SLOW Wifi speeds using Dell 1515 half mini PCI card

[toothpix]

EDIT 2/26/2013: Since posting this my download speeds have gotten much quicker. Still not as quick as on my old laptop, but I'm thinking it may not be the card now. I will see how speeds average over the next few weeks, sorry for a possibly premature post.

I just built my first Hackintosh and it is running great so far. I haven't tested every single thing yet, but after about 4 or 5 fresh installs using unibeast and multibeast, I've now got it working.

System:
GA z77n wifi mini ITX (with intel half mini pci wifi card swapped for a dell 1515 card - worked OOB)
i5 3570k
(HD 4000)
(stock cooler)
8GB DDR 3 RAM

I went online to download some larger files and came back an hour later and was surprised to find that they were still going, and not even half way done. I pulled up activity monitor and saw that my downloads are cruising along at a snails pace of about 90 KB/sec, with a peak of 205 KB / sec. When I was downloading mountain lion, it was going at nearly 4 MB/sec (we have a fast wifi), and I've downloaded files form the same site as this current 90 KB/sec at about 2 MB/sec, so it's definitely not the wifi.

Is it the Dell card?? Is there anything I can do to up my speeds? I haven't tried with an ethernet cable yet, but I will update when I do and post the speeds.

 

[Sticklyman]

It could be your antennas. I built my wifi card myself with a Mini PCIe to PCIe adapter, and the antennas that came with it were awful. I once got them situated to give me decent reception. In the end, I replaced them with others that have higher gain, and are on a wire so I can move them around.

 

[toothpix]

Thanks for this advice, I will look into that. Since my post my wifi has downloaded much faster, peaking at around 1.6 MB / sec, so that's good, but it still is not as fast as it was on my 6 year old macbook pro. I think I may have been a little quick with my post. I'll see how the speeds average over the next few weeks. Thanks.

 

[Sticklyman]

It might be worth it too to experiment with positioning the components in the wifi system, i.e. the router and the computer, if possible. Like I mentioned before, I bought antennas that I can move http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001VEAI74/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Those in particular. But I did have to move my router to a position with fewer obstructions to get the best results.