RT-AC87R (U) vs. Netgear Nighthawk X4 AC2350

[dfran1]

Hi all,
Just wondering what you all thought of the new Nighthawk X4 AC2350.

Nighthawk X4 AC2350

I know no reviews are up yet but I bet some are wondering as me (since I don't own any net gear routers lately) what the thoughts are?

It does have 3 USB3 ports and 1 eSATA port. Does net gear have hard drive spin down in the menu?

I have read that people with net gear routers seem to have USB issues, one in particular said their hard drive keeps getting corruption due to the net gear ?

Anyone else thoughts input? Merlin ?

Thanks

 

[Richard1864]

Hi all,
Just wondering what you all thought of the new Nighthawk X4 AC2350.

Nighthawk X4 AC2350

I know no reviews are up yet but I bet some are wondering as me (since I don't own any net gear routers lately) what the thoughts are?

It does have 3 USB3 ports and 1 eSATA port. Does net gear have hard drive spin down in the menu?

I have read that people with net gear routers seem to have USB issues, one in particular said their hard drive keeps getting corruption due to the net gear ?

Anyone else thoughts input? Merlin ?

Thanks

I heard same, could never get R7000 to see any hard drive whatsoever, was otherwise an ok router. R87 much better, see every hard drive connected without any issues

 

[hggomes]

The spindown is a feature of the hdd controller, not a router issue.

If the controller does not allow spindown you will not be able to use it even on ASUS.

Nighthawk X4 HW its better than AC87R/U:

1. Better Dual Core 1.4GHZ Atheros CPU
2. 2x USB 3.0 and 1xeSATA
3. 90mb/s on USB 3.0 transfers

 

[dfran1]

The spindown is a feature of the hdd controller, not a router issue.

If the controller does not allow spindown you will not be able to use it even on ASUS.

Nighthawk X4 HW its better than AC87R/U:

1. Better Dual Core 1.4GHZ Atheros CPU
2. 2x USB 3.0 and 1xeSATA
3. 90mb/s on USB 3.0 transfers

do you think we will see or need something close to this on the RT-AC87R (U)?

 

[hggomes]

With overclock maybe it can stay close to it, but 60-70mb/s read/write will the maximum at default speed.

Speed is always a good thing, specially if you want to use it as a NAS device, maybe some people don't need it but it wouldn't hurt

 

[Richard1864]

I like Netgear, but they can take up to 3 months or more between firmware updates, even when patching security holes. This new router also tends to keep heat INTERNAL, unlike the R87. I've seen the inside of this new Netgear, and there isn't much room for any kind of natural airflow for cooling the CPU, no space for airflow under the heat sink whatsoever. Having lots of holes top and bottom of case is nice, but if there's no room for the air to actually MOVE and cool things, then what's the point of the extra holes? And 1.0 ghz Atheros chips run HOT, about 10-20° C hotter than ones in the R87 even when idling, and Atheros told me the 1.4 ghz ones being used by Netgear idle at 58° C in a room with ambient temp of 70° F. That seems hot to me.

 

[hggomes]

I agree with you on Netgear FW releases, they use ancient software on the FW, just look at OpenSSL version inside the GPL, 0.9.7 LOL

Those SOCs have a TJMAX of 130º, so that wouldn't be a problem.

 

[NightOwl326]

Why do educated buyers keep giving Netgear another chance on their home wireless products? Take the r7000 for example, even as of today you have to load DD-WRT for truly stable firmware. And now that Netgear has 2 new models, you will see updates for the r7000 drop to zero. It's been that pattern for as long as I can remember with Netgear home products.

 

[RMerlin]

do you think we will see or need something close to this on the RT-AC87R (U)?

I am skeptical about that 90 MB/s figure. I'd like to see actual benchmarks to prove it. SMB overhead alone would typically limit network throughput closer to 80 MB/s, so it's possible you'd need something like NFS to get anywhere close to that performance. I suspect Netgear based this number on a locally run HDD benchmark, which is quite synthetic in nature by taking the network overhead out of the equation.

