Killer Xeno Pro: Do You Really Need A Gaming Network Card?

[cleeve]

Bigfoot Networks has updated its gaming Network Processing Units to support PCI Express connectivity. The new Killer Xeno Pro has a lot of new features, but can it really deliver higher performance for a gamer? We test the new card in order to find out.

Killer Xeno Pro: Do You Really Need A Gaming Network Card? : Read more

 

[tryceo]

I won one of these from wowhead.com, but i havent fitted it inside the case yet...

IMO its a waste of money... I just keep my internet idle when im playing online.. plus you can get a better upgrade for your GPUs if you dont spend money on this...

 

[eddieroolz]

Wasn't there an article similar to this a while back, and everyone bashed it saying that it was pointless? (It was, but just saying)

Doesn't seem like its still worth the premium yet.

 

[ColMirage]

Hah, I've been wondering about how bad of a scam this card was today.

 

[haplo602]

try a quality server NIC like an intel f.e. and you'll see better results for less money, the killer nic and derivates are just hyped nonsense

 

[IronRyan21]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Wasn't there an article similar to this a while back, and everyone bashed it saying that it was pointless? (It was, but just saying)Doesn't seem like its still worth the premium yet.[/citation]
[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]Wasn't there an article similar to this a while back, and everyone bashed it saying that it was pointless? (It was, but just saying)Doesn't seem like its still worth the premium yet.[/citation]

When I saw the headline for the articles, I was thinking the same thing....Yes, they did an article before and yes this product is pointless. +1 eddieroolz

 

[tirzono]

Wow, I have bought this card and it even cured my AIDS!

Thanks Killer Xeno Pro!

 

[tryceo]

yep... after about 1 minute of testing(removed 1 9800 GTX) The lagg is still there.

If anyone wants mine tho... willing to sell it for $90. it just got opened..

 

[Neggers]

Some important testing is not done here which I would like to see.

I live in Australia and I am a WoW player on the US servers, so a typical ping for me is 250-300 and 300-400 when raiding.

Now when you guys are testing with a 60 ping a difference of 10% for you is going to be 6ms and not going to translate into anything noticeable.

However for someone like me, if this card can improve my connection with the WoW servers by 10%, that could be upto 40 or 50 ms, which could be a huge difference.

So I would like to see more testing done in Higher ping situations, prehaps if you guys tested connection to MMO server in korea or europe, so you were testing in a 300+ ping enviroment, and see if this effects the results.

 

[Ciuy]

And i was thinking spending 50$ on a PCI network card , now i wont ...

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]Neggers[/nom]Some important testing is not done here which I would like to see.I live in Australia and I am a WoW player on the US servers, so a typical ping for me is 250-300 and 300-400 when raiding.Now when you guys are testing with a 60 ping a difference of 10% for you is going to be 6ms and not going to translate into anything noticeable.However for someone like me, if this card can improve my connection with the WoW servers by 10%, that could be upto 40 or 50 ms, which could be a huge difference.So I would like to see more testing done in Higher ping situations, prehaps if you guys tested connection to MMO server in korea or europe, so you were testing in a 300+ ping enviroment, and see if this effects the results.[/citation]

I never understood why the AUS guys would play on mid-west servers. I knew some really nice raiders from Australia, but they'd lag everyone and either do lower DPS or be unable to tank as a result. Not their fault, but they had way more success playing on Oceanic servers when they eventually swapped over.

 

[Guest]

this one is similair to killer nic

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/adapters/gigabit-ct/gigabit-ct-overview.htm

 

[Neggers]

[citation][nom]cangelini[/nom]I never understood why the AUS guys would play on mid-west servers. I knew some really nice raiders from Australia, but they'd lag everyone and either do lower DPS or be unable to tank as a result. Not their fault, but they had way more success playing on Oceanic servers when they eventually swapped over.[/citation]

First off, the Oceanic Servers are still located on the West Coast of the US, the only difference is they changed the time zone on them. So I actually have the same ping on US servers as I do on the so called Oceanic servers.

Secondly I have been a top raider since Pre-BC, including clearing All of 40man Naxx, and all BC raids Pre-Nerf.

And currently even with my ping, I have never lagged out and caused wipe or failed to perform for my guild (infact I am one of our top DPS, doing over 6k DPS as an enhancement shammy).

