Anandtech Reviews Killer NIC

lol according to the tests they did the killer nic card does not do shit?
 
I took at shot at the card on a upper mid range system (it was high range at the beginning of the year), the thought being it was cheaper then a new MB and a 2nd video card to go SLI, and inline with the cost of a faster CPU, the advantage over the CPU being it could actually move to a new system as the present MB is a 939. IMO the perfect box to test the card out on, (I didn't expect to see much improvement framerate wise with the SLI setup), the card did offer offer some improved framerates on this system, but it had severe issues with surfing, downloading patches, logging into games, etc. After a month of driver upgrades, surfing the net was still very slow, and I didn't get any great answers from tech support (I didn't make to the driver that Anandtech reported that fixed the issue). In the end the card went back, as it was not performing, for a full refund.
 
Always good to hear actual real world experience. Sorry it didn't work out for you.

I'm just confused as to BigFoot's business plan. Can anyone give insight as to what they were thinking?
 
The results of the review are what I expected to see.


gixser said:
Always good to hear actual real world experience. Sorry it didn't work out for you.

I'm just confused as to BigFoot's business plan. Can anyone give insight as to what they were thinking?

Well you can always get better performance by getting a newer process, more / newer memory, and newer video card, but no company has ever dove into the other piece of gaming which is the network. I really didn't expect this card to bring much to the table, but you never know what ideas will spark off of this. Basically, it has to start somewhere.

The other possibility will be that it fizzles out and nothing comes of it. Personally the idea behind it is great, but like Anandtech said there are just so many other variables that are not in control of the end users.
 
KevinO said:
The results of the review are what I expected to see.
Well you can always get better performance by getting a newer process, more / newer memory, and newer video card, but no company has ever dove into the other piece of gaming which is the network. I really didn't expect this card to bring much to the table, but you never know what ideas will spark off of this. Basically, it has to start somewhere.

The other possibility will be that it fizzles out and nothing comes of it. Personally the idea behind it is great, but like Anandtech said there are just so many other variables that are not in control of the end users.
Definitely things would go up with other parts, in my case this was a test one of my kids boxes, as he already had 2 gig memory, a X1800XT, 4200+, Audigy 2, etc. on a Asrock dual MB, none of the other components made sense to mess with.
CPU no sense in dumping more money on a 939 upgrade
Memory is doing fine
MB won't take SLI, any new video card would be more then the Killer was, and he'd just as soon wait for a DirectX 10 solution before a video upgrade.
The Audigy will be relpaced with an XFi in the near future most likely.

As for Bigfoots business plan, I think the product is a good concept, the care should have been tested more on different systems and it would help if they worked up some FNApps to sell that end of the card.
 
Hi, I'm tomstomper from the Engineering team on Killer NIC.

I think ya'll are totally misreading the Anandtech review. The reviewer DID see performance increases (big ones), and even a double blind test with a 12 year old, they could FEEL the difference (smoother and faster). The only problem they had was frustration with installation (and that's been cleared up), and questioning if it's worth $279 (which it's now on the street at $249 + FNA Firewall has been released, and more FNApps to come).

The "Does it work" question is answered by this:
"[In FEAR] We see a 7% increase in frame rates over the NVIDIA nForce 590SLI NIC and a 10% increase over the D-Link combination. In actual game play we found the Killer NIC to offer the most fluid experience and our ability to quickly transverse the map actually felt smoother than the other two solutions."

and this
"[In World of Warcraft] Ping rates did improve by up to 7% (host system improvements and server variables) and this is where we did notice a difference in game play during the busy test sessions on Friday and Saturday nights."

I summarized all the high points here:
http://www.killernic.com/forums/showthread.php?t=224

I'm here to help answer questions, so what else about the review or the Killer do you have?

I'm all over it.

TS
 
tomstomper said:
"[In FEAR] We see a 7% increase in frame rates over the NVIDIA nForce 590SLI NIC and a 10% increase over the D-Link combination. In actual game play we found the Killer NIC to offer the most fluid experience and our ability to quickly transverse the map actually felt smoother than the other two solutions."

