How much wifi speed do i need?

[Craze Ladd]

So i am building my gaming desktop and I was wondering how much WiFi speed do I actually need in my WiFi adapter. My WiFi router is ok. It had an average of 7 ping, 84.00 mb/s download speed, and 40.00 mb/s upload speed. I want to choose between 2 wireless wifi adapters. The GIGABYTE GC-WB867D-I, which has 867 mb/s wifi speed for 30.00$, or the ASUS PCE-AC68 which has 1.30gb/s wifi speed for 93.00$. So which one should I get?

 

[Chugalug_]

The adapter is merely a way for your connection to access your PC, it will not increase the speed of your wifi, that is determined by your provider.
Think of it as the road holding up the car.
You'd probably want an 802.11ac adapter, the second one you've listed is absolutely overkill.
Get the Gigabyte you mentioned, or the TP-Link Archer T4U, both are great value.

 

[bill001g]

First your router must support speeds that fast also. Next it will never run faster than your internet connection. So if you currently have a 84m connection and your current equipment runs at 84m the you can go no faster.

Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance.

What is also important to remember wireless is the worst possible network choice for games. It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate. If at all possible use a ethernet connection. If that is not possible consider powerline networks instead of wireless.

 

[Chugalug_]

First your router must support speeds that fast also. Next it will never run faster than your internet connection. So if you currently have a 84m connection and your current equipment runs at 84m the you can go no faster.

Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance.

What is also important to remember wireless is the worst possible network choice for games. It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate. If at all possible use a ethernet connection. If that is not possible consider powerline networks instead of wireless.

Bill, this is wildly incorrect.
Wireless is perfectly fine for gaming provided you get a decent adapter.
"It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate."
You're referring to packet loss, which is either due to inconsistencies in connection, (not client side dropout) or server side issues.
"Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance."

I don't even know how to respond to this to be honest, it's just that dumbfounding. 🙁
Please read up on how the internet actually works, what network latency is, and what network transfer rates are.
This is all 100% false, ignore it OP.
An expensive network card will have better support for higher bandwidth connection standards (e.g. 802.11ac) and will feature higher end components to better relay the signal to your PC.
See the links above for your two choices OP, make a decision based on aesthetics and run with it.

 

[bill001g]

First your router must support speeds that fast also. Next it will never run faster than your internet connection. So if you currently have a 84m connection and your current equipment runs at 84m the you can go no faster.

Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance.

What is also important to remember wireless is the worst possible network choice for games. It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate. If at all possible use a ethernet connection. If that is not possible consider powerline networks instead of wireless.

Bill, this is wildly incorrect.
Wireless is perfectly fine for gaming provided you get a decent adapter.
"It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate."
You're referring to packet loss, which is either due to inconsistencies in connection, (not client side dropout) or server side issues.
"Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance."

I don't even know how to respond to this to be honest, it's just that dumbfounding. 🙁
Please read up on how the internet actually works, what network latency is, and what network transfer rates are.
This is all 100% false, ignore it OP.
An expensive network card will have better support for higher bandwidth connection standards (e.g. 802.11ac) and will feature higher end components to better relay the signal to your PC.
See the links above for your two choices OP, make a decision based on aesthetics and run with it.

You are the one that has absolutely no clue how network really works. I know extremely well the difference between bandwidth and latency. I make my living doing just networking.

The common example given is say you have a car (game) and it only can run at 50mph(ie 1mbps). If you add more lanes to the road (ie bandwidth) does it actually make your car go faster. The obvious answer is no unless you start discussing overload connection which is not a valid assumption when you are talking wireless inside a house.

I will challenge you to prove your statement that wireless is perfectly fine for gaming. Assume I live very close to you and am transferring large amount of data on my wireless router and I am using the newest models that use all the possible radio channels so I am guaranteed to overlap you.

You are really going to say that the interference caused by that has no effect on your game. This is discussed constantly and for you to reject that it happens is delusional.

 

[Chugalug_]

I know what you mean with the car analogy, i'm not saying that a better card will make his speed faster, that is all dependent on the ISP, I'm saying that it will allow for SUPPORT for higher transfer speeds, and will feature better quality components.
Tell me that a $30 wireless adapter that supports ac wifi will perform the same as a top of the line $100 TP-link.
It won't. :/

I'm open to having a discussion, I want to learn about it if I happen to be incorrect, although I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here, can you rephrase it?
Are you agreeing with me that wireless is fine for gaming? Or are you against it?
Very contradictory.
"I will challenge you to prove your statement that wireless is perfectly fine for gaming. Assume I live very close to you and am transferring large amount of data on my wireless router and I am using the newest models that use all the possible radio channels so I am guaranteed to overlap you.

You are really going to say that the interference caused by that has no effect on your game. This is discussed constantly and for you to reject that it happens is delusional. "

 

[Craze Ladd]

The adapter is merely a way for your connection to access your PC, it will not increase the speed of your wifi, that is determined by your provider.
Think of it as the road holding up the car.
You'd probably want an 802.11ac adapter, the second one you've listed is absolutely overkill.
Get the Gigabyte you mentioned, or the TP-Link Archer T4U, both are great value.

Thank you for replying. I am not so good with computer and what you just said I never new. Thank you for you help and because of you I am now going to save around 60$. I am very grateful that that you explained all of that to me and again, thank you so much.

 

[Craze Ladd]

First your router must support speeds that fast also. Next it will never run faster than your internet connection. So if you currently have a 84m connection and your current equipment runs at 84m the you can go no faster. Last and most important games use very little bandwidth. Most use well under 1mbit/sec. The game companies want people who have extremely slow internet connection to still pay them money so they design the games to use very little bandwidth. So a really expensive network card will not improve performance. What is also important to remember wireless is the worst possible network choice for games. It will have random data loss and delays which games do not tolerate. If at all possible use a ethernet connection. If that is not possible consider powerline networks instead of wireless. The common example given is say you have a car (game) and it only can run at 50mph(ie 1mbps). If you add more lanes to the road (ie bandwidth) does it actually make your car go faster. The obvious answer is no unless you start discussing overload connection which is not a valid assumption when you are talking wireless inside a house.

Thank you for your help aswell bill001g, with out you too I would not have known any of this and even though you say that I should switch to an ethernet cord and do it wired, I can't because the router is very far away from my room sadly. I am going to be going with the GIGABYTE wifi adapter that costs 30$ and has 867mb/s. Thank you for your help

 

[bill001g]

It is almost a moot point then because even having "support" for faster still make no difference to the game as long as I have as much as the game requires...ignoring any other use for the internet. And of course better quality device are always preferred.

Games and wireless are the worst possible combination you can get because of how they work.

Wireless connection unlike almost any other network connection attempt to prevent data loss. The radios themselves detect damaged data mostly due to interference and attempt to resend data. It will actually attempt to resend it many times. This is why you can see ping time to your router over 1000ms at times. Then if the next packet goes though with no damage it will be back at 1ms.

Games use the latency in the path to determine the movement of users in a game. It will use this time along with the times from other players to determine their relative locations. It needs this number to stay fairly consistent. If it jumps all over the place it gets confused and you see complains from users of rubberbanding or they just complain of lag. Because of how interactive games are even small variations of even 100ms can cause major issues.

This is not just games that have this issue. This is a generic problem called jitter. Things like VoIP or live video stream have the same issue but those application put in fairly large delay buffers to try to tolerate it. A interactive game because of how it works does not have the option to put in a delay buffer so the random delay are directly reflected in the game.