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Killer NIC – First look
Would you have to be noob with rich parents to pay £180 for a network card, or is the Killer NIC the ultimate upgrade for online gamers?
Bigfoot Network’s Killer NIC is a bit like one-time boxing loudmouth Prince Naseem Hamed; it’s haunted by hype. The hype surrounding the Killer NIC isn’t quite as brutal as Hamed’s reputation in his hey-day; despite the name, all the Killer purports to do is preserve your frame rate while you’re gaming online. There’s a whole Linux computer on this PCI card, with the aim of usurping the Windows TCP/IP stack with a more efficient Penguin-based one, giving you a lower ping, and a more responsive and reliable PC for online gaming.
First impressions of this card are worthy of admiring raised eyebrows. It looks the business, flaunting a trés chic ‘K-blade’ nickel-plated aluminium heatsink. With the card installed, you have a Linux sub-system that you access from Windows. This lets you do cool things through the dedicated Linux system without bothering your main system, but let’s cover the theory behind the bold claim that ‘Killer provides the edge in online gaming’ first.
According to Bigfoot, the Windows networking stack isn’t particularly efficient when dealing with the profusion of small packets common when gaming online. To circumvent this, you need a clever network interface card that can deal with all the necessities, including IP reassembly, and UDP/IP and TCP/IP checksums. To achieve this, you pretty much need a dedicated computer, so under the heatsink, you’ll find a 400MHz Freescale Semiconductor MPC8343EVRAGD Network Processing Unit (NPU). This also deals directly with main game loops, without ever troubling - and being held back by - the layers of the Windows networking stack. There’s even 64MB of PC2100 RAM on the card, so that it can run the Linux OS from its 8MB ROM.
There are a few brand-name technologies to help this NPU, including ‘LLR’ (lag and latency reduction), which performs the legwork. It utilises ‘Game First’, which prioritises inbound and outbound UDP packets based on their type. There’s also ‘Max FPS’, which alleviates CPU, cache and main system bottlenecks, and ‘Ultimate Ping’, which prioritises every packet and improves response time to main game loops. The Killer also accelerates TCP/IP requests, but it’s specifically the low latency of network gaming offload that’s the focus of these technologies. Note, however, that the Killer is just a network card so it can only deal with local problems - if you have a rubbish ISP, the Killer can’t help.
During in-game testing, we switched between the Killer NIC and the on-board Realtek Gigabit Ethernet of a MSI K9A Platinum motherboard. Both are rated at Gigabit speeds, so we were eager to find out if the Killer justifies being £180 more expensive than an on-board NIC.
First up was Counter Strike: Source, a game that should benefit from prioritised UDP packets. The hype claimed that the Killer could make as much as a 20fps difference, but this was wide of the mark. The Killer did make a difference, especially in action-dense maps such as ‘Office’. In such frenzied firefights, FRAPS showed that our PC with the Killer fitted managed timings of mid-50fps, peaking at 62fps. Meanwhile, the on-board NIC dropped into the low 40s in the same action-intensive areas, peaking in the mid-50s, giving the Killer around a 10fps advantage.
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So what is the difference between this card and the "KillerNIC K1 Network Interface Card" that sells for £129.99? Is it to do with the Bit Torrent features? If the gaming features and performance are the same, I might invest in one. Help needed please CPC!
Comment by grimerking at 9:12am 28th September 2007
So what is the difference between this card and the "KillerNIC K1 Network Interface Card" that sells for £129.99? Is it to do with the Bit Torrent features? If the gaming features and performance are the same, I might invest in one. Help needed please CPC!
Comment by grimerking at 9:12am 28th September 2007
Just go with a better internet provider ?? Although the hassle vs price difference is what people will choose in the end Personally it looks like another expensive gimmick like physix.
Comment by Lightning_Pete at 4:24pm 7th September 2007
Very similar idea of using LInux on-board. We have been using them as hardware firewall in servers for a couple of years. This seems like a cheaper alternative to someone needing a hardware firewall.
Comment by gravy_uk at 1:32pm 7th September 2007
I wounder if they could integrate this on motherboard.
Comment by megapig at 12:28pm 7th September 2007
"If it was pcie , could run bittorrent with the pc turned off, and you could configure bittorrent remotely with the pc turned off then I'd buy one. (hosting an ftp/webserver via a usb stick with the pc off would be useful as well)" for what you want just get a cheap old laptop off ebay and install a small linux build...even dsl would do what you need...
Comment by reashlin at 9:02pm 6th September 2007
I have been using this card for the last couple of weeks. I have had problems running it on XP Pro 32bit but it works like a dream on Vista 32bit. Unfortunately gaming on Vista isn\'t as good as on XP. For the brief periods of time that it did work on XP (15-25mins before loss of connection) CS:S played like it should. I hit what I aimed at and my FPS did increase a reasonable amount.
Comment by Conroy at 4:33pm 6th September 2007
I have been using this card for the last couple of weeks. I have had problems running it on XP Pro 32bit but it works like a dream on Vista 32bit. Unfortunately gaming on Vista isn\'t as good as on XP. For the brief periods of time that it did work on XP (15-25mins before loss of connection) CS:S played like it should. I hit what I aimed at and my FPS did increase a reasonable amount.
Comment by Conroy at 4:33pm 6th September 2007
If it was pcie , could run bittorrent with the pc turned off, and you could configure bittorrent remotely with the pc turned off then I'd buy one. (hosting an ftp/webserver via a usb stick with the pc off would be useful as well)
Comment by mcmadhatter at 3:07pm 6th September 2007
It could possibly tempt me at £140 if the price comes down in time, guess its something that would be a one time buy too unlike a gfix card
Comment by Paul866 at 1:17am 6th September 2007
All the reviews out there seem very good and tbh i would consider one of these for the torrent prioritisation... problem is i only got 1 pci slot and that has an xfi in it... we need 1x pci-e devices soon people...we need to use those sockets.
Comment by reashlin at 9:58pm 5th September 2007
I'd be instantly sold if it could do the torrents to USB or hard drive while the main computer was off/suspended. Is there still a noticable difference if you use it with very fast machines/quad core etc. Also, no one plays LOTR tell us how it performs with WoW ;)
Comment by Fizzzl at 4:29pm 5th September 2007
If they could make a wireless NIC with the same specs I'm sure a lot more folks would consider it...me for example!
Comment by F_A_F at 4:25pm 5th September 2007
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