But you neglect to mention
We witnessed improvements from 4% to 10% in these titles when compared to our standard D-Link PCI NIC. This sounds impressive and was a slight surprise to us actually. However, we did not see or feel any real differences in our game play experiences due to increased frame rates from the Killer NIC or by simply overclocking our video card.

ping they do say is a different story (especially WoW).
 
But who plays F.E.A.R anyways? How about CS:S or BF2/2142? F.E.A.R sits at 19th on games played online: http://archive.gamespy.com/stats/

Kinda odd how you guys picked F.E.A.R. to showcase your product, eh? :rolleyes:

This card would have been great about 5 years ago when we all were doing all we could to releave the load on our Athlon 750 and Pentium 3 750 processors...but nowdays, especially with dual core support...the load a cheapo NIC puts on the host CPU is negilable and with the Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors starting to hit the market, I doubt the last thing anyone worries about is taking that 1% load of of one of four cores.

But what do I know, I am not an engineer, just a guy with the wallet.
 
Ok, say this card does make these improvements. How in the heck can you justify charging that much money for that card? The computing power needed for such a card is well below that of say a sound card. The X-fi sound card gives you about the same performance increase as this NIC, but costs half the price!

Is there any reason for its price other than it is the only one of its kind?
 
Met-AL said:
Kinda odd how you guys picked F.E.A.R. to showcase your product, eh? :rolleyes:

But what do I know, I am not an engineer, just a guy with the wallet.
no need to be a dick about it.

I agree with KevinO, I always appreciate innovation and maybe now its not the omgpwnage everybody is looking to see but at least people are embracing the idea of tapping into different hardware. It all has to start somewhere and I have much respect for trying to push the envelope. I'm sure years ago the concept of upgrading to a super high end a gfx card was unheard of. Someone had to do and look how far that has come.

tomstomper, I just want to say this is another reason I love the [H]. We have one of the freaking engineers in here to answer our questions. That's about as direct from the horse's mouth as it gets. I hope you decide to hang around more and show us what you guys can do. Keep up the work and i wish you guys all the best.
 
g33zy said:
no need to be a dick about it.

Trying to be the first NIC !!!!!!?

I am not being a dick about it. The product does virtually nothing to improve anything, except in one game. What if ATi or nVidia released a video card that only accelerated F.E.A.R and nothing else?

Good luck selling that NIC.
 
It helped from 7-10% in FEAR at 1280x1024, how would it do at 1920x1200

And also another great quote from anand:
Another area of frustration was the fact that we could not use FNapps. This is the number two feature on the card and from all indications accounts for a large portion of the card's cost. This feature has been hyped ad nauseam since the inception of the card and we still do not have one working applet to test. In theory, this feature sets the card apart and could become a viable reason to own the card depending upon your needs.

And as mentioned in another thread on this forum, it was great how killernic cut and pasted the review to make it look liek their product was perfect lol And now I dont even see the review lsited in the forum or site.
 
Met-AL said:
Trying to be the first NIC !!!!!!?

I am not being a dick about it. The product does virtually nothing to improve anything, except in one game. What if ATi or nVidia released a video card that only accelerated F.E.A.R and nothing else?

Good luck selling that NIC.
Its not being a !!!!!!, all i'm saying is when you are pulling the sarcasm and rolling your eyes its not benefiting the situation.

There's no need to demean thier prodcut by talking down about it. All I was saying was that I am commending them on thinking outside the box. I'm not saying its a great concept and that its the greatest invention ever. All i'm saying is that I like the fact that instead of creating another video card they are looking for different ways to improve the gaming experience.
 
g33zy said:
All i'm saying is that I like the fact that instead of creating another video card they are looking for different ways to improve the gaming experience.

umm...but they didn't improve the gaming experience
 
First Feel:
Yes, people do feel it. all the time! Tons of testimonials here:
http://www.killernic.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=4

Not to mention the anandtech review that said:
we did a blind performance test in WoW with a third party. The third party had no idea their on-board NIC had been replaced with the Killer NIC. The first reaction was a question asking if an additional one gigabyte of RAM had been added to the system or if the video card had been changed.

And yes, I only pick out the good quotes, i've analyzed any bad quotes thouroughly though, and for example we are working on more FNApps.

