Question Replacement for Intel 6300AGN half-mini PCIe card.

[nonag]

Hi,

I am having issues with my wireless card connecting at 5Ghz. But at 2.4 G it's all good. There are times the card does not even see my 5GHz SSID, I may have to play around with the wireless properties or just wait it out. When it does see the 5GHz network, it could take minutes for it to connect and then it stays connected. If I reboot the machine then I have to go thru this song and dance all over a gain. At my location the card can see a handful (like 20 other) wireless networks both 2.4 and 5G.

I am not 100% sure if it is my router / extender at fault or the wireless network card but I can leaning towards the network card since all my other wireless devices are working fine at 5GHz. In the router extender set up, I have is the Actiontec G1100 router (with all wireless turned OFF) that is MOCA connected to the Actiontec WCB6200 wireless extender which has the wireless radios turned ON.

The laptop I have is a Latitude e6540 with the Intel Centrino-N 6300AGN card. I believe the form of this card is the half-mini PCIe. I am looking for a replacement card of the same form but more recent. The 6300AGN is discontinued and the driver version (15.16.0.2) and dated back to 01/06/2015. I cannot find more recent drivers. I did some searches and found the 7260N to be in the same form but this is also discontinued.

I reinstalled win 10 x64 (2004) on the machine and I have the same issues.

Are there any other wireless cards of the same form that I can use in this e6540 Latitude?

Thanks!

 

[bill001g]

In general if the card will physically fit it will function.

There are some laptops that have bios restrictions but I don't think dell does that any more. HP is the one you must be the most careful of but mostly it is their business grade ones that have restrictions.

So what you look for is a half size pci-e card. That is key modern machines are using m2 which won't fit.

Next you need to match the number of antenna. Yours is one that is uncommon and has 3 antenna which is rare for a laptop. You can put in a 2x2 if you want.

Your also does not appear to have bluetooth which is also strange, you laptop must have a different way to get bluetooth or does not support it.

The simple thing would be to replace it with a identical card. 802.11ac should give you a speed boost but finding a 3 antenna 802.11ac is going to be tricky. 802.11ac running 2 antenna is going to be faster than 802.11n running 3 antenna.

I do not have any particular card to recommend. Intel cards tend to be very popular for laptops.

 

[nonag]

I searched for the Dual band 7260AC card on Amazon. Apparently there are several clones to the Intel version. They're about similarly priced but the one advertised as Intel has a 2 - 3 week delay. The clone brands (ie. YOUBO, Siren, MQUPIN) have 2 day shipping.

Would any one know if these are actually the same - I mean do they use different dirvers? I'm just afraid of installing a third party driver for the clones.

 

[bill001g]

Those companies just assemble the boards. There are only a very small number of wifi chipset makers. You should be able to load drivers from intels site since it is still a actual intel wifi chipset on the board.

 

[nonag]

Thanks! I ordered one & it should be here in a couple of days. Hopefully it'll fix the issue. Otherwise I'll have to try the USB dongle.

 

[Frooby]

Hi Nonag.

Any updates on this? Did your new card work fine? Which one did you go for, and are drivers easy to obtain?

Thanks.

 

[nonag]

Hi!

I did try the 7260N card from Amazon but it was having the same issue as the 6300AGN while connecting to the wireless router. Both are discontinued and the drivers are old and not updated anymore. You can get the driver from the Intel site. Once connected the connection speed with the 7260N was much greater being an AC radio.

Anyways I ended up returning the 7260N. I moved the MOCA wireless extender to the computer room sitting just next to my laptop so I have access to the ethernet port My kid's machine (about 10ft away) is still on wifi, but he's not having any issues.

I'm not sure why it does that with some wifi radios. The apple products we have never exhibit this issue - the oldest apple product we have - the mac mini 2012 connects in a couple of seconds.
The one other device that exhibits this issue is the Sharp (aka Hisense) roku TV in the living room - when it's turned on in the morning it can sometime take a couple of minutes to connect to the 5G wifi.

Anyways... if you have a spare USB port, then an external dongle is another alternative...

Thanks!

Hi Nonag.

Any updates on this? Did your new card work fine? Which one did you go for, and are drivers easy to obtain?

Thanks.

 

[Frooby]

Thank Nonag.

It's all very weird.

For months I've been having download speed issues with my existing card (2.4GHz) - sometimes perfect, other times crawling at a few low kBps. I found disabling the 5GHz at my router would usually sort it - not always - , but then that caused my son to go ape instead...

Now it's completely 'dead'.

(Now that son has left home for Uni, I can disable the 5GHz again and see.... )