OK I think my issue is that Arduino IDE is burning the wrong bootloader but I am not sure whats happening.
I am using Arduino IDE, an arduino nano to burn a Atmega328p_AU (exact product I ordered https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/556-ATMEGA328P-AU/)
It will burn a bootloader to it but its super slow and laggy once I put a sketch on it. I tried swapping the Atmega off the the nano onto the project to make sure I didn't get the wrong oscillator or something like that. Works perfect so I think for some reason the IDE is burning the wrong bootloader. How to make sure its getting the right one?
Which bootloader did you burn? Uno? Nano (which one)?
Remember that the bootloader only runs after a reset and takes some time before it hands the control over to your application. Once your application has control, the bootloader has no influence on the behaviour of the sketch.
I'm not sure about below and to which boards it does apply.
I've read that some bootloaders detect what the reason of the reset is and immediately hand the control over to your application on power up so there is no delay. When the board is reset via the reset pin (e.g. as is done during an upload on Uno/Nano/...) the bootloader will wait for a while for the upload data so there is a delay.
If de above description of "laggy" is the cause of your problem, you can try bootloaders for Arduino Uno and Nano (both old and new) and bootloaders for SparkFun ProMini (if you have the SparkFun boards package installed); all of those might be different regarding the cause of the reset.
Solved it. It was just the just the cheap chinese clone nano board I was testing the new Atmega 328 on that was having issues and not the actual project.
There is no other way to describe what it was doing other than as laggy like it had wrong crystal. Instructions were running really slow.
No clue what was wrong with the board I was testing them on though I tried swapping the crystal no change. Put the chinese chip back on the board it worked fine tossed in the parts bin. I was just trying to test it on a nano board first before doing everything in circuit.
Put together my project and it worked fine no issues so it was something on that nano? oh well it's not an issue.
The Arduino IDE will reset your Uno which fires up the bootloader to check for a new incoming program. This half a second or so lag will always be there on start-up and I wanted to get rid of it.