$280 Killer NIC card "for gamers"

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Googer
Thats because such devices already exsit and those NICs only support Hardware TCP/IP and do not support the UDP protocol that all games use to transmit across the internet. I believe it was LSI who made a NIC with an onboard Intel Xscale Processor (similar to the one used in PDAs) and dedicated RAM. I have not seen it for a while, so I am not sure if they still make it. But I do know Adaptec still makes an awesome ($600+) Gigabit NIC.

(and no I do not work for Killer or any of it's competitors)

And yet another reason to ignore this thing.

Every single NIC out there does the layer 2-4 checksum in hardware. this POS is nothing more than an attempt to rip off people. We're not talking offloading TCP processing. We're talking UDP.

It amazes me really that people are actually believing this crap. Hell, just look at their white paper. it makes people puke.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Googer

I am not pointing at MS Dawn or anyone in perticular, but I feel that there are a few of you who are not too informed or have a grasp of the possiblities that this thing could and can do. Think of this as the new Linksys WRT54G of Gigabit NICs with custom firmware that could be arriving sometime very soon. This NIC may be the next killer product that you may feel the need to own.

Yep I'm extremely misinformed. Just search for all my drivel-on my way to lifer-posts here. It's all good. :laugh:

Gotta have a few more :wine:

The seas have turned brown on the boards and are rising. This place is going to Tallinn.

:laugh:

 

[aidanjm]

Originally posted by: holotech
an OS on a NIC card isnt revolutionary?

it's an interesting idea. I believe ASUS has just brought out an ADSL modem with a similar approach (it can download bitorrents, etc. independently of your computer, due to it's internal operating system). As for the NIC, I guess you have to wait for availability and reveiws.

 

[Hanpan]

Listen to this man. He knows what he's talking about.

Originally posted by: spidey07
Just let it die. This is a scam of tremendous proportions. It has all the makings of a scam..

1) put out website that gets hits on lag
2) this website just so happens to pump a product
3) get the buzz going
4) offer 'be the first on your block to own the ultimate network card!'
5) profit

Ignore this nonsense, it will go away soon. Let it die and don't you dare give the snake oil salesmen a dime of your money.

This is the monster cable/bose of network cards. In every way shape and form. What is so sad is there are still people buy it. Let it die. You are being fooled by people with very good marketing skills. Everything I have read in their "white paper" is full of dark brown bullcrap. Every bit of it. If anything people/gamers should be offended.

-edit-
throw a sniffer on the line and you'll see about a 192-384 kbit stream of small udp packets. This is trivial to even a 1995 computer. It takes less than 1 percent of your processor to do this. It's a scam.

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: Hanpan
Listen to this man. He knows what he's talking about.

Originally posted by: spidey07
Just let it die. This is a scam of tremendous proportions. It has all the makings of a scam..

1) put out website that gets hits on lag
2) this website just so happens to pump a product
3) get the buzz going
4) offer 'be the first on your block to own the ultimate network card!'
5) profit

Ignore this nonsense, it will go away soon. Let it die and don't you dare give the snake oil salesmen a dime of your money.

This is the monster cable/bose of network cards. In every way shape and form. What is so sad is there are still people buy it. Let it die. You are being fooled by people with very good marketing skills. Everything I have read in their "white paper" is full of dark brown bullcrap. Every bit of it. If anything people/gamers should be offended.

-edit-
throw a sniffer on the line and you'll see about a 192-384 kbit stream of small udp packets. This is trivial to even a 1995 computer. It takes less than 1 percent of your processor to do this. It's a scam.

competition is what keeps businesses alive. sometime down the road, many businesses will not be in business once a stronger rival jumps into the picture.
AMD and Intel for example, world leader in computer processors. their image means everything to them, from advertising to the way they present themselves in public, down to the very last nanometer process research diaries they keep in file cabinets.
don't think that the top network companies don't know about this. the future for the Killer NIC will be very interesting find out. it will either dominate or lose sales, signficantly, when a different network business over time, decides to shoot their products at a similar target market, gamers and speed freak enthusiats alike.

 

[Sable]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
The rest of us work for a living.

