Help me choose: 450mbps or 300mbps wifi card?

[RobotLizard]

i'm trying to decide between buying a

• 
  300 mbps wifi card (http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WDN3800-Wireless-Express-Adapter/dp/B00A0VCHQE/ref=cm_cd_al_qh_dp_t)
  450 mbps wifi card (http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-TL-WDN4800-450Mbps-Wireless-Express/dp/B007GMPZ0A/ref=lp_430513031_1_2?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1414413995&sr=1-2)

The 450 one is £25 and the 300 one is £20, so my question is, if I mainly want to play Titanfall and Counter Strike:Global offensive, with smooth internet connection, is it worth paying £5 more for 150 mbps, or is the extra 150 not needed?

 

[boosted1g]

Assuming you can not hardwire direcetly to router you will be better off buying a 500-600mbps powerline networking adapter.

The powerline adapters have less latency/ping then wifi which is what is important for smooth gameplay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-PA411KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B0084Y9N3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414428973&sr=8-1&keywords=powerline+network+adapter

 

[RobotLizard]

Assuming you can not hardwire direcetly to router you will be better off buying a 500-600mbps powerline networking adapter.

The powerline adapters have less latency/ping then wifi which is what is important for smooth gameplay

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-PA411KIT-Powerline-Adapter-Starter/dp/B0084Y9N3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414428973&sr=8-1&keywords=powerline+network+adapter

I dont want to, can you actually answer the question rather than resolving something i haven't asked?

 

[boosted1g]

I have never had someone have such a sharp dissapproval for me suggesting something this is better for the same price.

Since you are dead set on using a high latency wifi connection that will slow donw your game play here is the answer to your wifi question:

First and foremost your wifi card is limited by your wireless router. If you only have a 300 or 600mbps (300 for 2.4 gHz band and 300 for 5.0 band) then your router will not be able to even use the extra 150mbps.

So if you do not have a 450 or 900 mbps router then the immediate answer is get the 300 mbps card.


If you do have a 450 or 900 mbps router then this will help you, maybe. In all reality your wifi speed will be 1/2 to 1/3 the said speed, thus your real speed from router to wifi card will be 225 to 150mbps (so on a 300mbps card the real speed would be 150 to 100mbps). So if your internet speed is over 100mbps then yes a 450mbps card would allow you to use all of your bandwidth.
If you do not have a 100mbps internet connection and will likely not have one for many years then the 450mbps card will not benefit you.

 

[bill001g]

It makes absolutely no difference at all on video games. Games use very little bandwidth. Since games are designed for all people even with poor internet to be able to play you might need 1mbit/sec most are even less than that. So even if you get 300m or 450m or what ever it still will only use 1mbit. There is no reason to waste money on a high speed card just to play games.

The misconception you have is speed somehow implies quality and how smoothly a game runs. Games require consistent packet delivery times with no data loss. Any wireless because of interference can not reliably meet those needs. Speed only help on wireless for data delivery methods that can retransmit the lost data...games and most streaming video do not make any attempt to recover lost data.

So the best answer to your question is to use neither if you have any other option when you play games.

 

[Guest]

Since you are dead set on using a high latency wifi connection that will slow donw your game play here is the answer to your wifi question:

Your joking right?your speed doesn't even affect gameplay as stated above. Plus millions of people use wifi to game. unless you have horrible internet it wont matter. Wifi is just fine for gaming as long as you do not have a crap router, or wifi card.

 

[bill001g]

Since you are dead set on using a high latency wifi connection that will slow donw your game play here is the answer to your wifi question:

Your joking right?your speed doesn't even affect gameplay as stated above. Plus millions of people use wifi to game. unless you have horrible internet it wont matter. Wifi is just fine for gaming as long as you do not have a crap router, or wifi card.

You can't even get you insults right. Speed and latency are 2 very different things. Latency especially variable latency is the main cause of the lag in games...other than packet loss. The game is using the timing between the packets to calculate location in the game and when it jumps from 20ms to 500ms it prevents the client and the server from keeping location sync of items in a game.

It has nothing at all to do with having a crap router or wifi card although that is bad too. If you live in area with lots of other people trying to use wifi you will get massive problems with games. Everyone transmits over the top of each other and everyone gets damaged data which causes retransmission by the router which cause latency.

You could have a 10g fiber internet and if you have a couple of neighbors sending data on the same radio channel you will still get packet retransmission and loss and it only takes a tiny bit to affect a game or streaming video.

Just because you are lucky and it works for you means nothing. It only take a search of this forum to see massive numbers of people have problems playing games especially shooter type games on wireless. .

 

[digitaldoc]

I would go with the 300 Mbps card if the application is gaming. You will not notice any difference.