COMPUTEX: The GPU/NIC Combo Card Revealed

[septentriones]

[citation][nom]chickenhoagie[/nom]as will I[/citation]
I agree, I love my Sapphire 5850 It might be interesting to put one of these on a micro itx board for lan gaming since those boards often have only one slot.

 

[benage]

Another complete waste of time product. Just because the card prioritises gaming traffic doesn't mean your ISP or any other switchgear in its path is doing the same thing. I'd doubt that most ISP's have QOS to prioritise gaming traffic, normally VOIP has priority over everything else. Stick to your onboard NIC and save your money.

 

[JPForums]

Yah, that's what we need, an NIC fighting with my video card for dominance. Instead of network lag we'll have to deal with a drop in frame rate.

Check out the comparisons on this site with multicard configurations that split lanes 8x/8x and configurations that use full bandwidth 16x/16x. The difference isn't exactly earth shattering. Somehow I doubt even dedicating an entire lane to the NIC would result in a fight for dominance. That is, of course, unless they did something profoundly stupid with the design. On the other hand, until very recently, they were pawning off their cards as gigabit cards when the couldn't even push throughput that matched an old 3COM 3C905C 10/100 card. Granted, throughput isn't the point of their cards, but it still makes me feel jaded that they called them gigabit cards given their lack of gigabit capabilities. Good thing EVGA customer support was kind enough to let me return it. Note: They've reportedly fixed the throughput problem now.

Next inventions by Bigfoot: a fridge and powered subwoofer combo, a cell phone umbrella, and a toaster that warms your bathwater while you are in it!

I laughed so hard I woke up everyone in the house on this one. I don't whether to compliment you or spite you. +1

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]Parsian[/nom]this is like adding oranges with apples... how did they even conceive this?[/citation]
Good question...
I though adding a Killer NIC and Creative sound card together in a single slot card would have been cool, but I never would have guessed at a NIC/GPU combo.

 

[hemelskonijn]

This is not that new in the late 90's VESA expension cards usually combined a load of features like the TnL cards (in this case thunder en lightning as in audio and video) but also a load of boards combining more including NIC.

I liked those VLB boars (except their price) and i would love to see more combo's like that if the price/performance is right.

 

[matm347]

Why would anyone want to invest in a high end NIC..which would easily last several CPU upgrade cycles..when it's stuck to a GPU, which any avid gamer upgrades every year or so?? I understand killer trying to get more market penetration, but as all of the reviews show..there is hardly any gain.
A gaming router can handle traffic management and allows for gaming(or whatever traffic you want) to be prioritized.

 

[dark_lord69]

Next thing you know they will have one with high quality audio. Not a bad mix but really, I'm just fine with onboard audio and an onboard NIC. Now if they could just get that Fusion CPU/GPU going that'd be awesome. Then do intgrated TV tuner on the motherboard and make sure the CPU/GPU can handle extreme graphics (like Crysis running high resolutions and on the highest setting.) Then I wouldn't need any add in cards. Just a motherboard RAM and the CPU/GPU!

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]dark_lord69[/nom]Next thing you know they will have one with high quality audio. Not a bad mix but really, I'm just fine with onboard audio and an onboard NIC. Now if they could just get that Fusion CPU/GPU going that'd be awesome. Then do intgrated TV tuner on the motherboard and make sure the CPU/GPU can handle extreme graphics (like Crysis running high resolutions and on the highest setting.) Then I wouldn't need any add in cards. Just a motherboard RAM and the CPU/GPU![/citation]
ATi cards have their own on board audio for HDMI (apparently it's decent too). Sneaky bastards.

 

[jazz84]

[citation][nom]anamaniac[/nom]ATi cards have their own on board audio for HDMI (apparently it's decent too). Sneaky bastards.[/citation]


Really? I thought that was just an S/PDIF pass-through...

 

[segio526]

I agree, that NIC would be way better attached to a good sound card since they would be things that aren't replaced often. On board NICs and Sound both suck. I have yet to come across on board audio that is even close to my old Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 (although I replaced it with an old Audigy 2 a year ago 'cause the Live! 5.1 didn't work with Vista. I should see if it works on 7).

I'm going to have to drop my sound card at some point since boards are coming with fewer and fewer PCI slots. If I could get a combo sound card, NIC, and TV Tuner all on an x4 or x8 PCIe card, that would be pretty sweet (should be doable since those are all x1 type cards)

 

[makwy2]

I'm not sure that the focus of gamers is really the NIC. I could see graphics, processor, cooling, etc... but NIC is just ridiculous. I have always found onboard network interface just fine.

 

[xrodney]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Didn't they find out that NICs don't work?[/citation]
Actually having good NIC helps a lot.
Good NIC can filter corrupted/faulty packets and process them much faster then most cheap software based network cards. You wont recognize difference on low used and slow traffic connection, but as soon as you are getting thousands packets per second a load most of your bandwith you will find difference.

You dont need to use torrent to mess up your game pings, ventrilo/TS server can do that if you share it for your friends, or using your main PC as proxy for your whole home network.

Good HW based NIC also reduce load on your CPU and increasing FPS on end and it can even make you able work (with increased ping ofcourse) during DDOS attack.