Thinkpads Forum

My X301 has the Intel 5100 AGN WiFi card in it. I kind of thought that the card in it wasn't doing as well as I thought it should, but decided that I'd wait and use it for a few months before I really looked into it. Well, I'm still not very happy with it's performance. My wife's T61 with the 4965 AGN appears to pick up better AND stay locked on better. Plus it connects at 150 vs. 135 that I get.

Is there a cure for this? What have other had success with on these things?

Have you tried tweaking the settings in the card's properties? That's the first thing I'd look into.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Intel cards whatsoever and throw in an Atheros-chipped card wherever and whenever I can...

From my experience with more than ten x301 machines, you’re actually getting a pretty good connection with your router – although I never had an issue with the connection dropping. But the only time I ever saw 135 was if the laptop & router were within a few feet of each other. More typical was around 120 and way below 100 if upstairs. Tried a 6200 and file transfer speeds improved about 20%. The 6200 will probably require a BIOS mod (I forget) but a 3.16 whitelist removed BIOS is easy to find).

But if you’re going to do a BIOS mod anyway, George is right, get an Atheros card.
I have the one RBS mentions in this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=111374
With the router in the basement and the x301 on the second floor it’s connecting at 144.4 (to a 150 router)
Last time I checked a 5100 under those conditions, it was connecting at about 18 and the 6200 was around 80.

With the Atheros 9380 file transfer speeds (what I care about) nearly doubled from the 5100 and are 50% better than the 6200.
Or cheaper, an Atheros 9285 card; if you get the half mini PCI version you’ll need an adapter.

Just tried an Intel 6200 half mini-pci card in the UWB slot opposite the full size WiFi card slot and it works fine (whitelist still applies) so no adapter is needed.

I'm leaning toward doing something more every day. I'm in a typical residential Texas home with standard wood studs,and sheetrock. In the next room from the AP (N300), I'm getting 135 and 80% signal. That I can live with although it's not very good performance, but it does this really annoying can't find the AP thing coming out of sleep. If it finds anything, it finds the old AP (N150) across the house! The most annoying thing is that is that my wife's T61 with it's 4965 consistently outperforms it. Literally "as we speak" (in the room with the AP) I'm connected at 240, and the T61 is at 300!

Does anyone know if this machine will take the 4965 w/o the BIOS mod?

My X301 had the intel 5100. Internet keep cutting out and within 10 feet of my Apple Express router, i was only getting 135 to 150(maybe 180 for few sec's). I went and got the intel 5300 from ebay.Was under 20.00 cdn,cheaper if bought from china.
Now i'm getting full 300 all the time with solid connection. 300 is most my Apple Express can do.
Befor on netflix with the 5100 it would cut out , buffer and go again. Now with the 5300 its great.
And no bios mod. If i was to do the bios mod i would go for the intel 6300.

Only cards listed on the parts page are the Intel 5100, 5150, 5300 and 5350, pretty safe to assume any others are not on the whitelist.
From actually installing them, I know a 3945 and a 6300 do not work without a BIOS mod and would guess the 4965 won't either.

Without a BIOS mod your only option would be a 5300 and see if the third antenna makes any difference.

$8.00, free shipping from US.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-Thin ... 4177245ee0

91011 wrote:Without a BIOS mod your only option would be a 5300 and see if the third antenna makes any difference.

$8.00, free shipping from US.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-Lenovo-Thin ... 4177245ee0

This is definitely the place to start for me. Thanks for the help!

I have an Intel 5300 in my X301 and in a direct comparison with a 5100, the 5300 has much better range and transfer speeds. I'm not entirely sure, but I think all X301's come with a 3x3 setup, so you should easily be able to upgrade.

I came home from my football game last night/this morning to find the 5300. So, I put it in the machine immediately, and other than that the machine now connects at anywhere from 165-300 Mps, here's what I found:

* Access Connections's graphic indicator for signal strength doesn't seem to be working now. It's odd, in that I see it connect and show the bars go up, then it blanks out and doesn't show any bars at all, like it isn't connect.... but it is.
* I followed the instructions I found online from a Lenovo video on how to replace the WiFi card. It said that there were 3 antennas on the machine and what order to install them. Instead of the 3 (white, black and grey), what I found was the grey and black attached to the 5100, then a white and a yellowish/beige one in stashed out of the way between the 2 RAM sockets. I used the two that were attached to the 5100 and the unused white one.

It occurs to me that the white and yellowish wires might be for the empty mPCIe half-length socket for a WWAN card, but not sure since my machine (2774-18U) doesn't have one installed.

At this point, I'm pretty darned happy with the performance, just curious about the extra antenna(s) and the odd behavior of the Access Connection signal indicator. Anyone have thoughts on this?

Glad you find it working better than the 5100, just a couple things:

1. I don’t ever use Acc Conn but the Windows WiFi icon has been showing the same behavior – says not connected but when a browser is opened the ‘not connected’ message goes away.
General consensus is it’s the Intel driver but I haven’t been able to prove it.

2. The white wire you found between the RAM slots is the third antenna lead - should be on the middle post of the 5300.

3. I’ve always assumed the off-white wire is for the UWB slot which was supposed to be for wireless USB. (A half mini PCIe WiFi card will fit & work in that slot but WL is still enforced)

4. The WWAN slot is actually under the keyboard, sort of below the Thinkvantage button and the indicator lights. Should be an orange and blue antenna wire taped to the MB.

The antenna between the ram slots is not white but yellow and should NOT be used with the wireless card. In fact I have no idea what it's for. Me and some others speculated it's a 4th (?) wireless antenna.

The three cables you want to connect to the wireless card are black, grey and white. Please pay attention that you put each of them on the correct position on the wireless card.

My X301 came with a 5300. I have 5300s in my W500 and three T61s, and that setup works great... but I was disappointed in the wireless performance using the same card in the X301 and can only assume that the thinner lid means the antennas aren't as good. I swapped in a 6300 and found that the newer card makes it perfectly usable, but still not as manly as the bigger machines.