Bigfoot Networks Killer 2100 reviewed, 'completely destroys' on-board NICs
By Tim Stevens 
posted May 13th 2010 9:18AM
posted May 13th 2010 9:18AM
We're still trying to wrap our heads around the idea that an aftermarket NIC can really improve your gaming experience, but time and time again Bigfoot Networks Killer line of network interface controllers comes through reviews with flying colors, and its latest, the Killer 2100, is no exception. Boot Daily took one for a spin and found that it "completely destroys the typical on-board LAN port in all the gaming tests." Latency and UDP throughput were clearly improved, and the new software was found to be comprehensive and useful. We're still not seeing this as a product for casual gamers, but if you've ever blamed lag for your inability to rack up the headshots then this is $129 well-spent -- assuming you'll be able to come up with some other excuse.
@2mnyshp Says the beer bellied non-gamer
This is bullshit, I don't care what any review says, you're not going to improve your very INTERNET CONNECTION by spending money on this. It's like audiophiles spending thousands of dollars on "special" cabling, or magical audio speakers, or those "special" cups that lift a cable off the ground that cost about 500 dollars each.
It's a placebo, nothing else.
I can see this being useful for transferring files on a gigabit ethernet network.
@robotrock How? It doesn't perform any better than build-in NIC which costs $0 compared to dedicated solution for $130.
This card is to NICs as Monster Cable is to HDMI cables. They are ripping you off!!!
Wow, so much "stupid" in these comments it's sad. Some of you need to go back to school or read a book on how your computers AND THE SPECIFIC OS you use handle networking. Anything offloading the CPU processing is going to help in some way at least a little bit.
@TWiz While that's true even transferring giant files (or many many small ones) across a gig-E network with jumbo frames enabled only takes up maybe 1-2% of your CPU time on modern multi-core processors, and most of that is involved in the OS reading the files and packetizing them (which I really doubt this NIC takes over).
I don't know about you, but without running a multi-core folding@home client I've never managed to top out my CPU. A 1-2% gain is inconsequential given the amount of idle power my machine has even when being pushed as hard as I can push it.
(Now, this assumes the person arguing for this has a high-end computer with a modern multi-core processor and a full gig-E setup with jumbo frames enabled across all machines... but given that this thing is a totally optional $130 expense that seems a safe assumption to make, unless of course they're an idiot and buying into the hype and stick this thing on an old 10/100 network.)
Kinda off-topic, but lol, I get plain HTML code on the source link.
On topic: Yeah, that other excuse is gonna be very important! Better think of one already before buying the BNK 2100 :)
So they're comparing a $130 NIC against a $3 onboard Realtek 8111? Of course it's going to get slaughtered. How about an Intel Desktop NIC ($35)? Intel Server NIC ($120)? Find out how it compares against a budget and premium add-in NIC and then we'll know whether it's worth $130...
@Jason Litka
Price does not equal performance.
You've obviously never used an Intel NIC.
This Bigfoot company sucks ... actually seeing an article about it on engaged falling for a product that is clearly a scam sucks even more!
The source of the article (Boot Daily) clearly must have gotten paid a handsome amount of money for their 10 out of 10 recommendation and pathetic flawed testing (why do you compare this card against a product that got released back in 2006 by one of the cheapest network electronic companies? how would that 5ms local ping results improvement (probably due to better device drivers) change anything if internet adds 100ms to it anyway?).
thanks but i think i'll stick with my $30-40 Intel EXPI9301CT
Something like this 'can' work but with a few caveats. It's obvious that we are living in a world where we are buying hardware, but it is really all about the SW running it. Take any truly exceptional hardware product and there will be some serious braintrust in SW behind it.
Having worked at a network security company that used 3-5k failover NIC's...SW makes a difference. But as many people have stated...where is it being processed? If this thing has an on board ASIC chip or something...I would be a believer...highly doubtful at that price though.
Gotta remember that you buy the nastiest NIC card in the world, but if you have a sh!tty router or no QoS prioritization...not going to matter anyway...looks like a viable upgrade over an on board NIC though....wonder how it would look head to head with some of the other off board NIC's mentioned above?
And yet I am pretty sure I would outplay anyone using one of these gimmicks.
over at crunchgear this item was discussed and dismissed by the reviewer while in the comments section, they were openly dismissing it too. then someone from Bigfoot comes in to defend the product in the comments section and is rapidly dismissed...funny stuff. snake oil i tell you!!! it's a shamockery!!!
Any Intel server grade NIC blows it out of the water, and for 30-50% less money. And server grade stuff is sexy anyhow.
Look, I understand the card is super fast on it;s own. That's what an on-board ToC does... That's why server NICs have ToC processors. At LAN speeds and on good switches, a ToC based NIC can not just shave a few ms off each transaction, it can handle tens of thousands per second with ease, with no CPU impact.
However, introduce an ISP, a 256k upload limit, or even 1M, and ANY gains from the NIC will be essentiall unnoticable, unless you are concurrently under heavy load from other things in your network, or CPU bound already.
1) No one looking to put in a $129 NIC is going to be CPU bound first of all.
2) a ToC based NIC is readily available from lots of other sources for $30-50, and should prove highly comparable to this NIC card and has all the same bus speed and CPU offload benefits. Most of those also have 2-4 NIC ports at that price, enabling load balancing and other enhancements, or just segregating Internet traffic from local LAN traffic when running a media server (or ensuring your VM is properly isolated to a physical not-bridged NIC for various reasons).
I'll believe this when I see:
A) comparison to other ToC NICs and an impact that's at least 2ms better than other ToC NICs
B) proof that this LAN improvement translates into WAN improvement of not less than 5ms. and that other ToC NICs don;t ALSO see the same improvement.
C) realistic simulation on how much CPU is saved, aka how much more game horsepower comes available, for a PC on a relatively quiet LAN, and on common home switch/router technology. Does this latency lowering of 5-10ms over WAN or 2-3ms over LAN ACTUALLY translate into not less than 2 additional FPS on a system someone likely to pay $129 for a NIC would have?
Buying 2 XD
@Inchigh dumbass
So is this the monstercable of NICs?
1: all the ppl saying this helps your CPU. This was valid when you had a slow single core. This was also valid when the CPU was doing the graphics processing. Now, CPU's can handle sound, network. Offload the major crunching to the GPU and you DON'T need this snake oil
2: Does every supporter of this product forget the killer NIC card that came out a few years ago and turned out to be what skeptics anticipated. A giant smelly farce...
That was the worst review I have ever read for any hardware. What a joke.
Honestly, I'm a bit disappointed that Engadget would even post about this. The test is horrible, and the entire review is obviously biased. Put plain and simply, a wired LAN should not have ping times listed for the onboard NIC. My 40 dollar netgear router and onboard NIC at home provides
I find it amazing how even the onboard LAN is managing over 300 Megabytes per second, considering that Gigabit LAN tops out at about 125 Megabytes per second. Almost unbelievable, then, that for a mere $130, you too can defy the laws of physics and manage to cram almost 1 Gigabyte per second down a 1 Gigabit per second link.
/sarcasm
Bad Company 2 from my house has serious lag, I do quite well considering how bad it is. But I am on a console so this won't work, and besides, I doubt it would do shit anyway.
This is the only NIC optimised for gaming. The algorithm build into the firmware ensures gaming packets are given priority. You 'kill' the other before they 'kill' you because your packet arrives at the server before that of your opponents. Ask the pro gamers e.g. SK gaming, Fnatic etc.