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

[jabliese]

Would like to see testing on a slower system, compared to spending $130 on a newer graphics card.

Would also like to see it in a lan party environment, with it installed on the server only, and server/client.

 

[fadirocks]

shutting those network-heavy applications off while gaming

yep totally agree

 

[Honis]

For $130 I could upgrade my internet connection to the next tier for 13 months. I'd expect the higher internet speed to be more effective and noticeable than this!

Still the article was missing one thing. Comparing it to other PCI/E NICs. They all take some work off the CPU. The difference, if any, would probably only be noticed in a low end system.

In FFXI, the lag and latency can be curbed by having an awesome CPU/GFX setup. Most people lag out because they can't handle loading and managing 50+ PCs running around and the visual effects that result. Is the same true for WoW?

 

[snarfies]

I think there's some interesting potential to this card - if the firewall were working. According to the product page (http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killer-xeno-ultra/) it has a FTP, telnet, and torrent clients built into it, and that's pretty cool too. I wouldn't pay three figures for it. But cut the price in half I would consider it.

 

[void_pointer]

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

Erm ... what the?

(1) If you're at a LAN party and you are not getting pings less-than 5ms or so then there is something seriously going wrong, and

(2) as if anyone can genuinely tell the difference between a 54 ms ping and a 60 ms ping. Please.

 

[raptor550]

[citation][nom]haplo602[/nom]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[/citation]

Agree, Intel has the top NIC cards. They actually have CPU offloading, thoug they are designed for servers, i.e. bandwidth vs latency.

 

[cdillon]

All good NICs have the option to trade off latency for CPU-usage by throttling their interrupt rate, but this adds latency. Intel NICs call this "Interrupt moderation", some others call it "Interrupt Coalescing". What happens is the NIC will wait a couple extra milliseconds after receiving a packet before firing off an interrupt to tell the CPU that a packet has arrived, so that the NIC will have a chance to gather more incoming packets so the CPU can process them all at once. Newer Intel NICs by default do this adaptively, i.e., at low loads the interrupt moderation is minimal so that latency is also minimal, but at higher loads the interrupt moderation is turned up to reduce CPU usage. You can force Interrupt Moderation OFF so that it never adds latency, but you will increase your CPU usage very slightly.

 

[oldscotch]

Dude, CT Raid?
It's time to move on. Deadly Boss Mods, ORA...

Does the Firefox throttle plugin only work with Firefox downloads? Or can it be made to throttle everything, like say, utorrent?

 

[Narg]

I use the $25 Intel NICs. They also give a noticable performance boost in gaming over onboard NICs, and other tasks run better too. Much more worthy purchase IMHO.

 

[Zoidman]

You know what this reminds me of? (Of course you don't, cause if you did that would be creepy @,@) But remember the days when the dedicated physics cards came out? They were hyped about quite a lot, but in the end of the day, how much performance gain did they truly offer, and at what cost!? Then what was their fate ultimately?

 

[xyster]

i'd love to see how this card stacks up in a server environment with a heavy network workload put on it; test to see what it takes to make this card worthwhile!

From the benchmark results, there did seem to be a consistent, although small, improvement with the NIC. For gamers that want every last framerate and millisecond, and who have the money to blow, the NIC still seems to offer something.

Would a cheaper dedicated NIC also provide the same performance over the integrated solution? (minus the prioritizing features)

cheers.

 

[kewl munky]

The first time I ever saw this card I laughed at the idea. The only way this card would be useful at all is if you go to a LAN party with like 100+ people or so so that you can keep a reasonable ping.

 

[chechak]

nvidia or ATI

 

[Aerobernardo]

[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]

Im not being mean by saying that people from AUS play in US servers because in Asian servers they play with people from China and Vietnam. Try speaking english with them, not to mention their soberb lags. Same way to south america: people play on US servers to run away from early 90's PC's trying out Crysis online...

 

[x3style]

I would like to see the a software solution to this like cfosSpeed tested against this hardware one.

I for one am very pleased with it and goign trough your test i can proudly say cfosSpeed beats the shit out of this hardware solution besides the fact that you can save a fortune.

http://www.cfos.de/speed/cfosspeed_e.htm

 

[folken]

Gaming network cards crack me up. Unless you are desperate for one or two more fps on a ridiculous gaming rig there isn't much of a point. Spending over $100 on a CPU, Video Card, and/or RAM will make a much greater difference. Also, getting a higher performance network card isn't really going to do a damned thing to help latency if the router for your internet connection is a cheap piece of junk. Spending over a hundred dollars on a router will make an impressive difference especially when under load.

