Interview: Bigfoot's Killer NIC, Exposed

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hay guise, you still making shitstorm about this LUL

Average Joe Wants a new computer, he can get either

a good pc with a 4870 and no killer nic or
a good pc with a 4570 with killer nic

you make the math (replace the 4870 and 4570 with the gt280 and 260)
150$ are well worth spent on upgrading the monitor, or Vid card, or CPU for Better framerate


now if your rig has pentiple VIdcard SLI and crossfire with liquid nitrogen cooling, and Raid 10 config for max speed and backup , with a 2000watts psu and a hueg 24 26" monitor.. then yeah killer nic
 
[citation][nom]gxsolace[/nom][/citation]
You clearly have no idea whatsoever about the difference between a gige chip and a 10/100 chip. Latency, as you said, has nothing to do with the bandwidth or 'size of the pipe'. The reason gige has better latency has EVERYTHING to do with the speed of the chip (its response time and its internal frequency). Typical point to point (thats nic to switch to nic) latencies of 10/100 chips are on the order of 10-30ms, whereas decent gige chips are on the order of 10-30-100us - MICROSECONDS. I can give you some numbers for Infiniband too, since I happen to be highly educated in the matter, typical numbers for decent IB cards range from 1.5-4.5us for a point to point ping-pong.

Also, your definition of Latency is out of context here, the real latency you compare wrt networking is ping-pong latency. Your ping on your beloved games? yeah thats what it is.. but w/e, everyone here is super smart anyhow.
 
[citation][nom]gxsolace[/nom][/citation]
Wow a little grumpy there bud... So what's it like knowing everything? You remind me of some "know it all" college friends of mine. LOL they think they are the authority on gaming and politics. Very funny indeed...
 
Funny I'm a happy player with 100ms of ping and guess what I still beat the crap of many with much lower pings, the fact is that ping means virtually nothing for anyone that is under 100ms.

Make a tracert to whatever game server you use and you'll notice 99% of the time taken to ping the server is wasted outside your home sweet home, so why wasting $150 on something that will only help you on that really small scale, and even by some magical reason your ping went down by 10% would it matter much, 100ms or 90ms... means nothing in playability.

chaohsiangchen> I'm not sure the speed of light is what limit us, the time the servers takes to analyze the data and send it to the other server, and the time wasted on the repeaters along the way account for more than the time the data takes traveling at the speed of the light in the "pipes".
 
[citation][nom]killerb255[/nom]This is only useful for those that ABSOLUTELY NEED to use full gigabit bandwidth all the time. I've never seen a copper gigabit NIC utilize more than 35% bandwidth. YMMV, though.Gamers really don't need it, even at LAN parties. Online gamers DEFINITELY don't need it, unless they're in Japan with a 1 Gbps Internet connection. Servers could utilize something like this. Professional workstations with large CAD drawings on a network share could utilize this as well.[/citation]

Again: Bandwidth is not something we're concerned about yet. The fattest, fastest pipe in the world will not fix the lag inside your PC, which is what the Killer NIC is addressed to fix.

[citation][nom]wiseadam[/nom]No matter how much hype, no matter how cool it looks. It's not worth anymore than $50 for the small performance increase PERIOD. They have to end up on their knees blowing tom to get them to put up some BS AD on their front page to make it seem like $150 is worth 1/2 a frame rate without lag. Weeeeeek. I've said this before, give me $100, I'll buy a great intel NIC, put some fancy heatsink on it and I bet you won't be able to tell a difference![/citation]

I'd bet that Harlan, having designed both architectures, could tell the difference. :)

[citation][nom]dreamkiller323[/nom]Too bad you can only use this on ONE computer on a NETWORK of computers. A better investment would be to get a packet-shaping router such as StreamEngine-equipped routers - This way it affects the whole network. I got the ZyXel X-550 two years ago and I often have Bitorrent running on my fileserver while I play on my gaming machine with no change in latency. Killer NIC can't do that.[/citation]

A Killer NIC can't do that because packet-shaping at the router level is useless for client-side latency.

Remember - we don't (yet) do anything to the packets once they're outside your computer. What happens inside:
- bypass the Windows network stack
- offload the CPU
- direct hardware interrupts for game packets
- superior UDP acceleration
All of these combine to make significant framerate and latency improvements, even more so in Vista and even more so in crowded, busy or high-combat environments.

A "gaming" router allows you to assign priority to UDP packets from the WAN to your LAN, but then those packets run up against your "dumb" NIC and the Windows kernel.



 
Wow, such a great product the lame of us.
I think they should market it right next to Monster cable. It would fit into the extremely overpriced for little or no gain category.
I would maybe consider it, if it was like $4.99 with $4.00 instant rebate.
 