RE: FNApps... we just recently released a new one (called the FNA Firewall), and announced a program to spur development of more (a bouty of over $15,000 is now on offer):
http://killernic.com/KillerNic/KillerDownloadsFNApps.aspx

Finally on PRICE, which, if we cut through all the crap, i think is the real issue some people have with the Killer... and it ain't cheap.
Why? 1.) it does have a lot of components that are not cheap: a 400Mhz network processor with custom designed chip, 64 Megs of Ram, Gigabit Phy, 8Megs of onboard flash, USB port, plus 3v or 5v PCI edge power circuitry... all this costs money to make (of course Volumes help this aspect of cost a lot!)

2.) The technology around the Killer comes from Corporate Server Network acceleration technology (e.g. web server, e-commerce servers, database servers, etc.). A Web Accellerator card costs around 800$+.... so what the team at Bigfoot has done, is create a card that is in the budget of SOME gamers, and believe me, we would really really like it to be in budget for all... but it is what it is.

3.) The support and future proof value of this card is way above average products. So far the team has produced tons of new features and ongoing patches for new software products... Not to mention the fact that each and every FNApp that comes out adds incredible value to every Killer... and we don't think that people will be buying a NEW killer every year (like they do now with $500+ video cards).

Whew, glad to get that off my chest...
and yes, I will try to stay and keep up, PM me if I get too busy and there is a thread that needs my attention.

Thanks for the questions,

TS
 
So if I'm looking at this right, the only FNapp is the firewall app? Thats pretty crappy, I mean at this point you could really be selling a Killer nic without the FNApps processor for a lower price and people would get the same value out of it.

The FNapps and its processing power are the only things about the nic that interest me. But not if theres nothing for it.
 
My big issue with this killer nic:

My router doesnt use high end NICs, neither does my modem, and neither does the router comcast has out here in a cabinet suck on the side of this apartment.

Rip on me for this if you like, but I really fail to see how the killer nic is going to give $300-$400 worth of improvement in my online gaming experiance. If im getting 50Fps with my onboard NIC, and the Killer nic truely does increase framerate by 10%... thats a whole whopping 5Fps, probably something I wouldnt be able to notice.

And the other part of this killer NIC, the latency/lag improvement. Pings to my router are less than 1ms, pings to my ISP (comcast) gateway, are anywhere from 5 to 14ms. I just dont understand how this card is going to give any improvement worth the money. Aside from actually buying one and proving/disproving it, I can only speculate.
 
bob said:
Rip on me for this if you like, but I really fail to see how the killer nic is going to give $300-$400 worth of improvement in my online gaming experiance.

I guess you can buy the Killer for ~$250 now. Price drop.

But yeah, your point is valid especially when you can just buy a DGL-4300 with the Ubicom StreamEngine for ~$100 and have prioritized packets available for your whole network which only helps marginally and only when you have Johnny pron addicted surfing while you game.
 
no, there are dozens of FNApps, an entire open source operating system (Linux) evan a fully functional (and open source) compiler.

FNA Firewall is one of the first that have been released in a 'big' way though... expect more to come.

And anyways, you obviously don't understand what a Network Processing Unit does (NPU)... without it you would NOT get the benefits of the Killer offloading and replacing the MS Windows stack with a highly optimized interrupt driven game-focused network model.

happy to go into that more if there is interest.. :), or click here:
http://killernic.com/KillerNic/KillerAboutLLR.aspx

