High Jitter/blockage/lag with my PCI wifi card on desktop PC

[Jack J]

Hi guys, looking for an expert/experianced persons knowledge to trouble shoot this problem I've been having over the years.

To best surmise my problem.

• 
  I have a TP link PCI wifi card installed in my pc case.
  http://www.mwave.com.au/product/tplink-tlwn881nd-300mbps-wireless-n-pci-express-adapter-aa81105
  The Case is under a table facing away from the wifi/modem about 6m away, one wall between it and my room.

• 
  I have times the wifi works well, and times like this that I want to hammer the tiny $19 PCI wifi thing. The best of times I can play all my games without any lag, ping 50-80.
  The worst of times, it disconnects from the wifi and I have to manually reconnect.

• 
  The main problem when it plays up is that I experience regular "clogging" in the online games I play. For example I play cs:go regularly, now, I've run the +graph command which shows my ping (probably sampling 10 times a second). The ping will stay at 50ms then spike to 250 then slowly drop down to 50 again. I'm certain it's a delay in sending or receiving the information as in game everything freezes briefly.

• 
  I've tried changing wifi settings too, the 20mhz , to 40mhz upper and lower. and also changing channel to the least popular. Sometimes it just makes things even worse. The main point is, my brothers laptop can play those games quite fine, being even further away from the wifi than me.
  

So my questions are:
1. Is it the PCI wifi adapter's fault? I say this because sometimes it works fine but other times it behaves like trash. I'm more and more suspecting that this cheap TP link is at fault.
I've attached a speed test result, you can see how the D/L speed varies which I'm pretty sure makes it lag.

http://i62.tinypic.com/2ueiflj.jpg
2. What tests can I do to try determine the root cause? I've been trying ping testers, they don't really help unless they graph the results. I might try facing my pc case better but I still think it's the cards problem.
3. I'm thinking getting a new wifi adapter. Should I go for a usb wifi since I could plug it in the front of the case which faces the wifi best? Or are all usb's bad and I should focus rearranging the new PCI card towards the wifi?

Thanks for reading and I'll answer all questions the best I can.

 

[bill001g]

You likely have hit on the problem with the direction the antenna are facing. This is the huge disadvantage to any pci card. They have better antenna than a USB device but people tend to stuff them under desks against walls which block the signals form almost all directions. The case itself blocks a huge amount of signal.

Just to test I would take the pc and place it on top of the desk with the antenna facing the router. I suspect you will get better performance.

If you can't leave it that way you can use a USB device but even with a USB device I would place it on a USB extension so you can place it away from the computer. Since you are using it for a desktop I would avoid the tiny devices because they also have very tiny antenna. Some devices already have long USB cables and stands to put the unit on.

 

[Jack J]

Found the cause of the problem. It was partly because of the direction the PCI antenna was facing. Faced it side onward and it has improved performance a bit.
However the lag spikes still exist but they are now manageable.

I'm pretty sure the cheap PCI card is to blame, I'll have to replace it with a better card which I should've used in the first place.