time to replace my ac87u

[MasterBash]

I am looking to replace my ac87u, which gave me a bit of problems previously.

First of all, I am a gamer, so latency and reliability is important to me, sonething the ac87u could not give me.

Although i mostly play games, i have to use wireless. I am in a non crowded area so i have no interference coming from my neighbour. I can use the 5ghz band for myself and put everyone else on 2.4 if needed.

Now, i dont know what i want. i know the r7800 has good reviews, but with a slow and old firmware thats possibly plagued with security issues.

gt or rt-ac5300. i like the interface of the gt and asuswrt overall and the aiprotection feature/openvpn client support. i am also open to other models like the 86u if its worth it.

merlin fw is a bonus for most asus routers and so is being able to use ddwrt on something like the r7800.

so i dont know what would meet my needs the most. apparently the r7800 has very low bufferbloat while being very reliable. is that what i should go for? is there something on the asus side that would be just as good for my needs?

thanks!

 

[Antec800]

Just purchased a ASUS rt3100 newer version of the ac88u with 4 less ports, and purchased a x4s nighthawk both routers plugged in perform the same and WiFi, but the the asus wifi is faster on 5ghz longer distance after extensive testing, and the asus ui is faster and looks 10x better

 

[avtella]

I wouldn’t get the AC3100/AC5300 at this point, look at the 86U as a better alternate, the R7800/86U are much better hardware wise than the AC3100 and if getting it for DDWRT/OpenWRT. OpenWRT/LEDE project is actually better on the R7800 than DDWrt thanks to SQM QoS and some fixes. The AC86U is pretty competitive with the R7800 performance wise, I’d get that as pricing is similar from what I last checked on Amazon.

Antec800 your situation is odd as I have tested both devices as well, guess differences in home layout/placement can account for results.

 

[Antec800]

Is the 86u better then the 88u?

 

[avtella]

Compared to the 88U/AC3100 the WiFi chipset and CPU are newer on the 86U, it has a crypto accelerator making it much faster for VPN as well, in addition it has much better storage performance than the 88U/AC3100 and R7800. 5Ghz WiFi performance is pretty close to the R7800 which is still the best.

 

[Antec800]

I thought the newest version of the 3100 manufactured in 2017 was different then the old 3100

 

[avtella]

It’s probably just a slight change in hardware/revision but I doubt it’s a drastic change.

 

[Antec800]

So you recommend the 86u out of all asus routers right now

 

[avtella]

Yeah, it pretty much is a better overall package than the other two.

 

[Antec800]

Is there any reason why the old 7800 does so well in wireless performance?

 

[avtella]

Not sure, it’s still the best I’ve tested to date in 5Ghz performance, it even beats the R9000 which uses the same WiFi QCA9984 chipset. Maybe board layout, not sure what the makes it so good.