpg

I will also add this observation: The 7260 may very well not work with this laptop. Generally speaking, the laptops that have Centrino cards from the factory are older and don't support the 7260. You can give it a try, but I'd bet that it isn't going to work. So again, a reason for you to only buy the 7260 from a source that will allow you to return it with no questions asked.

 

[enr00ted]

The Sony Vaio model you're referring to supports a 2x2 card (it supports two streams and has two antenna wires), so at least physically, it should support the AC7260. Whether the AC7260 is on Sony's "whitelist" and will be accepted by your bios is another matter altogether, and you won't know until you try it out by installing the card and trying to boot up.

Given the possible whitelist issue, I'd recommend you only purchase the 7260 from a source that will accept returns in the event it doesn't work in your laptop.

This is a picture of the card that is installed by Sony as OEM in your Vaio. You can clearly see that it is a two-wire card and thus supports two streams. The AC7260 also has two antenna wires.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_migrated/pics/34_wlan_05.jpg

I will also add this observation: The 7260 may very well not work with this laptop. Generally speaking, the laptops that have Centrino cards from the factory are older and don't support the 7260. You can give it a try, but I'd bet that it isn't going to work. So again, a reason for you to only buy the 7260 from a source that will allow you to return it with no questions asked.

This particular model had a broadcom, the one that I added pictures in the main thread:
http://s24.postimg.org/qy0qhmcud/IMG...114_120604.jpg
http://s21.postimg.org/7gpzbac13/IMG...114_120619.jpg

I now replaced that with the Intel 3160 (1x1). I hope there is no whitelist but seeing that this works I suspect there's not.