I’m partial to the r7800. Has good developer support and a broad user base. The r7800 works great with openwrt for under 500mbps isp service. For slightly better performance you’ll have to use software offloading (check the box in the firewall section) or use more aggressive CPU settings. If you want to go faster - Openwrt can support gigabit connections with the r7800 using NSS hardware offloading. Check my build in the community section of the forum.
WRT3200ACM / WRT32X is a spectacular platform for performance and has dual boot firmware so you can try a lot of builds and keep OEM or a good working build on the other partition. Everything runs great on mine: 500Mbit cable modem with SQM Cake enabled for A+ bufferbloat and A+ quality on dslreports.com/speedtest, Adblock, USB 3.0 storage with read/write performance at 120MB/s with Samba4, Wireguard, 802.11ac WiFi 5GHz is great have no issues if you stick to 80MHz width. Kernels 5.4 and 5.10 both work great. Been running davidc502's build until 21.02 releases with a 4+ month uptime. I'm going to stick with mvebu until hopefully WiFi 6 support comes to OpenWrt someday, then I'll upgrade to a new router.
I know R7800 has come a long way too and offers similar performance if you run an NSS build so it's another great option. WiFi support is better, think it might do Mesh and MU-MIMO in OpenWrt, the WRT wifi driver doesn't support those.
As mentioned above, the wrt3200acm can be faster for wired routing, but the wireless side is massively better on the r7800. If your WAN connection is slower than ~500-650 MBit/s (without SQM or ~200 MBit/s with SQM), the r7800 is the clear winner (I'm not considering NSS assistance in these numbers, as that's not officially supported in OpenWrt). Above that, the WRT3200ACM has more steam (up to 1 GBit/s WAN-to-LAN routing), but you'd have to live with its problematic wireless side - or use a good AP instead.
Just wanted to confirm. Does the WRT wifi driver support single user 3x MIMO on 5GHz with each antenna supporting 80MHz? It is only multi-user MIMO that it does not support, is that right?
i have 300/300Mb/sec internet so the r7800 should be ok from that perspective
i have the wrt3200 located where it is ~10-12c outside and the router reports ~65c so in the summer when it can get to 25 - 30c, that just wont work with the wrt3200 (i asume)
so what you are saying is the r7800 has better wifi(dont need wifi from this device)
wrt3200 faster rouing performance (check!)
so the r7800 wont be able to run 300Mb/sec sqm, that´s a bummer
i guess i´m cinda stuck with wrt3200 from my perspektive
just wish there was a (easy) way of getting the temperature down
it is a really sweat router the wrt3200, how does it hold up for you guys when it´s getting really hot
what´s the max temp you seen on it?
Both devices are running hot (and its 802.11ax successors often come with active cooling), I wouldn't expect much of a difference here (the delta between individual specimens is likely higher, than between the different model ranges).
ok, i know words are expensive but comeon, please elaborate
i just installed my r7800 which i have in the main house where it is ¨23c and it reports around 45c
the wrt3200 where it is ~11c it reports ~65c
so the fact that r7800 have cpu scaling does not have anything to do with the fact that it runs way cooler?
the wrt3200 would be arund 85-90c in the summer, i can hardly think that´s acceptable (at idle)
My WRT32X (same internal hardware as WRT3200ACM) has no cooling issues and as I listed above I'm basically running everything from it that would keep the CPU busy, SQM cake at 500Mbits, NAS, Adblock, irqbalance (if it works on mvebu that's debatable), etc. and currently running with 4-5 months uptime. Rock solid fast and stable. I don't know the temps specifically but there are no temp issues. Can't wait for a nice 21.02 upgrade though, hopefully it's done soon.
I should note that CPU frequency scaling works with mvebu too. Several users have compiled and run it, maybe it could save <1W power not even sure it does that without voltage scaling too. Again, there are no thermal issues with my WRT32X under reasonably heavy loads.
EDIT: Hadn't checked that thread in a while, it looks like CPU scaling was added to for mvebu (WRT routers) in November which means it should be included in OpenWrt 21.02. Looks like hynman noticed it even lowers temps by 2 degrees avg. Hopefully it doesn't add any latency like it did for the R7800 initially.
Yea actually re-reading that post I cannot tell if hnyman kept it on his private builds or it was merged. Either way I know several users are running the patch on 5.4 with mvebu and it works, but don't know how well. The R7800 had some latency problems when it was merged there, so I'd use with caution or do testing to see how it runs.
That doesn't sound right I remember a changelog from Kong noting 600mbits with shaping (maybe using the NSS cores not sure): https://www.desipro.de/openwrt/Changelog
Anyway yea, WRT3200ACM or WRT32X will do 500+ Mbits no problem with SQM cake.
Not to my knowledge. I have been using it in my own WRT3200ACM builds since early 2017 without problems, but I have not tried to get it merged, as the upstream discussions indicated that there might possibly be some problems with some CPU variants. The upstream discussions in 2015(?) never got finalized.
i have both router idling at the same place now (~11c) r7800 is around 39c and the wrt3200 is around ~65(active router but not doing much atm 0.00, 0.00, 0.01)
the 65c is cpu from what i gathered after som googling, the rest is wifi/ddr
how is it possible that it differs ~25c?
EDIT: it is what it is, found lots of threads on dd-wrt forum and generally consensus is, leave it or fan it
EDIT2: found a usb fan when digging around in the garage, found a pretty small usb fan, 40mm if i where to guess, just that fan lowered cpu temp with roughly ~17c, 48c now
after i added fan i stresstested a bit, last bit on the screenshot is idle (fairly) and the 65 was also idle before adding fan