I give up. You couldn't be more obvious if your username was "shill" (and frankly I resent marketers on behalf of future forum members for taking up usernames without actually being legitimate members). But perhaps one less person will consider buying this each time there's a thread deriding it, to perhaps balance out all the people that will buy it because HardOCP says it's awesome and they have to have it to be true gamers.

Quoted For M*therF*cking Truth.

 

[MrUniq]

Well it seems like some of these enthusiast sites have become more concerned with money rather than giving an honest opinion and review. I saw that forum thread over there and it was obvious he was hedging, surely because he didn't want to upset someone advertising on his site. And using the excuse "I have to present it to gamers" while pretty much copying and pasting whatever press notes he found on the product.

Originally posted by: Sable

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
The rest of us work for a living.

I give up. You couldn't be more obvious if your username was "shill" (and frankly I resent marketers on behalf of future forum members for taking up usernames without actually being legitimate members). But perhaps one less person will consider buying this each time there's a thread deriding it, to perhaps balance out all the people that will buy it because HardOCP says it's awesome and they have to have it to be true gamers.

Quoted For M*therF*cking Truth.

 

[eastvillager]

There is actually one fairly good use for this card:

Running a proxy hack for an online game without having to have a 2nd computer up and running.

KillerNIC might come in handy for cheaters, if not for anybody else.

 

[Schadenfroh]

OP is nothing compared to Rollo.

 

[Mark R]

I've just reread this thread and there was some argument about prioritising traffic.

Prioritising outbound traffic I can understand - the network transport may be a bottleneck - so urgent packets may need sending first (incase they are delayed by a queue of earlier one).

But what on earth is the point of prioritising inbound traffic - the CPU and OS's IP stack are hardly bottlenecks. All that would happen is that the card fires an interrupt when a packet arrives and the OS grants control to the program expecting the data. If data arrives for a program with a higher task-priority, the OS will premptively halt the previous process and hand control to the higher-priority task. I fail to see how prioritising inbound data can be of any value at all.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: aidanjm

Originally posted by: holotech
an OS on a NIC card isnt revolutionary?

OS + NIC == router

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: Mark R
I've just reread this thread and there was some argument about prioritising traffic.

it's called QoS and even a off-the shelf $70 Linksys router can do that, flash a wrtg54 with dd-wrt and you can priorize the hell out of whatever you want. And whatever else you want (eg. firewall, NAT etc.) because it's running on Linux.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: holotech
an OS on a NIC card isnt revolutionary?

Edited... I see others have already pointed out the 'NIC card' thing... ATM machine, PIN number, etc. Thanks!

 

[getbush]

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=27&threadid=1905700&enterthread=y

 

[Evilhomer99]

I used to get fragged all the time, now that I have a Killernic, I'm owning noobs left and right.......thanks Killernic!

But wait theres more! You get not one, but two bottles of computer Oxyclean!

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: JackBurton

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Googer

The Killer NIC is running on a special version of linux and it includes a USB port that can be custom configured to work as a lan based usb device. The Killer NIC's Linux is intended to be customized the way firefox uses plug-ins.

Doesn't it seem kind of out of place to have such a "high end" product available only in plain vanilla pci? A gigabit (capable) interface would be much better suited with pci-e. The USB interface is OK but most of the managed solutions have their own internal IP that can be accessed via telnet.

Killer NIC is a Gigabit NIC and I would suspect that if this card proves to be popular they will be quick to develop a PCI-e version (serial bus' have tangable amount of extra latency). But from a buisness perspective PCI-32 is a smart choice since it is the most common denominator in all PCs, 100% of them have at least one PCI slot while about 25-30% of todays PC's have a spare PCI-e slot (other than the graphics slot).

USB just makes this card much more flexible in its customized configurations.

I am not pointing at MS Dawn or anyone in perticular, but I feel that there are a few of you who are not too informed or have a grasp of the possiblities that this thing could and can do. Think of this as the new Linksys WRT54G of Gigabit NICs with custom firmware that could be arriving sometime very soon. This NIC may be the next killer product that you may feel the need to own.

Please give me a scenario where using custom software on the NIC would benefit anyone? I'd like to hear this. Please give me the "possibilties" of this NIC.

Just a quick few off the top of my head....