TS
~~~
Bigfoot Engineering
 
bob, if you don't like the improvement potential, you should definately wait till you see enough value (it will get there, especially when you are firewalled, and downloading Torrents on it, and then start VOIPing using it).

Met-AL: Packet prioritiztion is the lowest feature of the Killer... you are right, it's technology better used in a router with leachers. BUT If you want real latency performance improvement that STACKS with router prioritization, and you want a boost in FPS WITH the potential of FNA...

then give Killer a shot.

If you don't want all that.... you've made your point.

TS
 
I have no doubt that there is some good technology on the card, and that it cost a lot of money to develop said technology. I don't think it's a shoddy product, I just think that there is not enough justification to stomach the price tag right now. Hopefully this will change though. I see this product as more of an enabler of better future gaming experiences, rather than a solution to current performance issues.

Remember too, that the US is wayyy behind on Internet connection speeds as compared to the rest of the world. As we catch up and our multiplayer gaming pipes get bigger, we may see this card become a more useful thing to have.
 
Well the only FNapp I see is FNAFirewall. I dont care about the LLR, my pings are in the 20s to 40s for games as it is.

With googling I still havent found a list of FNapps. What are the dozens of apps?
 
Boscoh said:
I have no doubt that there is some good technology on the card, and that it cost a lot of money to develop said technology. I don't think it's a shoddy product, I just think that there is not enough justification to stomach the price tag right now. Hopefully this will change though. I see this product as more of an enabler of better future gaming experiences, rather than a solution to current performance issues.

Remember too, that the US is wayyy behind on Internet connection speeds as compared to the rest of the world. As we catch up and our multiplayer gaming pipes get bigger, we may see this card become a more useful thing to have.

You mean bigger tubes ;). I dont consider this card as being a sheep in wolfes clothing, nor do I doubt that its a good performer. What Im really having a hard time with... well, let use myself as an example.

I dont game often, but considering what is on tv during the daytime... theres not much else to do in my free time. A battlefield 2, FEAR, HL1/HL2 fan, I play online as much as I have the chance. Im the type of person that will blow a money-loaf if there is an area which can have good improvement. I think that life is worth living now, im not the type of person to save up every penny for 'later'. For example, I blew 700 bucks on two 6' tall subwoofers tuned to 14hz.... for gaming and watching dvds, on my computer. Battlefield 2 doesnt cut the mustard on an 8" subwoofer, and I saw there was room for great improvement in this area.

Audio is one thing, but networking is another. Lets assume FIOS's 30/5Mb fiber optic internet is ~45.00/mo, avalible in nearly every city in the country, and people like senator ted stevens hasn't yet mollested the internet. Lets also assume the killer nic has been in production for a few years, and its price is down to $150-$200.00. I use a Pfsense firewall/router between the outside world and my LAN for firewalling, traffic shaping, and for VPN. My router is a 500Mhz K6 with 415 megs of ram, the NIC inside of it is a dual-port compaq server nic, an older one.

Ive got a stupidly oversized audio system for rattling my windows when firing in the tank. I have a router which should be fairly decent in comparison to some of the 'gamer' routers, and 30/5mb fiber optic internet is about as good as its going to get for gaming. I have $300.00 sitting on my desk, its winter... theres not much to blow it on aside from gaming or alcohol.

I ask, with this kind of theoretical setup, what would the killer nic do for me in terms of improving my overall gaming experiance. Lets just assume ive previously been using my onboard NIC. I dont want to come across as someone who is rejecting this technology all together, Im just having a very hard time understanding how its going to be worth it, at any cost, for someone like me... and I know that what I do (gaming behind a decent router) isnt rare. If theres one thing I am... a skeptic. Im also sure there are many other people wondering the exact same thing im wondering.
 
I can only speculate on what it would be useful for in that situation. One thing immediately comes to mind: in-game voice communications. Although, using the right software, that isn't that big of a CPU hog right now. Maybe in the future (this is a big maybe), this card can offload the processing a game does when it receives position updates for players in MP games. That may have the potential to boost frame rates quite a bit. However, I think that would require substantial coding from the game developers...which I don't think they'll do unless this card takes off or shows real promise. Thats the kind of "better future gaming experience" stuff I was talking about.

I do see your point though, given that kind of setup there is not much reason that either one of us can see for forking out that much money. Unless something along the lines of the above happens, and it improves the hell out of frame rates, I would never buy it. And I wouldn't be spending over $100 on it if that did happen.
 
Bob, I like your hypothetical...

So, you don't need a hardware firewall (you've already dropped some cash on that). no problem.

The question is simple... do you want a smoother and faster online gaming experience? If you are satisifed with your current smoothness/fastness... okay, no problem, you are done (until more FNApps come out that make it necessary to have a Killer again).

