We were never ones to stand in the way of
pure gamer PC overkill, and Bigfoot's
Killer Network Interface Card (NIC) fits that bill nicely. They've managed to take a commodity PC component and build $280 PCI card around it, complete with 64MB of DDR RAM and a 400MHz processor. Cries of extortion and vaporware have been leveled, but now that IGN have got their hands on the device, they seem to think it's worth the hyperbole. One thing they were careful to point out before firing it up is that the Killer NIC runs Linux, so that processor and RAM can be put to more use than just routing your frags -- a firewall or a bit of anti-virus software could reside right on the card to check over data before it even gets to your PC, and IGN figures a BitTorrent client would be possible, allowing for full-speed gaming while you use any remaining bandwidth for downloading that
dev release of Leopard. As far as actual gaming performance, IGN's preliminary results were fairly impressive. The card bumped the framerate on the bundled F.E.A.R. from 74 to 86 fps, and the ping went from an average of 67ms to 45ms. If you're seriously considering dropping the cash you might want to wait around for a bit more scientific testing, but so far things aren't looking too good for Mr. Videogame's budget and his killjoy Excel spreadsheet of doom.
posted Sep 1st 2006 1:41AM
I own the model just below this one a killer K1, and I have to admit I did see some improvements with it, I did see a few more FPS,and pretty much what they claim it is to do. The biggest thing i did see on a game server that I always play (BF2142 titan server) on was the fact even with a low ping when i would usually see some lag from time to time, after the install I should still seen it when in heavy traffic (30 or so players in a small area) I had none and never seen any again my K/D ratio jumped threw the roof. I seen others lag but have no effect on my end. Yes I agree it is geared more for gamers, and is a nice add on if you can afford the price tag. Is it a must have thing???? Not really. Like others stated you can archive almost the same thing with a higher SLI vid card config or other methods. But when already running pretty much every thing top end why not go for a little more. I am running an AMD 6400+ oc, dule 8800 SLI, Big Foot K1, 10,000 Raptor HD, SB 5.1 live (old but still a goodie) 600w twin rail PSU SLI Ready all on a Asus M2N SLI Deluxe Mobo, G-5 mouse and G-15 key board. duel boot XP Pro/ Debian. duel Samsungs 932bw.
All I can say when hitting a lan party I am the fist one to get checked for an aim bot...
If the numbers are correct then it sounds really hot, but what's up with the price tag :
You know what I just realized. While the Killer NIC might be significantly better than your cheapo NIC or onboard NIC, it's probably not much better than a high end network card that doesn't offload processing to the CPU.
I'd like to see a comparison between the Killer NIC and a high end NIC, like something from Intel's PRO line.
I call bs. It might, maybe get you a couple more frames per second. But for $280, I'd rather spend that money on a better videocard that will surely give you more performance for the buck.
And any competent router or software nowadays can boost game and voice packets right through, giving them priority over your torrents and such.
This trend of offloading work from the motherboard has gone to extremes. A separate videocard? Of course. A separate soundcard? It has it's benefits. But an overly-expensive NIC? Not going to do much.
This product is targeted at gamers, yet any gamer would rather spend the money on something more helpful - I'd buy one of those new physics cards before this, for about $50 less.
OOOOOWWWWWWW!!! IT'S EXTREEEEME NETWORKING, MAN!!!! YYYYYAAAAAAAAAA!!!1 THE FUTURE IZ H0AR AND NOW!!!!
Seriously, though. Looks cool. A welcome addition to any enthusiast's laser-etched, windowed, liquid-cooled, blacklit monstrosity.
"Rooting your fags"? Um, OK...
Is that a weapon on top?
Shredsled, it's actually a fully-functional bowie knife, so that when your overly-violent stimulating games drive you over the edge (and shit, you'll have plenty with your -20ms ping), you can just rip that badboy off of your KILLAR NIC (lolz!1!) and rip your parents a new gut.
You can use the K-weapon to cut those who dare claim to have a superior rig.
Seriously, this is a great item. The only problem is that, if you've got a window cut in your case, you may inadvertantly reveal your secret identity at the next lan -party.
What a crap review... Even they admit they haven't really tested anything useful until "tomorrow"
Offload processing helps and can be had for $30 in some broadcom and intel based cards. Better systems are only $100 or so for a "server nic" and even then for gaming it's quite questionable as to it's gains.