1-It could be used as in in-pc lower latency router.
2- The usb port could be connected to a storage device for hosting and offloading bittorrent. QoS would be implemented to ensure it did not interfere with other applications.
3- It could handle proxy server duities that filer the internet for your childern..
4- Dedicated Printserver
5- If you need anymore inspiration then just look at the wide variety of WRT54G 3rd party open source firmware that is out there.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Googer
Thats because such devices already exsit and those NICs only support Hardware TCP/IP and do not support the UDP protocol that all games use to transmit across the internet. I believe it was LSI who made a NIC with an onboard Intel Xscale Processor (similar to the one used in PDAs) and dedicated RAM. I have not seen it for a while, so I am not sure if they still make it. But I do know Adaptec still makes an awesome ($600+) Gigabit NIC.

(and no I do not work for Killer or any of it's competitors)

And yet another reason to ignore this thing.

Every single NIC out there does the layer 2-4 checksum in hardware. this POS is nothing more than an attempt to rip off people. We're not talking offloading TCP processing. We're talking UDP.

It amazes me really that people are actually believing this crap. Hell, just look at their white paper. it makes people puke.

I suspose that you believe that this similar product does not work either?. It too promised to lower latency and delivers on that promise. What you are saying reminds me of the days when the Razer Boomslang was first annouced. There were tons of skeptics that said "A mouse is just a mouse" or "Gaming Mouse, What a Joke!" But today everyone and their brother is now making high resolution mice and almost no one is doubting the credible advandage of a good mouse for gaming. The same may hold true for the killer nic, but only a little bit of time and an Anandtech revew will prove me correct.

Dont get me wrong, I would love to have one and really want one; but I do agree with you that $280 is a whole lot of money and is something I will definitly think twice about before I pull out the plastic.

($150 or less and I would probably buy one)

Lets wait for these to hit mass market before we all start to pass any serious judgement.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Googer

I am not pointing at MS Dawn or anyone in perticular, but I feel that there are a few of you who are not too informed or have a grasp of the possiblities that this thing could and can do. Think of this as the new Linksys WRT54G of Gigabit NICs with custom firmware that could be arriving sometime very soon. This NIC may be the next killer product that you may feel the need to own.

Yep I'm extremely misinformed. Just search for all my drivel-on my way to lifer-posts here. It's all good. :laugh:

Gotta have a few more :wine:

The seas have turned brown on the boards and are rising. This place is going to Tallinn.

:laugh:

You obviously do know your networking protocols and related jargon

but I am not sure that can see a lot of possiblity of a linux based NIC with open and customizeable firmware. The USB port only makes this thing much more flexible.

 

[RanDum72]

I think when we are at a point where we have cheap access to GIGABIT internet speeds, then these kind of cards can start to make sense. For now, there are a lot of things to buy with $300 that can make a difference in a PC.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: RanDum72
I think when we are at a point where we have cheap access to GIGABIT internet speeds, then these kind of cards can start to make sense. For now, there are a lot of things to buy with $300 that can make a difference in a PC.

I do agree, but I all depends on the size of your budget. If you are the kind of person whom has a Core2 Extreme Edtion, 16GB of PC1200, 6 Drive 15KSCSI RAID0+1, Multiple GPUs with several monitors, and a physics prossor then you are the kind of person who would feel the need to buy one of these NICs.

 

[RanDum72]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: RanDum72
I think when we are at a point where we have cheap access to GIGABIT internet speeds, then these kind of cards can start to make sense. For now, there are a lot of things to buy with $300 that can make a difference in a PC.

I do agree, but I all depends on the size of your budget. If you are the kind of person whom has a Core2 Extreme Edtion, 16GB of PC1200, 6 Drive 15KSCSI RAID0+1, Multiple GPUs with several monitors, and a physics prossor than you are the kind of person who would feel the need to buy one of these NICs.

Well, heck yeah, if you have a $15-25 g's to drop in a PC, then I guess an extra $300 won't hurt. While you're at it, make sure to use Monster cables @$200 for 6 feet to maximize signal transfer and minimize interference. Don't forget those nice external water cooling stuff @ around $800 to make everything nice and cool. For insurance, just hack a hole in your wall to install that 500,000 BTU AC unit that blows directly into the PC....

 

[fire400]

Originally posted by: RanDum72

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: RanDum72
I think when we are at a point where we have cheap access to GIGABIT internet speeds, then these kind of cards can start to make sense. For now, there are a lot of things to buy with $300 that can make a difference in a PC.

