If you like messing with stuff, you might consider a Linksys WRT54G. It's gradually become cheaper and more tightly designed over the years (i.e. it can get all confused if you're putting a lot of traffic through it), but it's a good platform for third-party firmware. Any version up to 4.0 works great with the third-party DD-WRT firmware. Versions 4 to 6 work well but you need an extra step to kill the evil VxWorks OS in the Linksys. Version 7 doesn't work with DD-WRT. Tomato and OpenWRT are also good third-party firmware.
In terms of stuff which just works all day, I'm quite happy with Buffalo, both the Airstations and the Nfiniti. I'm plugged into 1Gbps fiber capped at 200Mbps; I need to channel bundle through two devices (they're 100Mbps routers) and I get around 160Mbps which is OK.