gaming routers, are they all they're cracked up to be

Sort of. 'Gaming' routers have a QoS (Quality of Service) engine built into them that allows you to prioritize packets for specific applications when other people are using your network.

Most of the high end routers have QoS built in anyways...the difference with them and the Gaming routers are preconfigured setups. The Gaming versions contain all the relative information for popular services like Steam, Battle.net, Gamespy Arcade etc and allow the user to simply select one and give it priority as opposed to manually configuring it.

Some models also contain preconfigured games like Age of Empires 3, Counter Strike: Source, Unreal Tournemant but do not allow you to add new games to the list which is rather dumb imo.