Killer NIC 2100 ping times for 4 games compared, my experience

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Guest

Guest
I bought a Killer NIC 2100 recently to try it out vs. the onboard NIC, and I thought I'd post the ping results for 4 different servers across 4 different games that I tried.

System:
q9550 quad core
gigabyte 965p-ds3 (marvel yukon something onboard NIC)
4gigs ram ddr2
radeon 4890
killer nic 2100 with latest firmware/drivers

Ping results for 4 games that I play the most, in 4 servers that I play the most...

Battlefield: Vietnam - server: HHK Hastings 24/7
Onboard pings: 41 to 82 hovers between
Killer NIC pings: 43 to 97 hovers between, nasty spike to 113

Call of Duty: World at War - server: [Fire] Zoo York
Onboard pings: 64 to 95 hovers between
Killer NIC pings: 85 to 114 hovers between

Unreal Tournament 3 - server: Beer Drinkers Deathmatch
Onboard pings: 64 to 76
Killer NIC pings: 56 to 68

Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam - server: Campers Paradise
Onboard pings: 98 to 103
Killer NIC pings: 105 to 116

To me, this is obviously a waste of money. The only game out of the 4 it helped in was Unreal Tournament 3 which helped by about 8 ping. It made BFBC2, BF:V, and COD:WAW worse than with the onboard. Since I mainly play BFBC2 atm, and it bumps my ping UP instead of helping, this thing is getting returned.
 
Not surprised, the major factor in latency is your ISPs system not your own system, and for most cases, even cutting your ping in half wont matter much, the difference between 40ms and 80ms is still wayyy smaller than your reaction time, so it wont help. With most boards coming with a good NIC these days i see no need for any of the expensive add-on ones like the Killer NICs.
 
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Guest

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I disagree, as a diehard battlefield series player I definitely notice 40ms vs. 80ms. Before Bad Company 2, I would never enter a server where my ping was 80+, 60 and below only.

The Killer 2100 on paper has something going for it, bypassing the windows stack to gain some ping time. Unfortunately in real world testing here it fails. If it made all my games 8ms faster like it did Unreal Tournament 3, it would be worth it.
 
^^ The main issue is that the time a packet spends in the windows IP stack is miniscule compared to the tranmsit time from point A to point B. If we had a gigabit network, you *might* start to see some improvement, but even then, I'd suspect not much.

And yes, going from 40 to 80 ping is noticable. The place where Gameservers stores their NY servers are JUST outside my housing complex, so when I play in NY servers, I can get pings under 10. Trust me, it makes a difference.
 
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Guest

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Well, what I don't understand is how it increased my ping time. Even if it decreased every game by 5% I'd consider it a winning product.

10ms to your NYC server? Must be awesome, almost like playing on a LAN.
 
^^ Possibly because of non-optimized drivers; the Windows TCP stack is actually very well optimized, and has a VERY high priority. Its possible the NIC drivers are less optimized, or have a lower priority within windows, adding lag time.

The downside to 10ms ping is that TWL/XPL and other competition leagues consider that a sure-fire sign you are hacking; i think most leagues need a 10ms MINIMUM ping to be allowed to compete...
 

GunBladeType-T

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Jul 8, 2010
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Well since it worked good for Unreal Torunament series, How about Doom-F.e.a.r. series-Quake IV! It might work good for upcoming games like Rage-Doom IV. I'd check out benchamrks with games based on the Unreal Engine that they just released! It seems it works well with certain software compiliers that maybe optimize for it! Asus Rampage III Thunderbolt series bundles it nowadays for free with asus's sound proccessing unit fusionedon one add in board!
 

HansUllrichGrimminger

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Apr 28, 2011
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From what I can gather, the killer nic offloads all processing from your cpu, clearing up that particular bottleneck. It mostly frees up your cpu for other things, pings really aren't that affected by this card. Not for the price anyways, there still going for 70 bucks and up.
 

GunBladeType-T

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I would Trying Buying One and Overclocking it in a Liquid Cooling Enclosure! See if a Faster MHZ speed makes a Difference in Pings! It also comes with a lot of Bandwith Analyzer's, and Software that alone, are worth at least the $70 bucks you pay!