We’re always listening to the community on hardware sites, and I wanted to make sure we posted here to let you know that we’re not ignoring anyone, and to keep you updated on the things we’re working on for Killer technology.
First and foremost, many posters have mentioned that the price of the Killer is too high for a NIC, as the network connections that come with their motherboards are “free”
, when in actuality, the comparison doesn’t really stack up when you evaluate the two side by side. The chipsets on your motherboards or built into your factory systems are essentially “dumb” connections that simply allow the computer to physically connect to a network and negotiate the right network speed. All the other heavy lifting of network operations relies on your CPU. The closest comparison is the hardware / software modem discussions that started when soft modems were first introduced – a hardware modem was better since it didn’t rely on the CPU for your dialup connection.
And that’s only the first difference. Your software-based firewall relies on the CPU for operation, while a Killer NIC runs its own. The Killer can also manage the network traffic on your client with hardware bandwidth control to keep other network operations from stepping on your game. With a Killer NIC, you can finally live worry-free in the DMZ on your home router, bypassing your router’s firewall and removing any firewall lag that it might cause.
And none of the “free” NICs on your computer can claim a 10-20% performance boost in online gaming by the simple fact of being there.
And a $50 add-on NIC (like the Intel NIC) will only help with throughput. It still relies on Windows’ Networking protocols to adjust for better throughput, and won’t deliver each packet when it arrives in a time-sensitive manner with a hardware interrupt.
Which leads us to the next question – performance.
A fast network connection doesn’t address client-side latency. And a fat network connection doesn’t address client-side latency. And the Killer NIC doesn’t address the Internet. (Yet.) We’ve never claimed to fix the connection between the gamer and the server. The best performance gains today come from fixing the connection between the game client on the PC, and we do that by bypassing the Windows Network Stack.
Performance gains with the Killer NIC are real, but difficult to measure consistently because network load on a game is impossible to keep consistent. What is consistent is Killer’s performance gain in ALL network conditions. When you’re grinding against rats solo in some field somewhere, Killer’s helping your framerate and latency. But when you’re healing a 40-man raid with a ton of mobs and 38 players typing “Heal plz” and 2 more spamming “w00t,” it offers the SAME performance gain, even with all that traffic.
It’s a high-horsepower, gamer-grade card. Sure, sometimes it takes your ping on a CS:S server down from 125ms to 100ms. But it’ll take your framerate up 20% and give you the edge when everybody else’s ping starts to climb into silent-movie mode.
Finally, it’s an upgrade that’s as permanent and useful as your case. This is a component that can go into any configuration and “just work” with any online game. It won’t get slow like a CPU or full like a hard drive – this is the high-end NIC that you can carry with you for a few years of gaming. The fact that Microsoft’s Windows planning shows no sign of changing means that the Windows Network Stack will only get bigger and more unwieldy, so you’ll get better performance by routing around it. We’ve verified bigger performance gains on Vista with the Killer NIC, and we see the same performance gains between brand-new machines and those wildcard home built rigs.
But don’t take our word for it. Have a look here at the basic concept behind offloading TCP / IP traffic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Offload_Engine
And then take a look at our review on Tom’s Guide from earlier this spring:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/killer-m1-nic,review-1083.html
“…gamers reported quicker reaction times in their virtual worlds, a better ability to anticipate and track opponents and general improvements in their scoring as well.”
And let’s close on price. Right now we’ve got the Killer NIC K1 available for as low as $149 in most online retail stores. This for a NIC that runs its own Linux-powered Freescale Network Processing Unit, that can run a firewall, bandwidth control, Bit torrent and your game simultaneously, without causing your game to hiccup or puke entirely. It’s a pretty sweet deal compared to a “dumb” NIC, and we’re happy to say that thousands of new Killer NIC users are reporting the same.
Thanks,
BFN Sean
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