AC68U vs AC3100 vs AC86U wifi testing

[Geraner]

Keep in mind that the AC86U has a newer 64bit processer. So it's not strange that you should see higher performance with this router compared to older models.
RT-AC86U: Broadcom BCM4906 (1.8 GHz, 2 cores)
RT-AC68U: Broadcom BCM4708A0 (800 MHz, 2 cores)
RT-AC3100: Broadcom BCM4709C0 (1.4 GHz, 2 cores)

Both the AC68U and the AC3100 do not support AES Accelleration, while the AC86U does it. As a result if you would run an OpenVPN client on the router, the speed would not be more than ca. 40 Mbit/s on those two older modells, while I'm getting 240-250 Mbit/s with OpenVPN on AC86U.

Also keep in mind the age of the routers.
The RT-AC68U was released in October 2013 (now four and a half years old).
The RT-AC3100 / RT-AC88U was released in October 2015 (now two and a half years old).
The RT-AC86U was released in August 2017.

 

[maxsteel]

Thank you for the experiment. Do you recommend setting 5G for 86u to 153 instead of auto? Thanks,

 

[maxbraketorque]

Thank you for the experiment. Do you recommend setting 5G for 86u to 153 instead of auto? Thanks,

I always do manual channel selection, especially for 5 GHz where its unlikely that there will be local competition for a particular channel. Among the upper channels in the 5 GHz spectrum, channel 153 won all the measurements of signal quality for my Galaxy Note 8 and 2016 MacBook Pro. But try for yourself. Its not hard to do the measurements - just a bit time consuming.

 

[koan00]

Keep in mind that the AC86U has a newer 64bit processer. So it's not strange that you should see higher performance with this router compared to older models.
RT-AC86U: Broadcom BCM4906 (1.8 GHz, 2 cores)
RT-AC68U: Broadcom BCM4708A0 (800 MHz, 2 cores)
RT-AC3100: Broadcom BCM4709C0 (1.4 GHz, 2 cores)

Both the AC68U and the AC3100 do not support AES Accelleration, while the AC86U does it. As a result if you would run an OpenVPN client on the router, the speed would not be more than ca. 40 Mbit/s on those two older modells, while I'm getting 240-250 Mbit/s with OpenVPN on AC86U.

Also keep in mind the age of the routers.
The RT-AC68U was released in October 2013 (now four and a half years old).
The RT-AC3100 / RT-AC88U was released in October 2015 (now two and a half years old).
The RT-AC86U was released in August 2017.

I'm not sure how much the CPU clock actually effects performance, but also keep in mind the the RT-AC68u and possibly others have had mid life product refreshes. For example, the current version RT-AC68U (b2 stepping) actually has 1400Mhz core clock.