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'Killer' Network Card Actually Reduces Latency
fatduck writes "HardOCP has published a review of the KillerNIC network card from Bigfoot Networks. The piece examines benchmarks of the product in online gaming and a number of user experiences. The product features a 'Network Processing Unit' or NPU, among other acronyms, which promise to drastically reduce latency in online games. Too good to be true? The card also sports a hefty price tag of $250." From the article: "The Killer NIC does exactly what it is advertised to do. It will lower your pings and very likely give you marginally better framerates in real world gaming scenarios. The Killer NIC is not for everyone as it is extremely expensive in this day and age of "free" onboard NICs. There are very likely other upgrades you can make to your computer for the same investment that will give you more in return. Some gamers will see a benefit while others do not. Hardcore deathmatchers are likely to feel the Killer NIC advantages while the middle-of-the road player will not be fine tuned enough to benefit from the experience. Certainly though, the hardcore online gamer is exactly who this product is targeted at."
First Post
this card is for the gamer that needs two clocks: one set to tomorrow and one set to Tokyo time, so he knows when to drift race.
(sorry for mangling to PA quote)
Seriously, $200? WTF?
Killer network cards have been around for so long, there's actually a Localtalk version here:
http://www.fiftythree.org/etherkiller/
Business Development Guy: We need a new product. Something... niche. Something overpriced. I know! Don't we still have a bunch of boxes of old network cards?
Hardware Engineer: Uh, yeah. We were about to offload them on eBay to make room in our closet...
Business Development Guy: No! Lets tack on some parts from China and sell them! We'll call it, hmm.. the Killer NIC! Since no one wants to buy NIC cards, we'll overprice them for no apparent reason! $250 a pop!
* Hardware Engineer bashes his forehead on the desk.
Hardware Engineer: You've got to be kidding me. Isn't that, like, fraud?
Business Development Guy: Not at all. We'll just never say how it works, only that it works. The processor will be for like, decorative purposes. Consumers love that kind of stuff!
It requires a fiber-optic cable because it needs to be able to send the photons in a superposition of states. By the time your program gets around to sending a packet, the photons are most of the way there and merely need to collapse into the same state as the packet. The naysayers who claim that the card can't actually improve latency are only thinking in terms of classical physics.
Badass Resumes
What's more interesting is that the card is actually a single-board computer with PowerPC processor and 64 MB of RAM!
So can you run Linux on it then? You could ssh to it from Windows and get some real work done.
25 years and counting, they still haven't caught me. :-)
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
Call me Mint Jelly; cause I'm still on the lamb. We Bob's gotta stick together.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Clearly you didn't read the review. The card works.
Maybe you shouldn't accept everything you read on wikipedia as scientific fact.
Badass Resumes
Circumcision is child abuse.
I'm on the Blue Team and "They're Everywhere!"
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Yeah, you definitely need to have a Cisco router with Monster Cable CAT 6 running between it and your computer to make full use of Gigabit. Anything less and you're dropping packet fidelity through crosstalk line expansion. Not to mention the undervoltage latencies.
You probably just forgot to buy the gold-plated ethernet cables as well. BTW, that combination also improves the sound quality of audio files transmitted over the network.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
While Weird Al is waxing his modem to make it go faster, I've found that cheetah blood rubbed on a network card will significantly reduce latency.
Paragraphs are fun.
And a great way to break up thoughts.
But each sentence,
does not need its own
paragraph.
it would be better if nobody complained about the complains that are about complains, so... oh, wait, nevermind.
Unless
you are making
poetry
OMG! William Shatner reads Slashdot!
khasim (12/9/06): In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
The secret is that the card comes with a very noticable "Type R" sticker for your case. That alone can improve performance by 12.3% across the board.
His userid is really 5 and I can barely frag him with teht fancy rig and apartment selected for it's proximity to the tournament server. Up to his nefarious tricks, he once again uses the absolute value of reverse psychology to propogate this rumor of a 'contrived testamonial' to ensure that everyone sees through the killernic gimmick and doesn't compete on a level playing field with him. If he actually had any skillz, he'd be dangerous. This guy is why they invented the deagle.
Amazingly, yes.
The 'Killer' sends packets so strong that any congestion encountered along the way gives up its place in the queue. Utilising the unique HellGain (TM) technology, pulses are transmitted with more energy than other NICs
Also, for those using half-duplex on hub ports, there's the CollisionKiller (TM) feature. When collisions are detected, your card keeps transmitting, but one-louder. Depending on the congestion on the segment, up to 500V could be present at the connector.