Worth replacing wireless card 5100 with 4965agn?

[sponka]

Hello!

Since my old T61 is dying I can use it's 4965agn as replacement in T500, which has 5100 and 2 antennas connected.
I already checket FRU and it's 42T0865, so it is AGN.

I found this thread, but it doesn't actually answer to question: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardwar ... 100-a.html

Any advice appreciated

[bill bolton]

Since my old T61 is dying I can use it's 4965agn as replacement in T500, which has 5100 and 2 antennas connected.

Two problems you will highly likely encounter are:

1. The 4965AGN is a full size card while the 5100 is half size card... so you may find the 4965AGN will not physically fit.

2. The 4965AGN is almost certainly not on the BIOS whitelist for the later ThinkPad T series models, so you'd need a patched BIOS to let it work if you could get it to physically fit.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[billp117]

I would leave your new laptop as-is...but can we help you solve your T61 laptop problem?

[ThinkRob]

Why would you want to replace a newer card with an older one?

I mean... yes, it's possible -- but I'm not really sure what you stand to gain by doing it.

If you want to upgrade your T500, get a 5300. It's also available as a half-height card and supports three antennas for MIMO.

[erik]

fwiw, the T500 uses full-height cards.   i've owned both of the 5100 and 5300 FRUs in W700, X301, and X200 systems and can confirm that the FRUs listed correspond to full-height cards.

it's #6 on the T500 service parts image:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-71037

but, modified BIOSes aside, i also have to question why one would want a 4965AGN over a 5100/5300AGN.   it would be a downgrade in every sense.

[sponka]

Both cards are full size.

As for question why -- I am under impression that 4965AGN is better than 5100 and worse than 5300. Judging just by number of antennas and from post I linked, 4965 does better transmit and receive (5300 is 3x3, 4965 is 2x3 and 5100 is 1x2).

Also, that would be no-cost replacement

Thanks for reply!

Edit: @billp117 -- my problem with T61 is here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=91708

[sponka]

Answer to my question @Anandtech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2569/6

The new WiFi Link 5100 supports the same number of spatial streams as the 4965 that's available in current Centrino notebooks, meaning that it can receive two streams of data concurrently, or transmit one stream and receive another at the same time. The third antenna in the 4965 is simply used to boost range, so it is possible that systems using the 5100 will have worse WiFi range than existing Centrino notebooks. Transmit performance can also be greater on systems equipped with the WiFi Link 4965, but the WiFi Link 5100 is $10 cheaper, which means we'll probably see it exclusively in cheaper notebooks.

and

In our tests, transmit performance between the 5100 and the older 4965 were identical, but receive performance was significantly worse. We suspect that this was more a problem with the storage setup on our test Centrino 2 notebook, disk read performance was great, write performance just wasn't. But our concern was transmit performance, and our initial tests show that the 5100 should at least offer the same performance as the older 4965 but at a lower price.

[mpcook]

I have a T400s with a Link 5100 wireless card. Just upgraded to a Netgear Dual Band router and I get very good performance from the 5100 card. I am comparing to a Netgear dual band card, the 5100 gets better signal when both near and far from the router. After reading some vague concerns here and there about the 5100, I have so far found no issues. The T400s is mostly located in an office somewhat distant from the router and on a different floor, and I always get good 5 MHz signal (better transfer speeds with about the same signal strength vs the 2.4 MHz).

I have to say it took several days of research to get the card and router settings set to optimize speed and quality of the wireless signal on 5 GHz. I think some of the issues people have with the newer cards may be due to non optimal settings. I can stream HD TV to my T400s while downloading continuous stream of files on my X60s, both on 5GHz with good quality video and decent speed on the downloads. At the same time, there are several G devices on the 2.4 GHz band.

I would stick with the 5100 and work with it a bit before replacing it.

Mike