Dual-core wrt1900ACSv2 wifi not as good as single-core wdr4300v1

The wrt1900ACSv2 has a dual core 1.6Ghz processor (and 4 antennas). The tl-wdr4300v1 has a single core 560Mhz processor (and 3 antennas).

After installing LEDE 17.01 on both and running a long series of tests, the tl-wdr4300v1 consistently produced faster wifi speeds than the wrt1900ACSv2. All testing was done on 5Ghz band.

Is this difference likely explainable by the different drivers (wrd4300 has ath9k, the wrt1900acs has marvell)? Shouldn't the wrt1900ACSv2 be capable of faster wifi on account of 4 antennas and significantly faster processor?

the processor makes very little difference in wifi speeds (at least until you
get up to the high -ac speeds)

the ath9k driver has received a lot of attention to remove bufferbloat and other
optimizations. The driver for the WRT1X00AC* family has not had nearly as much
attention, in large part to the lesser cooperation of the manufacturer

so it's all in the drivers unfortunantly :frowning:

David Lang

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The system does not get the full benefits from dual core as system seems to allocate all IRQs to the first core. At least in my R7800. And IRQs are important with network traffic.

You might test installing irqbalance package, running it and test if that improves your performance.

There is more discussion in the R7800 exploration thread.