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Resolved Question

HP Tower & ? on 802.11n Wi-Fi Card

Oct 26, 2011 4:45PM PDT
Hi,

I have a HP Tower with Windows XP SP3 with a AMD 32 bit processor and 4GB ram,and it came *without a wireless card (obtained new) and at the time installed a 802.11G wireless card . We have since then, Dec 2009? updated our router to a 4th generation Apple Airport Extreme dual band 802.11N backwards compatible router with very good results. All of the Macs and Pc's (except this unit) have 802.11n wireless cards. I am thinking of buying a 802.11n wi-fi card for the HP tower as its functional and hope for a speed bump and get the best results from the 802.11n router for it, I have not done this step with 802.11n (from 802.11g) and ? for forum is what would I expect from doing such a upgrade (ram has been upgraded to max amount) and one other item , if on occasion (pending putting a 802.11n wi-fi card in the HP tower, is ethernet direct wire (from the 802.11n router the same speed connection or (wired) as wi-fi or is wi-fi a bit slower or is in to close to call (the HP tower is situated where wi-fi 802.11n or ethernet to a the apple airport extreme 802.11n are both possible, sorry if this too wordy, just puzzled and I am more used to Mac's than PC's, and not a Tech Support Person but can do the basics.

Thank You
Confused Happy
David
a.k.a. ambienttales

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Best Answer

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G/N etc.
Oct 27, 2011 12:24AM PDT

An N card swap is not a big deal, as for radical results, maybe not. If you are going to hardwire units, go to CAT6 cables and you might want to swap out the modem to something like a Motorola Surfboard also hooked up CAT6, then you MAY see some results, there are other variables, server bandwidth etc.

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HP Tower&802.11n Wi-Fi Card
Oct 28, 2011 3:52AM PDT

pc3,

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HP Tower and 802.11n Wi-Fi Card (edit)
Oct 28, 2011 3:56AM PDT

pc3,

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B/G/N
Oct 29, 2011 2:05AM PDT

In order to utilize the N capability, all units would need N cards, hypothetically, to run at gigabit capacity (potentially) 1000mbs. Also the cable, CAT6 instead of CAT5, CAT5 supports up to 100mbs CAT6 up to 1000 = gigabit. IF there is G series hdwe involved, even though you are running other N capable (gigabit) hdwe, the system will default back to G capability. My system(s) run at G level by design since it would be too much of a hassle for me to do upgrades on a couple of systems within the network even though a couple of them are N capable as are my L/T'S plus the local server is a little iffy.

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HP Tower & 802.11N Wi-FI Card (Thanks)
Nov 24, 2011 2:02PM PST

pc3