The only thing good about this NIC and Physics card crapware is that real companies will take notice of the marketing for these products and integrate these "features" into their own cards. Look for "gaming enhanced nics" onboard in XPS machines etc... and physics done by a second GPU or processor on a graphics card.
The physics stuff has some merit but this network card raising framerates that much is total BS. One can stream a ton of traffic and disk IO with a lightweight torrent client with barely 3% cpu usage. Dual core systems are going to have even less benefit since they have a couple extra cycles from lack in threading efficiency.
When RAM and CPU prices drop even further hopefully network cards will have a 1 GB RAM with a 2 GHz dua core processor so all network functions can be handled at the card freeing your system memory and protecting your files by seperating network access and authentication from encrypted hard drive files. The power supplies of the future will be gigantic if nano technology is not soon implemented in chip making processes to lower consumption and heat.
The neck cutter for $180 is "over-Killer"
I've raked my hand across a heat sink while repairing a computer a few years back, and it hurt like a sonuvabitch. The thought of installing that card and potentially losing a finger in the process gives me the chills.
JR
wuss.
computer bites are par for the course... until you've had two-inch strips of flesh ripped from your hand tearing out isa cards, you've no right to complain.
I'd like to see a comparison between a computer with this Killer NIC at a certain CPU speed, with an identical computer that just has a good quality NIC and a 0.2GHZ faster CPU. And then I would like a cost comparison.
Just waiting for it to go SLI man... then it will be rad!
this is going to go as frar as the agei physx, all fine untill it's shown (yet again) that offloading to the GPU would provide better performance.
I would bet that a standard £8.99 NIC would have comparable performance.
The ideia of a USB headset connected to a small linux computer running something like teamspeak is starting to sell this to me... It really is :P
Hum. Maybe this isn't as bad as people first thought.
I mean, Network Cards in big server are not cheap as your home card, why? Because they are all the same anyway? No, there are actually a big difference and there are Bad, Good and Better cards and you will get what you pay for.
hmm, a network card with buildt in linux. nice :D
OMG! Is the sticker in that picture f0r ReAlZ? Free sticker?! OMG I MUST OWN IT!
Seriously, though. This is great news for my ElIT3 P3R1PH3R4L 571CK4RZ collection...unless it's a lick-on tattoo...in which case this product is even more extreme than I first imagined.
This is a totally bogus article. My favorite part is "Look closely and you can see the Linux system-on-a-chip".
If you look closely you can see the Xilinx FPGA that exists on the board, which is what I presume they're confusing with the "Linux system-on-a-chip."
Also, they didn't run any benchmarks. They just published the numbers from the manufacturer. This just totally wrong.
@Arlen and the others
That's what happens when someone decides to trust IGN. That's like using Hitler as the only historical source for information on the Holocaust.
Come on, Engadget... I had more trust in you guys..
Here's the follow up head-to-head with more precise benchmarks:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/729/729733p1.html
"The performance boost we got out of the Killer NIC in this testing exceeds Bigfoot Networks' own claims of 10-15% gains by a long shot and certainly seems to validate the potential of the technology. We suspect, however, that the fact that these computers were marginal at running F.E.A.R. in the first place had an impact in the comparison. In many cases the non-Killer NIC machine became absolutely bogged down as particles flew and grenades exploded, enough so that the entire machine would hang for a moment as things got sorted out. Obviously this murdered average fps figures. The Killer NIC equipped machine always managed to avoid grinding to a halt, perhaps due to enough of a performance boost from the Killer NIC to avoid becoming completely submerged in processing overhead and tanking its fps. Thus, we concluded that if we were conducting the head-to-head comparison between two high performance rigs the difference would not be as great as 65%."
-ign
what in same hill?!....who are these people?
fire them now please....
In other words, they got two incapable computers, maxed all of the details when they didn't have to, and then showed that taking a small load off the already stressed CPU increased the FPS. Personally though, I do not trust IGN at all.
Here is a really good question: If the computers were already completely incapable of performing at the maximum settings, why did they keep them at maximum for testing? I am guessing because it would highlight minor differences more...
And all of this could probably be achieved by buying a slightly faster CPU.
The second part of the review:
http://gear.ign.com/articles/729/729733p1.html
It gets a little bit more detailed.
You COULD go out and by this beast of a NIC
...OR...
you could go buy a 500MHz P2 machine for under $100 with more ram, and a built in hdd and be able to run more than what Bigfoot networks says you are allowed to run on their over-priced, all be it interesting, network card.
Was it mentioned what OSs this would be compatible with?