Bigfoot Netoworks' Killer NIC Sneak Peek

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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Bigfoot’s Killer NIC - A network interface card for the hardcore gamer? This is exactly who Bigfoot Networks is targeting with their “Killer NIC.” We give you a sneak peek a the Killer NIC, a product that Bigfoot Networks thinks is worth your hard earned dollar.

There are no doubt more than a few Killer NIC hurdles. Convincing anyone that they need a $279.00 NIC over the $0 NIC that is already on their motherboard is going to be tough. The guys at BigFoot know this very well. They are currently positioning their Killer NIC to capture some space at the super-high-end niche of the market. Add to that hurdle, once you find someone with the cash, they have to be doing something with their computer to appreciate this type of hardware. The fact of the matter is that most of us have no use for a $279 NIC, but there are a few that do and this is who Bigfoot is catering to. Value is certainly in the eye of the beholder.
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Please DIGG if you find worthy.
 
The whole extra processor thing for running little incidental apps is pretty sweet. Not to mention entirely bypassing the Windows networking stack...that either saves a lot of security vulnerabilities, or creates a new set entirely. The possibility for running TS/Vent/etc on the NPU instead of CPU is pretty sweet too.

Great app for BT too maybe, if you could add some kinda thing-a-ma-bob(TM) that would help juggle the massssssive connection amounts.

But I guess if you build it, some of them will come buy it. I've heard people here at school talking about it like it's the second coming of Jebus or something.
 
I can't imagine a situation where $279 is better spent on this nic over a better CPU/Mobo/memory combo.
 
XOR != OR said:
I can't imagine a situation where $279 is better spent on this nic over a better CPU/Mobo/memory combo.
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I aggree with you on that. Maybe for like $50-100 i could see but not $279. Increase framerates by 3-10%? Might as well spend that $300 bucks on a better videocard to give you that 3-10% increase. I mean come on... if you dont like your ping in a current server then find another one to play in.
 
Now...if the USB port could emulate a serial terminal connection for the linux...you could use it for all kinds of things.

Hmmm....posibilities (not even considering it for a NIC) of having a dedicated unix operating system on a card that is tied into all the hardware of the PC....could be a good mix.

Oh yeah, probably makes a nice NIC too.
 
Interesting Concept.

I would like to get my hands on one to fiddle with all the little secrets this thing holds to see exactly what it can do.
I won't be spending $280 on a network card anytime soon though, not at the very least until I see a very valuable reason.

I network, online game and file share a lot and I have the money to spend so if it doesn't work for me then I find them having difficulty selling these.
 
XOR != OR said:
I can't imagine a situation where $279 is better spent on this nic over a better CPU/Mobo/memory combo.
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When you say 'better' what exactly are you referring to? Because if your hung on the price, you should have stopped reading in the first paragraph.

To some people, it's hard to get better than what they already have and they will buy it. (It's probably the PPU crowd while your bs'n)
 
I do agree that it would be awsome for BT & maybe security, but I really don't buy the gaming performance increase.. Guess we'll have to wait for a full review..

Also, since a lot of people with high end systems are lacking spare PCI slots, it would be cool for them to release a PCI-E version. I might actually buy one to screw around with :)

BTW Kyle, SPELL CHECK FTW! (sorry!)
 
I'll reserve total judgement until I see some actual benchmarks on this card, and I'm sure it'll provide some benefit over the cheap-chipset onboard NIC's as they do tend to offload work onto the main CPU, but I hardly believe for one minute this could provide much benefit over a good offboard 3Com or Intel NIC.

Unless it has some magical powers too it, it's not going to provide much of a reduced ping considering 99% of your latency is outside of your own network, i.e. this machine has about 90 feet of network cable, through 2 switches, a router and then to the cable modem, and the ping time to my modem is < 1 ms, yet to most good game servers I ping 40-80 ms, all that lag is outside of my network and thus my control. This card can't influence any speed beyond it and the first hop, so I fail to see how this is going to reduce pings unless you're comparing to a poor quality NIC that introduces lag.

Of course it does appear to have some nice benefits with it's own CPU and Linux environment, but just like the preview says, it's going for a very niche market, and it's kind of hard to believe they're going to sell enough of these to stay in business long at the price they're asking for it. I'm the guy who's a stickler for quality, my entire network is all business class 3Com, Cisco, and Intel stuff, and even I wouldn't pay this kind of price for a NIC when there are alternatives that would work just as well for sub-$100 prices.
 
I've gotta see some benchies on it. This isnt 2000 where onboard NICs were sucking up 5-15% of your CPU.....

I dunno, so many things that it advertizes, I just dont think that it will work any better in real-world situations than onboard nic or a $10 netgear FA311....

I'm waiting for the full article. Benchmark some server apps to see how it does.
 
Can you fold with it?? Can you oc it?? In all seriouseness, FNA is very interesting to me... I mean, if it could run virus scanning, firewall, and a torrent proggy downloading to a usb hd, it would be very usefull.. The price is daunting but,

If your the guy/gal with 2x 7950gtx, hooked to a 30" Apple cinema display, an x-fie and 7.1 surround, 8 disc raid0/1 array, running the latest conroe/am2 with 4 gigs of the fastest ddr2 around, all oc'd to the max, you don't have too many ways left to increase performance.. This might just give you that little bit more.

