no CPU spikes, everything runs fine, just the ping spikes horribly. Also keep in mind that the DWA-552 was doing the exact same thing, so i returned it thinking it was the adapter, and purchased a different brand adapter with a different chipset, but this new one is doing the same exact thing as well. If i put my 802.11G adapter in the system it works perfectly. So i have tried 2 different brand N adapters and both are doing the exact same thing.
I have also been watching the logs VERY closely today, and it looks like the router is restarting on its own, this morning when i checked it, it said it was connected for 3 hours, which means it lost connection in the middle of the night. then i reset it manually to track a fresh log, now i just checked it again and it said it has been connected for 54 minutes. and just while checking this it just reset again, saying its been connected for 36 seconds.
looking at the log i see
Wireless system with MAC address 00XXXXXXXXXC disconnected for reason: AP maybe crash...
Above message repeated 2 times
and that is the MAC address of the router itself (edited for security).
I also see:
Wireless system with MAC address 00mydesktop5 disconnected for reason: Received Deauthentication.
so the router seems to be crashing??