I expect the RT-AC87 to eventually reach close to 80 MB/s once Asus has completed the switch to the new SDK, assuming you have a fast enough HDD. Initial alpha builds certainly showed that this speed was attainable (my own test were limited by the slow HDD I used when I tested it).

Other than that, I have no opinion on the new Netgear router at this time since all I know about it is just the marketing material you've all seen.

 

[hggomes]

"The Qualcomm CPU endows the R7500 with application and device aware dynamic QoS, courtesy of Qualcomm's StreamBoost QoS technology. The processor also brings dual USB 3.0 and one eSATA ports for higher performance storage sharing. NETGEAR said it has measured 80 MB/s reads from the USB 3.0 port and up to 95 MB/s reads via eSATA. Writes to both port flavors are in the 40 - 45 MB/s range."

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32502-netgear-makes-the-nighthawk-x4-official


So you believe AC87U (SDK7) can reach 80MB/s with a 1.0GHZ CPU but you don't believe on 90MB/s on R7500 X4 (SDK7) with 1.4GHZ CPU?

It's 2x 400MHZ more, so 10MB/s more doesn't surprise me at all.

Based on my AC68U results speeds from 800, 1000, 1200, 1300 and 1600 i can tell that you can achieve 20-30mb/s more on USB3.0 port with CPU at 1.6GHZ, it was 6-7mb/s more at each +200MHZ increase, appart from that i believe that clock to clock speed from Atheros CPU is better that BCM4709, it's a recent/newer CPU compared to Broadcom, so results could really slighly change in favor of R7500 X4.

 

[tl2k2]

"The Qualcomm CPU endows the R7500 with application and device aware dynamic QoS, courtesy of Qualcomm's StreamBoost QoS technology. The processor also brings dual USB 3.0 and one eSATA ports for higher performance storage sharing. NETGEAR said it has measured 80 MB/s reads from the USB 3.0 port and up to 95 MB/s reads via eSATA. Writes to both port flavors are in the 40 - 45 MB/s range."

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32502-netgear-makes-the-nighthawk-x4-official


So you believe AC87U (SDK7) can reach 80MB/s with a 1.0GHZ CPU but you don't believe on 90MB/s on R7500 X4 (SDK7) with 1.4GHZ CPU?

It's 2x 400MHZ more, so 10MB/s more doesn't surprise me at all.

Based on my AC68U results speeds from 800, 1000, 1200, 1300 and 1600 i can tell that you can achieve 20-30mb/s more on USB3.0 port with CPU at 1.6GHZ, it was 6-7mb/s more at each +200MHZ increase, appart from that i believe that clock to clock speed from Atheros CPU is better that BCM4709, it's a recent/newer CPU compared to Broadcom, so results could really slighly change in favor of R7500 X4.

don't forget that ac87 have the 5ghz band powered by it own chip, with the net gear chip, it have to power everything in that router so i don't see your point 2x400mhz will do much.

 

[RMerlin]

"The Qualcomm CPU endows the R7500 with application and device aware dynamic QoS, courtesy of Qualcomm's StreamBoost QoS technology. The processor also brings dual USB 3.0 and one eSATA ports for higher performance storage sharing. NETGEAR said it has measured 80 MB/s reads from the USB 3.0 port and up to 95 MB/s reads via eSATA. Writes to both port flavors are in the 40 - 45 MB/s range."

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32502-netgear-makes-the-nighthawk-x4-official


So you believe AC87U (SDK7) can reach 80MB/s with a 1.0GHZ CPU but you don't believe on 90MB/s on R7500 X4 (SDK7) with 1.4GHZ CPU?

The bottleneck here that makes me doubt it is the network, not the CPU power. With the SMB overhead, having 90 MB/s over a gigabit network sound unlikely to me.