I do agree, but I all depends on the size of your budget. If you are the kind of person whom has a Core2 Extreme Edtion, 16GB of PC1200, 6 Drive 15KSCSI RAID0+1, Multiple GPUs with several monitors, and a physics prossor than you are the kind of person who would feel the need to buy one of these NICs.

Well, heck yeah, if you have a $15-25 g's to drop in a PC, then I guess an extra $300 won't hurt. While you're at it, make sure to use Monster cables @$200 for 6 feet to maximize signal transfer and minimize interference. Don't forget those nice external water cooling stuff @ around $800 to make everything nice and cool. For insurance, just hack a hole in your wall to install that 500,000 BTU AC unit that blows directly into the PC....

obviously the card isn't for everyone.

the hardware onboard is impressive. because, internally, the enthusiast or network expert may decide that if the software environment is right, the card may provide more flexible options for reasons untold.

laptops made in the past two years have been manufactured to support the Athlon FX processors which even to this day are considered behemoths to properly cool inside of such a very small enclosure. typical people would say to just get a tower and save money. engineers will go that far to get this kind of technology into a notebook.

gamers will do the same if they feel the need that regardless of software achievements, the Killer NIC will provide the hardware basis for them without the need of extra hardware parts, just a daughter card upgrade.

 

[bX510]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Googer
Thats because such devices already exsit and those NICs only support Hardware TCP/IP and do not support the UDP protocol that all games use to transmit across the internet. I believe it was LSI who made a NIC with an onboard Intel Xscale Processor (similar to the one used in PDAs) and dedicated RAM. I have not seen it for a while, so I am not sure if they still make it. But I do know Adaptec still makes an awesome ($600+) Gigabit NIC.

(and no I do not work for Killer or any of it's competitors)

And yet another reason to ignore this thing.

Every single NIC out there does the layer 2-4 checksum in hardware. this POS is nothing more than an attempt to rip off people. We're not talking offloading TCP processing. We're talking UDP.

It amazes me really that people are actually believing this crap. Hell, just look at their white paper. it makes people puke.

I suspose that you believe that this similar product does not work either?. It too promised to lower latency and delivers on that promise. What you are saying reminds me of the days when the Razer Boomslang was first annouced. There were tons of skeptics that said "A mouse is just a mouse" or "Gaming Mouse, What a Joke!" But today everyone and their brother is now making high resolution mice and almost no one is doubting the credible advandage of a good mouse for gaming. The same may hold true for the killer nic, but only a little bit of time and an Anandtech revew will prove me correct.

Dont get me wrong, I would love to have one and really want one; but I do agree with you that $280 is a whole lot of money and is something I will definitly think twice about before I pull out the plastic.

($150 or less and I would probably buy one)

Lets wait for these to hit mass market before we all start to pass any serious judgement.

Well said...

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: NanoStuff
Wow, how many Mhz does it have? Its gotta be a lot more Mhz than my card.

500MHz.

First of all, if you're going to be a shill, at least know your product. It has a 400 Mhz processor. Secondly, obviously, not one of you paid shills has ever gamed in his life. If you had, you'd know right off the bat that being forced into using your motherboards onboard sound will account for a 20-25% loss of available cpu cycles, compared to a 1-3% loss, if using a decent sound card*.

And since all but a couple of the enthusiast motherboards for the last couple of years only have 2 PCI slots, using this NIC, along with an Ageia card, limits you to onboard sound, and a drastic loss in framerates, compared to using an Ageia card, and a sound card. So, you're limiting yourself to using either an Ageia card, or this NIC. Guess which one I would choose? And I highly doubt that I'm the only gamer who thinks that way.

*while gaming

 

[btcomm1]

There are a ton of pages to this thread. Someone probrably mentioned it before but in this article they said that they can make your ping appear to be much higher then it really is, so who is to say that the 10 to 20 ms lower ping that shows up in game is really lower. Perhaps it's using the same trick that makes you ping look higher only reverse. Meaning there is no real difference in performance while playing even though the ping that shows up says it's lower. Just like someone said the ping between the router and the nic are already practically 0 so all latency is between your ISP and the server you join.