However, if you want 5-10ms of lower ping, 5-20fps higher framerates, while playing online games... and a smoother online experience.. then you should TRY the Killer, which has been proven (in tons of reviews) to do just that in most games.... in games where it hasn't shown the ping benefit, users report that the game does feel smoother, and ping charts show less variability in ping.

I'm happy to talk about 'how' does it do this... (as I'm an engineer), but in your hypothetical, you wanted to know why you should buy.

Wanna talk tech, that's where I live.

TS
 
How does a person get to try one out? Not being a smartass here, but do you guys a program for trying one out? Doing it thru a vendor like NewEgg will charge a 15% restock and they really aren't the way to do a trial of a product.

Of course..there is the off chance that this thing will amaze me and I will have to shell out $250 and want to keep it!

PS, you should get your user name here setup with the forum staff so that your forum title reflects your status with Bigfoot Networks. Make it official that way as other vendors have done from various retailers and OEMs.
 
will work on that official bigfoot status idea.

2 ideas to 'try it out':
First, if you buy from our website we offer a 30-day money back guarantee.

Second, there are a lot of etailers, i don't know which have a restocking fee and which don't, but there may be some out there.

TS
 
I'm still trying to get beyond that fact that the fastest part of a network is the slowest part. So if I am getting pings of 100 in a game (without anything else running on my network), a new NIC (unless the thing in dying) is not going to help here, it is the connection in between.
 
protias said:
I'm still trying to get beyond that fact that the fastest part of a network is the slowest part. So if I am getting pings of 100 in a game (without anything else running on my network), a new NIC (unless the thing in dying) is not going to help here, it is the connection in between.

I have seen myself, using the same game server, using the same spec'd PC, a difference of as much as 10ms....by using different NICs. Same exact PC specs, same exact connection, same exact game, same exact server...different NICs.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
I have seen myself, using the same game server, using the same spec'd PC, a difference of as much as 10ms....by using different NICs. Same exact PC specs, same exact connection, same exact game, same exact server...different NICs.

It would have been nice to see two exact machines doing this at the same time, but have their own internet connection. Servers can have different loads even within a few minutes/hours of requesting packets. I take your word that it is faster, but I am I still not convinced.
 
10ms is a big difference that may have simply been caused by a change in route due to congestion. To truly test this you need an entirely self contained network.

Scratch the network, just drop a crossover between the client and the server.
 
Xipher said:
10ms is a big difference that may have simply been caused by a change in route due to congestion. To truly test this you need an entirely self contained network.

Scratch the network, just drop a crossover between the client and the server.

That would be a good start and then expand from there.
 
We (and our many reviewers)
http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/KillerNewsReviews.aspx
have done tons of testing, in many of the configurations you mention.

Some interesting findings.

1.) Traceroute and Ping DO NOT accurately estimate your in-game latency... they DO show if you have huge latencies (like on dial-up) but that's about it.

2.) In-Game Latency has to do with both the network (e.g. internet or LAN) AND to a much larger than expected amount: network programming and windows network stack effeciency.

It is #2 above that causes Killer to perform SO well in so many games.

There are a lot of varieties of game networking we've studied, and the most common (and most interesting) are games where the network stack is literally execercised on every game loop (e.g. check for data on every FPS (frame). That means that data is literally waiting for the app to ask for it, and introduces xms of latency into the game where x is dependant on FPS of the game. Yep, they are interrelated in this type of game.

Other types of games do other things (usually whatever the base 'engine' is doing that the game was designed with). We on the Killer design team literally examined the network stack calls of dozens of the most popular MMO and FPS games, and optimized for every case a new network stack that is completely hardware drive and interrupt drive.

So, with Killer interrupting the game when data arrives, you get the best in performance possible (and that's a whopping 10ms of reduced latency in some games, like WOW and CS:Source).

TS
 
tomstomper said:
I'm happy to talk about 'how' does it do this... (as I'm an engineer), but in your hypothetical, you wanted to know why you should buy.

Wanna talk tech, that's where I live.

TS

Im not really interested as to why I should/should not buy, but more so would it have much of a benefit with the kind of setup I have. Though, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, ill have to wait this out and see how people like the killer-nic once they become more popular/affordable.
 
Question for you tom, checked your forum quick and found that you are working on Linux drivers, my question is what is your intended way to release these drivers? Will this be done in a binary object fashion (like the official nVidia kernel module), or will they be open?

Now, I hope you understand why I ask this question. If you have watched the recent news about the nVidia drivers, you might have heard about the local privilege escalation exploit found in the drivers (which has since been corrected).
 
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