[Scorps75]

Hello,
Firstly hello to everyone on here and thanks for taking the time to read this.
Currently im using Merlin firmware for my Asus rt-ac5300 and im running into an issue.
im on a 330/45 mb connection here in the uk.

I have the latest merlin version firmware 384.13, i have flashed this more than once and done complete factory wipe no restore of any kind.

Now me and my 2 kids play fps games a lot, for instance apex legends. So we can go on and play do really well (top 3 most games) that evening.
Get up the next day and we go on again and cant seem to hit a barn door, check ping looks ok 18ms max, usually aroun 7ms / 8ms.
Check bufferbloat its between ratings of B and A. So i think ok reboot router, then we game again. Suddenly were back to hitting everything and doing as we would normally, top 5 area with around 7 kills each, buffler bloat is usally an A after reboot.

Ive been monitoring this for a couple of weeks now, and been trying to get to the bottom of the issue for a lot longer, ive changed network cables, plugged everyone directly into the router and not the netgear switch. Seen the same result for a while, i even changed supplier and still see the same issues, i tried the provided fritzbox as well and it seems to not cope with the connection to well at all.

So what could this be? is it time for a new router with SQM, fq-codel like this router has,and see how it goes or is it something else?
I was using the script by fresh jr at one point but its had no updates for a while either.

all help appreciated, do i need to find a new router?

ps. The router is about 2 years old now.
ppps. I wonder if the cpu cant handle the processing at fast speed of 300MB connection to well with the fq-codel (1.4 GHz dual-core processor)

Do i need a quad core cpu, reading around it may be the case......

i have never used DD-WRT so im new and after any advice thanks.

[Scorps75]

Thnaks for all the valuable information, i think ive got someway into partially solving this now.