 

[Guest]

This is a tad off topic but you mention in the article "How about a nice gigabit-class wireless router with a QoS engine built in, which is also designed to prioritize gaming traffic? Not only does that give your games priority over the network, but it will offer the benefits of gigabit network performance and wireless draft-n as well."
Which routers out there fill this bill?

 

[tipoo]

I miss the big ass silver K heatsink.

 

[cleeve]

[citation][nom]Ozimundi[/nom]This is a tad off topic but you mention in the article "How about a nice gigabit-class wireless router with a QoS engine built in, which is also designed to prioritize gaming traffic? Not only does that give your games priority over the network, but it will offer the benefits of gigabit network performance and wireless draft-n as well."Which routers out there fill this bill?[/citation]

Dlink DIR-655 comes to mind I think.

Solid router, I researched, bought one, and I'm very happy with it.

 

[Master Exon]

What? No torrent benchmarks? All this is is a ISO download through firefox? Are you kidding? How am I suppose to know how seeding OpenOffice and Ubuntu while gaming is affected by the NIC? What does the dumb firefox plug-in do for me?

 

[bellbillsnow]

Ouch. I guess I am still not convinced that it does not make a difference:
1) you only tested two games - one of which seems irrelevant since FPS's are already above 100
2) you do not really describe what you are doing in the game - it seems that the cards ability to shine is during battles with many people

I know this is a big request... but what would be really cool is if you got of your $600 SBM machines and then tested different NIC's (intel, Killer, Onboards (marvel and the other one), routers, and video cards etc in WOW battles. It would likely be impossible to do the final analysis numerically... but I bet we would all learn a lot. And you should probably call in some experts to help tune the equipment since there is a maze of settings. It would be a significant undertaking but likely a piece referenced for years...

 

[bellbillsnow]

One other issue:
I am going to have to come clean here: I own a K1. The review I read indicated that it made a difference and avoiding the network stack made sense to me.
Here is the issue: not only must the card be in and installed, but any other NIC's must be disabled and then the Killer must be put into Game Mode. A support tech told me that programs launched before the Killer is put into game mode would likely operate in App Mode. Were you sure that you launched the program in Game Mode.

I have similar concerns about your secondary review.

My take as an owner of a K1:
It seems to help - especially in big battles. The problem is that any time I lose my connection I blame it on the Killer. For awhile it did seem like it was crashing. Your review missed it's biggest weakness: it introduces a whole other computer that can crash in your computer.
That said, I have lost my connection a couple times (I play WAR) and then switched to the onboard NIC only to lose my connection again. As with all things in online gaming, there are always sooooo many variables outside of my system, so I am left wondering is it: my vid card drivers, the router, the NIC, my ISP or the game servers!? Drives me crazy. (BTW, I am looking for any network diagnostic tools that might help.)

The latest round I have been investigating routers. Seems like there is very little research on router quality for gaming purposes. Seems like sessions are key because games like to have lots of small UDP sessions open. And we have about 10 network devices now and multiple browser tabs seem to be overlaoding the NAT tables... so I reboot my router before gaming sessions and it seems to have helped.

 

[Hatecrime69]

I would be curious as to how it would perform in a low end server setup, say a vent/teamspeak server, lan game server, or a heavily used nas (hosting things like video files) In theory its not a terrible idea, the problem is if the difference between windows-handled stacks and network card handled stacks is a large enough difference to make it have a point in having such a product, so far the gamer-focused one is fail but i wonder if there's some other use that might make it a good entry level

 

[Neggers]

[citation][nom]cyberkuberiah[/nom]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 .[/citation]

I have already reduced my latency in WoW, from 500-600 to 250-350 with TCP tweaks in windows.

This card claims to bypass and optimise TCP use, which means it can still lower ping, by using TCP more effectively.

When I ping the WoW servers i can get a reply as low as 150ms, however I dont see this kind of latency in game. This is because more data is transfered during actual gameplay, compared to just a ping.

If this card can optimise or prioritise that data better it may be able to give me in latency closer to my ping times.

 

[salsoolo]

so basically this card is only good if i download stuff while gaming?