OEM firmware has all the proprietary advantages…at the sacrifice of having a terrible interface / limited software add-ons.
If you are on a gig line you really need a NSS offloaded build if you want to get everything you are paying for. Feel free to try my build on your EA8500 or R7800.
For wireless speeds ath10k and ath10k-ct are pretty comparable. All my clients like -ct at my house. With the same 2x2 iphone client I got these numbers with iperf3:
ath10k-ct with NSS
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.61 GBytes 462 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-30.03 sec 1.85 GBytes 530 Mbits/sec 126 sender
ath10k with encap offloading and NSS:
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.65 GBytes 473 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.81 GBytes 517 Mbits/sec 784 sender
ath10k with encap offloading:
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.63 GBytes 468 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.50 GBytes 428 Mbits/sec 1717 sender
ath10k
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.60 GBytes 459 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.14 GBytes 326 Mbits/sec 699 sender
ath10k-ct
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.53 GBytes 437 Mbits/sec receiver
[SUM] 0.00-30.01 sec 1.21 GBytes 347 Mbits/sec 763 sender