I wish I was that guy.. I'm not, so I will prolly end up passing on it.. I have too many other areas of my computer that could benefit more from $279, than buying a nic, however nice a nic it is..
 
Like several others, I want to see some benchmarks. I guess it might affect latency if there's a bunch of other network traffic (BitTorrent or whatever), but I'm not convinced. I've found that if there's something else creating lots of traffic, my router or my cable modem is the weak link. Of course, if you're spending $280 on a network card, you probably have something better than your typical cable/DSL internet connection and el-cheapo router.
 
Somewhat OT, but how could one run uTorrent in the background and game with a good ping? Moreover, without a hardware device...like a Sonicwall. Some sort of software proggy?

Ontopic, It'll sure be interesting to see the retail version of this guy. So is the heatsink really necessary? :p
 
Jodiuh said:
Somewhat OT, but how could one run uTorrent in the background and game with a good ping? Moreover, without a hardware device...like a Sonicwall. Some sort of software proggy?
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Did you read the article? :confused:
 
tdg said:
Unless it has some magical powers too it, it's not going to provide much of a reduced ping considering 99% of your latency is outside of your own network, i.e. this machine has about 90 feet of network cable, through 2 switches, a router and then to the cable modem, and the ping time to my modem is < 1 ms, yet to most good game servers I ping 40-80 ms, all that lag is outside of my network and thus my control. This card can't influence any speed beyond it and the first hop, so I fail to see how this is going to reduce pings unless you're comparing to a poor quality NIC that introduces lag.
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I think that sums it up nicely. Sure, this card will do a lot for LAN ping times, but it's going to do jack-all for everything else, and that everything else, is like 99% of the problem.
 
I have always thought to myself that one of these would be a great idea. I have always wondered where all my ping goes/ cpu power goes etc. If only each aspect of our computers could be better *managed instead of blindly trusting the OS to run them.

*I am no expert and I do not understand all the ins and outs of an OS.*

Maybe (in the future) there will be a way to control exactly what you're pc can and cannot do while you are running a game. That would be sweet! Now if we could just get REAL broadband like europe / asia we would have really low ping times. :eek:
 
movax said:
The whole extra processor thing for running little incidental apps is pretty sweet. Not to mention entirely bypassing the Windows networking stack...that either saves a lot of security vulnerabilities, or creates a new set entirely. The possibility for running TS/Vent/etc on the NPU instead of CPU is pretty sweet too.

Great app for BT too maybe, if you could add some kinda thing-a-ma-bob(TM) that would help juggle the massssssive connection amounts.

But I guess if you build it, some of them will come buy it. I've heard people here at school talking about it like it's the second coming of Jebus or something.
Click to expand...

For what it is worth.....The guy that built this thing worked for Intel and designed their T1000, T1000E and ISCSI controllers.
 
saturnine2 said:
BTW Kyle, SPELL CHECK FTW! (sorry!)
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yeah, thanks for the help pointing it out exactly. :rolleyes: I will get right on that.

Just for the record, if you are going to make fun of our articles, please have the decency to give back just a little and tell us what is broken so we can fix it easily.
 
saturnine2 said:
Sorry big guy, I was wrong pointing out a little title mistake and should have PMed you first :( Thanks for the first REAL preview of the "Killer NIC" :)
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You know bro, I am the one that needs to be hit side the head. there must have been 12 corrections in there that needed to be published. Sorry about that. I think we upped a version that had not been edited. :eek: My bad, you are all good. When people mention mistakes, it is usually one or two....not a dozen. I dont expect you to document all of that. Thanks for bringing my attention to them, most are hopefully fixed now. Let me know if you guys see any others.
 
I might be interested in one since I have a shitty connection and my sister is always downloading shit. Also the ping masking is nice so uhm... can get my server on ladders :cool: :p
 
Is HardOCP recieving any money for giving so much attention and coverage to a product that has never been tested in real world conditions nor ever been benchmarked? Not as accusation, just curious, as they are recieving a great deal of coverage from your site.
 
Not until we have gigabit connections can I see this thing ever being a componenet of a gamer's or everyday PC. It's far too expensive for the average Joe to put in his new gaming rig.

But, the possibilities for this thing in the server, Linux, and firewalling community endless. Think about it, a server could have antivirus stuff loaded on the NIC and viruses get scanned and stopped before they even hit the server! That, combined with the fact that it bypasses the Windows stack code altogether could truly revolutionize the security industry. Then there's the homemade router guys (myself being on of them). I could load BitTorrent and my internet security suite in this NIC's system on the WAN side of my firewall. Everything is done on the hardware level, all I have to do is get Linux to pass on the packets.

This is a really cool product, I can't wait to see how it pans out! :D
 
LOL they build it for the hardcore gamer and everyone in the IT field are thinking of lots of other uses for it already lol.
 