EDIT: their announced write speed also seem low - they are lower than what I can get on an RT-AC87 right now (before the new SDK). That's probably in part due to the Tuxera driver Asus now uses, while I suspect Netgear are still using Paragon.

 

[RMerlin]

don't forget that ac87 have the 5ghz band powered by it own chip, with the net gear chip, it have to power everything in that router so i don't see your point 2x400mhz will do much.

Actually, Netgear is also using a Quantenna chip, so there's a good chance they will also use a similar design to the RT-AC87.

 

[tl2k2]

Actually, Netgear is also using a Quantenna chip, so there's a good chance they will also use a similar design to the RT-AC87.

Really? so they using quantenna and qualcomm on R7500? i just went through their spec sheet and i see no sign of quantenna chip in there.

 

[hggomes]

Exactly, it seems that Quantenna chip is not an ASUS exclusive anymore like was preached on AC87U release.


TL2K2

You should see the router specs first:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-news/32502-netgear-makes-the-nighthawk-x4-official

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8464/...antenna-4x4-ac-radio-and-qualcomm-ipq8064-soc

http://www.quantenna.com/pressrelease-09_02_14.html

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showpost.php?p=137946&postcount=40

AC68U use BCM4708 on both bands and the increase of bandwith on USB is huge, im not talking about this for free, i test it and it really makes difference here.

 

[hggomes]

The bottleneck here that makes me doubt it is the network, not the CPU power. With the SMB overhead, having 90 MB/s over a gigabit network sound unlikely to me.

EDIT: their announced write speed also seem low - they are lower than what I can get on an RT-AC87 right now (before the new SDK). That's probably in part due to the Tuxera driver Asus now uses, while I suspect Netgear are still using Paragon.

The network on gigabit can reach 125mb/s so im not seeing your point here.

You can test it without Internet and other connections, just PC connected to the router and USB 3.0 HDD connected.

 

[tl2k2]

okai, i just went to wikidevi and see that the quantenna does exist in r7500 but unlike asus this chip actually power both band not just the 5ghz band, and the qualcomm just the cpu core and switch.

 

[dfran1]

Hi all,
I am actually getting a lot of input from all of this and just wanted to thank you all!!!!! for contributing and please keep it up, I know this knowledge would be used for lots of people like me that don't own any recent netgear router, and for all to compare.

Thank You all keep it up!!!!

 

[Mordred]

The bottleneck here that makes me doubt it is the network, not the CPU power. With the SMB overhead, having 90 MB/s over a gigabit network sound unlikely to me.

EDIT: their announced write speed also seem low - they are lower than what I can get on an RT-AC87 right now (before the new SDK). That's probably in part due to the Tuxera driver Asus now uses, while I suspect Netgear are still using Paragon.

Not sure whee you got that number from. But when doing backups at work we transfer with 100MB/s sustained throughput to our samba shares on a ZFS storage appliance via 1Gbe.

Since I was curious about the R7500 I downloaded the netgear GPL release and it is extremely surprising, it is based on openwrt and comes with gpl code for quantenna and includes atheros drivers.

That makes this unit the non plus ultra now. If there is a chance to get official openwrt support, very likely to have dd-wrt support, maybe tomato ...

It has the eSata support and a 1.4Ghz CPU. This is definitely a asus killer. It got everything asus has but better.

 

[tl2k2]

Not sure whee you got that number from. But when doing backups at work we transfer with 100MB/s sustained throughput to our samba shares on a ZFS storage appliance via 1Gbe.

Since I was curious about the R7500 I downloaded the netgear GPL release and it is extremely surprising, it is based on openwrt and comes with gpl code for quantenna and includes atheros drivers.

That makes this unit the non plus ultra now. If there is a chance to get official openwrt support, very likely to have dd-wrt support, maybe tomato ...

It has the eSata support and a 1.4Ghz CPU. This is definitely a asus killer. It got everything asus has but better.

i think me meant a usb attached to the router then measuring the speed not through by Gbe.