BFN Sean: I owned one of these things and it was nothing but trouble. First one, PC would not POST. Same with the 2nd and 3rd ones. 4th one would post. Got it installed with latest drivers and had problems. Software crashed and/or needed rebooting all too often. Web pages would randomly stop loading. The games I played, no matter what settings I tired (default or otherwise) showed either no improvement, very little improvement and in one case, latencies went up! Sometimes I'd start up my PC and find the thing wasn't detected that time and had to reboot. You may say that bandwidth isn't your goal at the moment but I think it's stupid to expect us to cripple our local network speed (currently limited by the PCI bus) just for a few FPS (never saw that benefit myself...have a very fast PC) or a shot at a few ms in latencies, while dealing with the temperamental nature of this thing.

I owned 4 of them now (RMAed 3 times) and I can say that this thing's a steaming pile. You guys love to talk it up but as of right now the thing is a paperweight I paid 300 bucks for. (bought when first released) I feel like a chump for buying this snake oil. I am 100% happy with my "dumb" Intel NICs, thank you.
 
Matt, 3 RMAs, ever wonder if its the person and not the? I'm not sure even Intel would work that hard to try to keep someone happy.

Anyways, reading the Killer Forums and Newegg there are many folks who love it, and as always on the internet some who hate it. So I dont think everyone has had your problems.

My Intel NIC died on me recently, ironicaly, but I was beyond the 1year and got no help at all.
 
Matt78,

I had my Intel NIC die on me and got no help at all sine I was 1 year out. Killer gave you 3 cards, thats pretty good.. ever wonder if it was your fault? The newegg has a few folks with issues, but mostly positive.
 
Just another Ageia, the whole point of the company is probably to get bought by someone like Asus
 
A-Does Killer NIC makes all of the improvements it advertises: probable yes-so does an Ageia physics card, a much worse product. Ageia works on 5 games and offers better gaming experience in 2, the Killer at least improves FPS by almost 2 in a score of games...so if you play these games that without any doubt gain 2 fps with this NIC, have $150 to spare and are pretty sure that a better VGA, CPU, HD (very important!) or cooling method wont improve your gaming experience (and 99,9999% $150 wont help you on because you already have top notch hardware there) go for it: Killer NIC is the way to go!
B-Is the killer NIC price adequate? NOPE: an excellent NIC card costs $30, an atom processor another $30, you can add more 1GB of memory and have a MUCH better hardware for half the price of the Killer NIC, so NOPE, it is NOT worth $150.
 
[citation][nom]geok1ng[/nom]A-Does Killer NIC makes all of the improvements it advertises: probable yes-so does an Ageia physics card, a much worse product. Ageia works on 5 games and offers better gaming experience in 2, the Killer at least improves FPS by almost 2 in a score of games...so if you play these games that without any doubt gain 2 fps with this NIC, have $150 to spare and are pretty sure that a better VGA, CPU, HD (very important!) or cooling method wont improve your gaming experience (and 99,9999% $150 wont help you on because you already have top notch hardware there) go for it: Killer NIC is the way to go!B-Is the killer NIC price adequate? NOPE: an excellent NIC card costs $30, an atom processor another $30, you can add more 1GB of memory and have a MUCH better hardware for half the price of the Killer NIC, so NOPE, it is NOT worth $150.[/citation]

Wow, you are definitely one of the retarded ones.

A - It is not just about getting extra frames, it is about gaining frames (which is more than 2 btw, but not a HUGE amount) - It is about reducing latency caused by the syncronous kernel in Windows OS's.

B - If the ATOM processor could be used in Networking applications like you think it can, then how come it is not used in switching gear, routing gear, SPI gear, QOS gear.

C - You're a moron - but atleast when you visit this site, you are making them money.
 
[citation][nom]Matt78[/nom]BFN Sean: I owned one of these things and it was nothing but trouble. First one, PC would not POST. Same with the 2nd and 3rd ones. 4th one would post. Got it installed with latest drivers and had problems. Software crashed and/or needed rebooting all too often. Web pages would randomly stop loading. The games I played, no matter what settings I tired (default or otherwise) showed either no improvement, very little improvement and in one case, latencies went up! Sometimes I'd start up my PC and find the thing wasn't detected that time and had to reboot. You may say that bandwidth isn't your goal at the moment but I think it's stupid to expect us to cripple our local network speed (currently limited by the PCI bus) just for a few FPS (never saw that benefit myself...have a very fast PC) or a shot at a few ms in latencies, while dealing with the temperamental nature of this thing.I owned 4 of them now (RMAed 3 times) and I can say that this thing's a steaming pile. You guys love to talk it up but as of right now the thing is a paperweight I paid 300 bucks for. (bought when first released) I feel like a chump for buying this snake oil. I am 100% happy with my "dumb" Intel NICs, thank you.[/citation]

Wow, you're retarded too.

You sound like one of those idiot sales guys at Circuit City that claims they have owned one of everything in the store.

Claiming you owned four of them, RMA'd three times, shows just how full of BS you really are.
 