I really like the idea of prioritizing apps to bandwidth limitations. I'd love to divy up my FIOS and put it to good use. ;)
 
This thing looks interesting but not in the way they are thinking about it. I'm thinking for small business setups. How cool would it be to have this in a sbs server running a firewall software giving the server an extra level of protection before hitting the net. This is a market that the price wouldn't be as big of an issue in and in my mind this could work well there with the right support. I have no interest in buying one of these for home use but if some programs get some stuff working on these who knows?
 
I am sure some battlefield 2 or quake 4 heads will buy this thing.

I do not think {H} is getting paid to review the product. I am expecting a fair evaluation. I expect a "yes it does reduce ping times, so if you have the money, go for it review"

It is an interesting concept - essentially using a co-processor to offfload all/most of the network related processes. If they spin it and create additional applications in say linux for the card. Power users (who have deep pockets) would probably increase the companies revenue far more than rich online gamers.

I wonder if nvidia/3com/etc will take note of this product and implement some of its features in their next gen designs.
 
The original Killer NIC white paper had some throughput benchmarks. I questioned those numbers because they didn't look right to me. When I got the test information I did my own tests, which significantly beat the reported results. Bigfoot subsequently withdrew the numbers from their white paper and reported some flaws in their tests. This can be seen here:

http://www.endlagnow.org/ELNForums/Topic400-12-1.aspx

Straight-ahead throughput tests are the easiest ones to do; anyone can do them, and their results will matter for local file transfers using high-end drive systems. Drives systems are also getting significantly faster; full gigabit is already a bottleneck for RAID arrays, before too long it's going to be a bottleneck for single drives, and affordability of 10 GbE is a ways off.

So when it comes time to do a review, I'd like to see some straight-ahead throughput numbers (in addition to the gaming benchmarks of course); whatever the results and whatever the justification for the results. Perhaps it'll have really good local gigabit throughput -- great. Perhaps it won't, and the reasoning is that it's optimized for UDP and gaming / etc., and not for large file transfers / LAN access. But it'd be good to know where it lies though so you don't have false expectations and possibly subsequent disappointment. For the gamer who wants it all, perhaps they'll have to do a dual NIC setup with one for Internet gaming and another for high-speed local file access.

I'd like to add that the natural line of thinking about online gaming performance takes me to the game servers. I understand that Bigfoot is doing some work or looking to do some work with game vendors / hosts. It'd be pretty interesting to know if they're able to contribute something to the bigger problem from that end.
 
Hmm, a lot more here than I first though. I do not have the money for one, but I must say that I'm a lot more impressed than first thoughts had me thinking.

I actually like the idea of it running my bit torrent client, but really uTorrent only uses next to nothing right now so that really does not matter.
 
Bordak said:
Is HardOCP recieving any money for giving so much attention and coverage to a product that has never been tested in real world conditions nor ever been benchmarked? Not as accusation, just curious, as they are recieving a great deal of coverage from your site.
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No, they probably published the article because it is interesting and interesting articles help make a site popular.
 
BoogerBomb said:
LOL they build it for the hardcore gamer and everyone in the IT field are thinking of lots of other uses for it already lol.
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Yeah, everyone at work is doing the same thing. Maybe it's the price, I dunno, but that's what everyone seems to think.

$280 for a NIC? ...iffy!

$280 for a little, tiny Linux box running inside your Windows PC? NOW you are talking! Seriously, using that USB drive for a larger install....I mean, to be able to run antivirus and firewall software completely outside the Windows environment - outside the network stack and *everything*....holy crap, that's got some SERIOUS potential!

What on earth are these guys thinking advertising this to just gamers?
 
If it significantly reduces CPU usage on network/internet traffic and also functioned as a quality hardware firewall then I would pay $125 for it (or maybe a little more).

If they promoted it for those purposes it would sell in the mainstream market and the price would come down. I think people are getting pretty fed up with the quality of today's hardware and software firewalls.
 
Good read guy... Thanks for the preview. I for one would much rather spend my money on this than a PPU! Maybe tomorrow, 6 months or a year from now that will not be the case but it sure is today. I plan to pick one up unless the [H] finds issues when they do their "community test" (great idea BTW - cool spin on real world benchmarking).
 
Bordak said:
Is HardOCP recieving any money for giving so much attention and coverage to a product that has never been tested in real world conditions nor ever been benchmarked? Not as accusation, just curious, as they are recieving a great deal of coverage from your site.
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WTF Maynard... Why would you even pose this question when Kyle indicated how he plans to move forward with the review of this product? :rolleyes:
 
3leggedcow said:
Did you read the article? :confused:
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Yes, I did. It was about the Killer NIC, a hardware solution to prioritize network traffic. I'm looking for a software solution. I didn't miss anything did I?
 
I actually am not technically gifted enough to understand all that but I do fileshare ALOT, and do my fair share of online gaming. However someone brought up a point about routers. What affect will the router have on the NIC doing its thing. Will i have to go buy some expensive router to take advantage of all the cool stuff you are supposed to be able to do with this? I can't wait to see a review of this because I would spend the money if it will honestly benefit me.
 
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