So maybe you met some bad Aus players, but trust me that not all of us are, and actually some of us that are actually good players, out perform most of the scrubs with

 

[Artman256]

Turning off DHT on your torrent client will make a noticeable difference to the speed of other applications using the internet.

 

[eternalfury]

How about testing the performance during large/long/multiple file downloads? FTP, HTTP, Torrents. Some of us download a lot. Hell, just trying to keep my MMO's updated is gigs a month.

 

[alabasterboy]

I have the older Killer K1, I first installed it on a Dell Precision 670 and noticed an improvement in my frame rate and lag. 10fps 50-60 ms. I put it in my new Dell T7500 and it still helped with the lagg as much but nothing really with the frame rate maybe 1 or 2 fps. I also live in Alaska and have 3Mb DSL that I share with my family. I would suggest trying this with an older system. I don't think you will notice much of a difference with a top end system. I think @ $130 its a bit over priced but for around $50-$60 its worth the money, which is what I picked mine up for the older K1 that is. Also not sure where you are located but you are already getting better latency than I am with out it.
Its a very situational upgrade.

 

[alabasterboy]

To the Aussie reader I would try picking up an older PCI version, I don't care what they say no upgrade is going to help your latency other than this if you already have a good system to begin with.

 

[cyberkuberiah]

[citation][nom]Neggers[/nom]Some important testing is not done here which I would like to see.I live in Australia and I am a WoW player on the US servers, so a typical ping for me is 250-300 and 300-400 when raiding.Now when you guys are testing with a 60 ping a difference of 10% for you is going to be 6ms and not going to translate into anything noticeable.However for someone like me, if this card can improve my connection with the WoW servers by 10%, that could be upto 40 or 50 ms, which could be a huge difference.So I would like to see more testing done in Higher ping situations, prehaps if you guys tested connection to MMO server in korea or europe, so you were testing in a 300+ ping enviroment, and see if this effects the results.[/citation]

your 300 ping is not the result of only your nic . data goes through a series of routers of the isp network and back , each of which have their delays . by buying this card you can only reduce the latency added by your nic , not of all those routers .

the claim of a flat percentage drop in latency irrespective of the location and isp infrastructure is hence worthy of rejection .

even 64 kbps leased circuits are costly , the reason is a q.o.s guarantee by the isp .

however , when considering lan parties , the presented card can provide a noticeable difference , as 6 ms out of 60 ms makes up 10 percent .

the radeon 4850 still is a better proposition for rigs that arent graphics maxed out . if you have , example , classified , 9800 gt for physx and 285 crossfire , heavily oc'ed i7 , low latency ram etc then this card could be a "topping" on your cake . niche market product .

 

[ravenware]

A key element that is missing is a standard expansion nic. Something with its own ram resources (most have a little bit), this way we can if the little differences are attributed to the gaming nics power or the fact that it has its own resources.

 

[kschoche]

lol, again with this trash?

 

[doomtomb]

I wouldn't be pissed at this product if they didn't get a name like EVGA to back it. This NPU stuff is crap, I have a motherboard with dual Gigabit LAN and you are trying to tell me that I need to get a seperate $130 card just to play on the internet? I think the premium on PC gaming is high enough thank you very much.

 

[kschoche]

holy cow, i stand corrected.
mad props to chris for taking the Killer whang out and actually doing a real world test and then actually being honest, thats been hardcore lacking in the past reviews for this product.
I still dont see the Killer nic's on server hardware anywhere... I thought that was part of their Killer plan to take over the world with $150+ nics that claim mad gains..

 

[Onus]

The world is full of suckers, and people who don't bother to do the research because they're spending OPM. This is the market that Bigfoot is targeting. Just because we aren't a part of it doesn't mean the market isn't potentially quite large.

 

[Kill@dor]

Great review. Yea, i had to skip to the conclusion because i already knew about this card, although i was still curious about it. And curiosity is where these companies get people like me... Thank you for a great article.

 

[lowguppy]

This device is most intriguing as an internal file server, especially once you can connect external HDDs to it. Even if you have an old box lying around that you could use for such a purpose, $130 is probably cheaper than the cost of powering another whole system, not to mention the space savings.

The problem is that it advertises performance gains that either aren't there, or are comparable to built in features some software has or free plugins for firefox. What I am curious about is the effect of a card like this on a less powerful system, like an older slower dual core system with a single video card. It may provide useful gains in such a system. How those gains would compare to upgrading other hardware is another question, but there's clearly no use for this thing in a high end system.