Killer NIC

[YegaDoyai]

First to buy this gets thier legs torn off and buried alive. Everyone after that just gets burned alive.

http://uk.gear.ign.com/articles/729/729733p1.html

DO NO FEED THE TROLLS

[DAve]

All that proves is that FEAR, CS and WOW have shit netcodes. Q4 and BF2 have no advantage at all.
Do they have a writer with a decent grasp of statistics. It doesn't sounds so.

It does sound good though - a mini linux distro running on the card, complete with firewall, antivirus and bittorrent client. Mmm. For $300, it's a bit steep though.

[Phizz]

Ok. Sure it has some nice features but tbh for $300 I rather have a bog standard £10 network card. If I want a firewall I'll stick to my router tyvm.

[Ru]

That looks. SO. PIMPIN!

[YegaDoyai]

I think you guys are missing the point. Your average decent Intel/3Com seperate card does everything this card does and costs about £30-40. There is some strength to the argument that it can aliviate CPU load but only in situation were CPU load is approaching 80%+, You will only notice a difference at these loads and if that is the case then a new CPU will more than likely cost about the same or be a better upgrade in general.

And yes Ru, that is why they will sell them.

[Sid]

Read about this a few weeks ago and yes it is overpriced but so is all high-end technology (£200 PhysX card anyone?). This type of equipment is designed to appeal to the extreme PC builder.

It is essentially a second computer with a USB port via the PCI interface. You could run and install applications without them having to 'talk' to the main system or use any main system resources. Although real world tests have produced 10ms to 20ms drops in pings in games such as CS:S, gaming is perhaps not necessarily the best use for this card. There are a whole load of possibilities - but as I said, this is overpriced and simply a luxury for those who can afford it.

[YegaDoyai]

I'd like to see those independant and scientific proofs that they can drop the ping by as much as that ( in average conditions) as if they could then £300 is well worth it.

[DAve]

Although real world tests have produced 10ms to 20ms drops in pings in games such as CS:S, gaming is perhaps not necessarily the best use for this card.
I don't physicaly see how they can reduce the ping time by 10-20 ms (on a 40 ms ping, say). The vast majority of ping time is the time it takes the signal to travel from one end of the pipe to another.

Unless I don't really understand what's going on here (hey, it's not the first time!)

[Sid]

Yeah, I'm not sure about how they do it, either - haven't really spent much time reading:

Quote from the HardOCP article:

At a recent trip to the Bigfoot offices in Austin, TX, we saw the Killer NIC working and just how the team there was collecting data about its performance. In real world comparable scenarios we saw pings drop 10ms to 20ms on a broadband connection playing World of Warcraft and Counter Strike Source. We also saw frame rates positively impacted anywhere between 3 to 10%.

[YegaDoyai]

If you read the bumph on the Killer NIC site it is almost exactly the same as what is on HardOCP, I get the impression that there is a reason HardOCP got an exclusive.

[Strings]

Will believe when I see objective 3rd party benchmarks. Just like the physics card... promised the world, but in fact delivere a bowl of cold custard.

Unless Im proven wrong, waste of money IMO

[YegaDoyai]

Actually, a bowl of cold custard would be a step up from a PhsyX card.

(you could reheat the custard)

[DAve]

Actually, a bowl of cold custard would be a step up from a PhsyX card.
IGN reports a bowl of PhysXNic Custard (tm) boosts frame rates by around 10%.