Are Killer NIC's really worth the money?

[ambam]

Most of the reviews I've read for the Killer NIC "gaming" network cards have been negative. It's supposed to be a NIC designed specifically for online gaming. But people insist that they do not notice any reduction in their ping and in game lag, and the only thing it does is "connect them to the internet".

The newest generation of Killer NIC products have dropped significantly in price, and are faster than the previous generation.

Should I get one if there is only an absolute minimal improvement in online gaming performance and lag reduction?

The integrated NIC on your motherboard is supposed to be more than sufficient for online gaming.

 

[sabot00]

It reduces your ping by around 1%.
Going from 100ms ping to 99 isn't a huge leap forward.

I'd use the money to get a better CPU, GPU, or mobo.

 

[GunBladeType-T]

Most of the reviews I've read for the Killer NIC "gaming" network cards have been negative. It's supposed to be a NIC designed specifically for online gaming. But people insist that they do not notice any reduction in their ping and in game lag, and the only thing it does is "connect them to the internet".

The newest generation of Killer NIC products have dropped significantly in price, and are faster than the previous generation.

Should I get one if there is only an absolute minimal improvement in online gaming performance and lag reduction?

The integrated NIC on your motherboard is supposed to be more than sufficient for online gaming.

I was wondering the same thing too! Maybe for servers like 100 people and over it speeds up your ping for max intense tournament gaming! Gotta have this card for those extreme gaming lan fests I guess!

 

[arcticking]

That's kinda bullshit, I saw a test involving an onboard NIC and a Intel Pro 1000/GT. The difference in ping was about 15-30ms. So there is infact a difference.

 

[fishyfinners]

i had one in my old pc nd it did do good when the drivers worked . only upside is you can download to a fash/ext harddrive wile playing and 10-15 better ping it also saves you cpu/chipset doing the traffic but isnt wotrh 100+£

 

[Frizzo]

if they actually offloaded to the npu for all online games they might be worth it...the main selling point was supposed to be the npu onboard processor, unfortunately it doesnt actually process anything for most games.

 

[mi1ez]

Probably not. Check out these reviews.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/networking/2010/05/01/killer-xeno-pro-gaming-network-card-review/1

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2010/09/02/killer-2100-gaming-network-card/1

 

[iam2thecrowe]

yeah, i'd say the internet connection is the bottleneck so a fast nic isnt going to do anything.

 

[fishyfinners]

not allways if it makes your pc latency faster i will make your ping better
But only on low end motherboards new mobo's have dual 100MB/ps ethernets thats faster that a nic

 

[arcticking]

aslong as you have a realtek NIC, lets just say.. switch to a third-part intel NIC. For the good of online gaming. I have one right now, and im getting major ping spikes on bad company 2 and warband.

 

[JamesSneed]

I have an integrated Realtek NIC on my motherboard and see no LAG spikes in BFBC2. I have noticed what feels like a lag spike on some servers but it apears server related as most of the servers I play on have zero lag. I have Verizon FIOS 25/25mbps and get 2-5ms pings on multiple pages of servers in BFBC2's server browser(50+ servers). Also, I think I have a slight latency advantage since I seem to fire first when I run head on with someone around a courner. I sugest you either try different servers or turn down the graphic settings to there lowest settinng and see if the lag goes away that way you can discover if it your hardware or the server because it is most likely not the NIC.

 

[nitros85]

While I can only provide proof for the Killer K1 NIC (got it off ebay used, really cheap) it definitely works well.

Going from onboard ethernet to Killer K1 NIC dropped my pings from 40ms to <20ms. Sometimes I will even get <10ms on servers nearby in Dallas. This is great compared to never going below 20ms with onboard.

A drop of 10-20ms is a big deal. Well worth the $20-$75 from ebay. Especially when you are already often going 20ms-80ms. That tiny drop of 10-20ms can mean having the fastest ping around.

 

[Someone Somewhere]

That's interesting. I get <4ms pings (literal pings; not sure about actual in-game data) to same city servers with a typical onboard Realtek chipset in my laptop.

$ ping citylink.net.nz -c 10
PING citylink.net.nz (202.8.44.4) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=2.84 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=2 ttl=58 time=2.98 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=3 ttl=58 time=3.62 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=4 ttl=58 time=3.64 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=5 ttl=58 time=3.27 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=6 ttl=58 time=4.41 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=7 ttl=58 time=1.99 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=8 ttl=58 time=2.62 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=9 ttl=58 time=3.45 ms
64 bytes from wn014-bk1.clnz.net (202.8.44.4): icmp_seq=10 ttl=58 time=4.16 ms

--- citylink.net.nz ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 received, 0% packet loss, time 9011ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.991/3.303/4.414/0.688 ms

Good peering is a wonderful thing.