re: What is the best gaming router?

Oh I'm sure, but looking at real-world speeds and the fact that the 802.11ac standard was only approved 6 months ago (and many of the routers on the market simply did a firmware upgrade from draft to approval), I'm personally not ready to buy or recommend AC routers. Even when every smartphone is using AC by the end of the year or whenever, the typical networking traffic isn't going to change much in the average household.

In a year, I'll probably change my mind. It needs a couple more generations, just like wireless N did. Specifically, beamforming has a shitload of room for improvement for there to be much range benefit. What I see in the 802.11ac specs is potential rather than promise. What I'm seeing in tests are zero real-world benefits in a typical home network. I'm not convinced it'll be much different in a year, but at that point, N would be fully "obsolete." We really aren't going to see the holy-shite-what-an-improvement factors with 802.11AC until there are 4x4 MU-MIMO routers. The upcoming ASUS AC87U looks particularly sexy in terms of specs. Still, it's going to take a lot to get me to consider "upgrading" my N900 dual-band... and I typically have 8-10 devices connected to it, and a couple of full PCs that share large files.

Edit: not saying its a bad purchase. From a brand and quality standpoint, it's great. And if you do get wireless ac client adapters, and you tend to heavily transfer, stream, access, etc large amounts of data across your local network over wifi (rather than the internet), you might notice a bump in throughput. It's just a too-common misconception that a 802.11ac router automatically means better or faster or longer range, or that it means anything at all to hard wired clients.