[citation][nom]Strunf[/nom]Funny I'm a happy player with 100ms of ping and guess what I still beat the crap of many with much lower pings, the fact is that ping means virtually nothing for anyone that is under 100ms.[/citation]

:| The classic macho-man gamer talk. "Yeah, ping don't matter, it's skill! Anything below 100 is good!"

Then you show up to big tournaments or lan tournaments and you get your ass handed to you, and yer the first one to blame that you are used to playing with a 100 ping.

Besides, ping IS important, but so is packet loss. And packet loss is minimized when latency is lowered.
 
[citation][nom]caskachan[/nom]hay guise, you still making shitstorm about this LULAverage Joe Wants a new computer, he can get either a good pc with a 4870 and no killer nic ora good pc with a 4570 with killer nicyou make the math (replace the 4870 and 4570 with the gt280 and 260)150$ are well worth spent on upgrading the monitor, or Vid card, or CPU for Better frameratenow if your rig has pentiple VIdcard SLI and crossfire with liquid nitrogen cooling, and Raid 10 config for max speed and backup , with a 2000watts psu and a hueg 24 26" monitor.. then yeah killer nic[/citation]

Stop being a moron - You're implying that the card is targeted at increasing frame rates ONLY. That is NOT what it is all about.
 
[citation][nom]estreetguy[/nom][/citation]

becuase its about using 150$ on hardware that will help you more than investing on a better vid card/cpu
makes sense XD
 
what a joke

there are so many factors between you and the game server, how is this card going to control all of those factors? oh wait it doesnt do sh!t, waste of money

with DSL, i would ping 25-35 on almost all servers and lag was almost non-existent across several diff games

if you cant play well with that ping, you should consider trying a different (slower) game
 
Ok....I give!!! I'll buy one. I mean I really don't need it, and it really doesn't do anything, and it really is overpriced....but damn, there must be something to it. I mean after all, it's mentioned AGAIN in another, what we thought was a reputable site. All of these review sites over the past 3 YEARS must have got it all wrong. Surely their testing methods must be faulty, or they were all eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the jelly got on the circuit board and caused a short without their realizing it. Ya....that's got to be it.

Mannnn....this company has to be well diversified, and or has buckets of money, because they have been making this card pop up in review sites for years, and everyone knows they aren't worth the voltage to run them. But they still keep giving them press, and making sure the name gets out there. Common guys....quite wasting ink....You could be telling us about something really useful....you know like screw drivers with lights....or rounded IDE cables...LOL
 
[citation][nom]dreamkiller323[/nom]Too bad you can only use this on ONE computer on a NETWORK of computers. A better investment would be to get a packet-shaping router such as StreamEngine-equipped routers - This way it affects the whole network. I got the ZyXel X-550 two years ago and I often have Bitorrent running on my fileserver while I play on my gaming machine with no change in latency. Killer NIC can't do that.[/citation]

+1

this chap here sees the light
learn from him, you can.
 
I dont know what they are thinking.....they can secure an interview with the card's designer, but not get a test sample? If it really worked you would think Harlan Beverly would walk over to a shelf and hand them a sample.

TH should have saved this article/interview until they could review the product, cause it looks like infomercial propaganda. Lame article.
 
And could the review actually include some non gaming tests.
Some of us do NAS, iSCSI, or even samba with our NICs too.
and a good NIC does help for these
 
I am not as smart as most of you guys, but I do know this for a fact. I can now game, voip, and torrent (*at same time*) with no hiccups. But I don't know, could have been because of the crappy nic on my motherboard. I have taken this card through 3 upgrades now, and its been consistent.

Is it a waste of money? Could be. But who the hell doesn't work and make more money... Who here hasn't had an evening out that resulted in a little more money than you expected. I'd like to see the macho men here tell their date not to order the most expensive wasteful piece of steak on the menu, lol.

Just thought I'd interrupt the internet fist fighting.

For the record, I don't care if you buy or not. It was just getting so intense in here with all these words flying around!

 
[citation][nom]estreetguy[/nom]Then you show up to big tournaments or lan tournaments and you get your ass handed to you, and yer the first one to blame that you are used to playing with a 100 ping.[/citation]

What crack are you smoking it's common knowledge that if you get your ass handed down to you it's cause you are not good enough, like the CS quote states for noobs that blame ping "Ping: your scapegoat for bad performance since 1990"

Besides 99.9% of the online players have a ping over 50ms and there's nothing this card can do about it.
 
So let's see, there's 0.2ms worth of latency from my computer to my router. There's 35 ms of latency from my computer to my favorite gaming server. Killer NIC is going to shave off how much? Seems to me there's only 0.2ms for it to work with...

And CPU load? Good grief. A game is what, 128 kbit? Maybe 256kbit bidirectionally? My old 486-25 could handle 256kbit of 64 byte UDP packets without breaking a sweat. I'm supposed to believe offloading this from a modern CPU will have a notable effect?
 
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