Killer NIC For EVE Online?

Hello all,

One of my friends who's a huge PvP player in EVE asked me if getting a Killer M1 NIC (he can get it for ~$25) would be worth it. I am told that in some of the massive wars that his Corp participate the network lag is pretty intense and a lowering in this lag would be helpful in nullsec. I wanted to know if getting the Killer NIC would be helpful for this situation. According to this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2111/9

There is a relative noticeable difference in ping times.

His specs:
9800GTX
E5200 @ 3.4Ghz
4GB DDR2 1066
P45-UD3L
450VX


@Mods: Don't move to Networks.
 
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I can't see how it's worth it for an MMO. The majority of network latency that you're going to experience is happening outside of your home network. I think that the money would be better spent on upgrading your cable/dsl/whatever connection. The only thing that the Killer NIC does on your home network is something that most routers today can do, QoS - use it to throttle specific types of traffic (like torrents/downloads/whatever). The situation I can see that it might be useful is an FPS-game LAN party, where you might actually receive a minor advantage with a slightly lower ping, and your traffic isn't hitting the internet at all.

From the section on WoW in the linked article from 2006 (the closest analogue to EVE): "We see...
Buy it plug it in and report your findings here :)



 

coldsleep

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I can't see how it's worth it for an MMO. The majority of network latency that you're going to experience is happening outside of your home network. I think that the money would be better spent on upgrading your cable/dsl/whatever connection. The only thing that the Killer NIC does on your home network is something that most routers today can do, QoS - use it to throttle specific types of traffic (like torrents/downloads/whatever). The situation I can see that it might be useful is an FPS-game LAN party, where you might actually receive a minor advantage with a slightly lower ping, and your traffic isn't hitting the internet at all.

From the section on WoW in the linked article from 2006 (the closest analogue to EVE): "We see about a 4% increase over our other products in frame rates. WoW is basically capped at 64 fps with dual core systems so it is difficult to determine if the Killer NIC would provide any further frame rate increases with our test platform."

They also saw a max 10 ms decrease in ping, but...that's still below the human threshold of response. Going from 500ms to 250ms would be a big deal, the drop they saw from worst case 128ms to 119 isn't.

I can't see paying $100+ for a possible 4%ish increase in performance.

Other anandtech articles:
2010 - http://www.anandtech.com/show/3716/bigfoot-networks-announces-3rd-gen-killer-nic-killer-2100 - promised a full review within a week that still hasn't appeared.
2009 - http://www.anandtech.com/show/2797/1 - page 3 & 4 - "Our EVE test is in a place where there were a very high number of other players and we were able to eliminate as many other factors as possible from testing. This test showed no difference in performance with or without the Killer Xeno Pro" and "In trying to do the similar testing with Team Fortress 2, the Killer Xeno Pro would be faster in once instance and slower in the next. There was no real consistency to our data in this case." and "In other words (and to sum up), when you have a bad connection, the Killer Xeno Pro is not going to fix it; when you have a good connection, the Killer Xeno Pro is not going to make the experience any better. "

A couple months ago, I read a blind study of the Killer NIC vs. a simple onboard, and the results indicated that people couldn't tell the difference, however I haven't been able to find that article since...I'll keep digging, though I might have to get back to you with that later.

Not the article mentioned, but further reviews:
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2037169,00.asp
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/misc_hardware/bigfoot_networks_killer_nic_killer_k1_network_cards/1

Again, I'd suggest either upgrading the connection from the ISP or upgrading other parts of the system first.
 
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coldsleep

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Well, at least at $25, it's not an unreasonable price. I still probably wouldn't bother, but at least that's just the price of a decent dinner or a few drinks.

It would be interesting (if he has the time to do some testing) to see if he gets different results with and without the Killer NIC.
 

coldsleep

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Shadow703793, here's the review I was looking at that actually had blind testing (not double-blind, though) of the Killer NIC. While many reviews point out 5-10% improvements in performance, I thought this was unique in that it talked about whether or not people actually noticed the difference.

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/478/1/

At any rate, as I said in my last post, at $25, it's not a big deal, but I think he's going to be underwhelmed. I'd love to see more data, though.