You cant always ditch the router, if there is a build-in modem...
I have that kind of a problem, but until now I got my wireless speed from the slow 54-130Mbps to the faster 300-450Mbps... the laptop itself was able to run 150Mbps so there was two things to ditch... the network card inside the laptop and the router... and then came a 3rd problem... my laptop wasn??t born with 3 antennas, so I had to rip my older laptop to get that 3rd antenna.
I still us the same router as before, because there is a build-in modem that I can??t replace that easy... but I do have a faster wireless up-to 450Mbps (3x faster before) and 1000Mbps on cable (10x faster than before)...
The next goal is to ditch the old router (300Mbps) with build-in modem and let the new router (450Mbps) work with a modem that have a giganet port too...