Killer NIC

Is this going to be the X FI of networking or end up like the ppu?

http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/
Not FF friendly.

sounds like marketing hype, im not convinced... theres no actual evidence presented to support the claims that are being made

I had no problem with switfox under linux, seemed friendly enough to me

Hmmm interesting.
I could possibly see some benefit if it can order packets and increase pings. Am skeptical though.When Im gaming Im not doing much else on the machine so packets shouldnt be an issue.

Also if this thing costs over $50 I would have to see some serious benchmarks in its favor to get it.

I had no problems with FF at all.

It will be the PuRAM of networking. Or Phantom. etc. PP folks have a product
In cleartext: total BS and a scam.

it dosent even look like they have a prototype yet either.

that nic is clearly generated in the pics

64mb of onboard RAM. Because... you know.. 4-5kb is extremely difficult for a CPU to offset.

That's a really big heatsink... for a network card. I wonder if this will go well with my $6000 quad-sli setup?

Apparently this device is made by bigfoot networks, a company thats been around as long as late 2005. bigfoot networks also have never released a product and display no performance comparision of said products on the site.

The claims seem to be based around the card doing some of the work of the processor which in turn provides less CPU overhead, thus allowing the processor to dedicate itself more to the game itself.... how much difference this will actually make is the question.

The technology is what they call Lag and Latency Reduction. (LLR™) and they make this statement regarding it :-

Gamers who have LLR™ installed in their rigs, will see a TON more benefit from Game Servers that are outfitted with LLR™ too!!!

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This to me specifically means that the device offers very little unless the game server specifically supports the device.
Im also curious as to why they use the terms 'will see' as it suggests that it has yet to be proven, why not use the term 'can see' which would suggest that a visable improvement can be found or just drop the 'will' from the statement ???

Still not convinced on this one

http://www.bigfootnetworks.com

It's funny since the target audience is likely to connect it to a crappy $50 Linksys router, much in the same way people buy high-end sound cards and connect them to crappy $100 Logitech speakers.

My boss sent a link to this earlier today. Thought it was ridiculous. Of course, I told him that it was pretty cool. *earns more brownie points

Couldn't they include a 2nd RJ-45 jack? What if your PC needs more than 1000Mbps? You can't offload it onto the other port! Where is the wireless expansion port? And... why is the heatsink made of magnesium alloy?

I want a PCI-Express version.

Um... offloading network proccesing to the NIC is NOT A NEW THING. NICs (whether add-in cards or onboard) have been doing this for years. Ever hear of QoS routing? Receives/directs traffic from/to specific ports or applications before other traffic. This "Killer NIC" thing is complete BS.

petteyg359 said:

Um... offloading network proccesing to the NIC is NOT A NEW THING. NICs (whether add-in cards or onboard) have been doing this for years. Ever hear of QoS routing? Receives/directs traffic from/to specific ports or applications before other traffic. This "Killer NIC" thing is complete BS.

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exactly, if they spent their time making a gaming router (they are already out and support features like this card has qos n such) there would be much more of a difference than a nic.

petteyg359 said:

Um... offloading network proccesing to the NIC is NOT A NEW THING. NICs (whether add-in cards or onboard) have been doing this for years. Ever hear of QoS routing? Receives/directs traffic from/to specific ports or applications before other traffic. This "Killer NIC" thing is complete BS.

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Hence the sarcasm.

petteyg359 said:

Um... offloading network proccesing to the NIC is NOT A NEW THING. NICs (whether add-in cards or onboard) have been doing this for years. Ever hear of QoS routing? Receives/directs traffic from/to specific ports or applications before other traffic. This "Killer NIC" thing is complete BS.

Click to expand...

Yep. I agree. 3Com has had hardware based NICs since the 10baseT ISA port days. (Think EtherLink II) I will say that most NICs today are exactly like the Winmodems of yesterday (and today too to be technical). Most NICs do not do all of the computational work. I don't think it's a big deal. I've not bothered to spring for a higher dollar hardware. At any rate, hardware based NICs are already on the market and have been for over a decade.

-maddog- said:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2037155,00.asp

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That seems to be the general thought. Lots of $$$$ for no improvement. For the cost of the Killer NIC, I could buy an E6600.