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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."
Where's the comparison between different onboard gigabit chipsets? (eg Broadcom, nForce, etc.) Where's the comparison between different PCI, PCI-X, and PCI Expressgigabit NICs?
If applicable, what are the settings for the onboard NICs being tested? Many have options for various CPU offload settings and optimizations for throughput or CPU usage.
Until we see these, how can we be sure if a high-end regular PCI-e NIC won't work just as well?
I suspect it will produce a noticeable improvement in situations where your computer is running heavily loaded. If you're playing a game that keeps your cpu pegged or near most of the time, your latency will be noticeably higher because of that (using the typical network card, which is a bit 'winmodemish' in that it's relying on the cpu to do much of its work.) So having a card that does all the network processing itself, without relying on the CPU, would avoid that slowdown.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
How can a NIC decrease the latency in any noticable way?
You'd be surprised what marketers can do.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
I don't see any benchmarks in that article. Here are some,, and they don't make the thing look all that impressive.
The only benefit in this thing, apparently, is that, for games which make too many "select()" polls, there's a faster no-data return. This is really a bug in the game, which ought to be multi-threaded by now. As games are revised for multi-core systems, this problem had better go away. In fact, it probably will go away in Vista, which has a multithreaded network stack.
These kinds of "professional" gamers could use a fancy NIC with lower times. Or if your Richie Rich and you need some extras for your already pimped out gaming rig.
From TFA:
That is just idiotic.
If you aren't going to do it right, then you are doing it WRONG. So it did NOT "reflect what would happen in real world gaming situations".
Again, you script it. You do not play it.
I'll give the KillerNIC people this, they certainly know how to pick their suckers.
Seriously. They didn't even bring their own PC's? They used the "testing machines" provided for them. And they think this has anything to do with "real world" performance?
A far, far better test, even under these biased conditions, would have been for them to use their own PC's. It cannot be that difficult to swap a NIC, can it?
In a blind taste test, more people preferred Coke over the Pepsi that I had previously pissed in.
For some strange reason, all I ever see in these "reviews" are the KillerNIC people insisting that the games be run on THEIR machines. And people who are "reviewing" it accepting this strange requirement. And not even scripting it so that they can compare it with their home machines.
In all the "reviews" of this that get posted here, I notice a few recurring items.
One of the most interesting to me is that they want the "gamers" to test the NIC as part of their entire box. But the real gamers would already have a box built to their specs that they were familiar with
Yet the "gamers" never seem to insist that they be allowed to compare the KillerNIC in their own box, against their existing NIC. And if they're serious gamers, they've already spent money replacing the on-board NIC if their motherboard came with it.
Kind of like if a tire company wants you to like new tires, but they won't let you drive them on your own car. You have to use their car. And you have to compare it to a different car that they have without the tires. And people accept that.
Under those conditions, I can show you improved ping times using nothing more than cool stickers for your case.
This is an "emperor with no clothes" thing - if you can't tell the difference, you must not be an experienced gamer. Since I'm an experienced gamer, I can tell the difference. HORSE PUCKY, boy!
This is an "emperor with no clothes" thing - if you can't tell the difference, you must not be an experienced gamer. Since I'm an experienced gamer, I can tell the difference. HORSE PUCKY, boy!
Naw, latency is an easily measured and quantified number and evidently this card does lower your latency somewhat.
How much that "somewhat" is noticeable is debatable. For those spending $bucks a month for high-speed internet for their $buckbucksbucks gaming rig, a crappy NIC is going to be rather bothersome. Go talk to a rabid "knife-makes-you-run-faster" CounterStrike player and ask him about the importance of latency.
But, for the rest of us, a NIC isn't really a bottleneck and onboard/generic PCI NICs do just fine. It's not "noticeable" enough.
Think of it as "online gamer viagra" - lower your ping by 5 ms!
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