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EVGA Releases Xeno Network Card

by - source: Tom's Hardware US

EVGA's latest network card--the Killer Xeno Pro--supposedly accelerates real-time killer Internet gaming utilizing an on-board NPU, 128 MB DDR2 memory and more.

For gamers who spend a good deal of gameplay time online, hardware performance is the most important factor hands down. With a slow CPU, GPU first-person shooters and MMORPGs become a laggy mess, churning out framerates as if the Energizer Bunny was on its last drum beat. When hardware performance falters, the experience becomes annoying, possibly hurting any chances to reign king on the frag list or score that special loot before another party hones in on the goods. Gamers and PC enthusiasts yearning to keep those framerates solid--while also wanting high-quality performance outside PC gaming--look for high-quality hardware without giving price tags a second glance.

EVGA, along with Bigfoot Networks, claim that your network card is a big factor in lag. Onboard network ports on motherboards? They don't cut it says EVGA.

EVGA has put aside its manufacturing apron--stamped with Nvidia's logo--and has teamed up with Bigfoot Networks to produce the EVGA Killer Xeno Pro. This isn't just any network card, but rather offers an on-board network processing unit (NPU), a nice chunk of on-board memory and even integrated audio for hardware-accelerated voice-chat. Ten years ago, who would have thought gamers would need all this extra hardware just for maintaining a blazing fast connection? Not this one, and quite frankly, it's difficult to imagine a PC today without something like the Killer Xeno Pro mounted in the rig's innards.

"We are extremely excited to partner with EVGA to deliver the Killer Xeno Pro to gamers across the globe," said Michael Howse, Bigfoot Networks CEO & President. "The EVGA Killer Xeno Pro using Bigfoot technology delivers the absolute best online experience, for this generation and next generation games."

According to the company, the Killer Xeno Pro uses the PCI-E slot for a higher throughput, decreasing latency. The card also features the Killer Xeno 400 MHz NPU, a dedicated smart packet processor for all network operations. This ensures that time sensitive data--such as game control information, player placement, and VoIP--reaches its destination on time. Moreover, by offloading the VoIP operations onto the integrated audio chip, the overall system's sound device thus doesn't have the extra strain, reducing the "hiccup" factor. The on-board 128 MB 266 MHz DDR2 memory helps with the whole process by taking on the extra burdens called forth by the VoIP, the built-in Linux-based firewall, and the card's Bandwidth Control feature.

"EVGA is excited to be offering this new technology to the online gamers," said Andrew Han, president and CEO, EVGA. "This new product improves the online experience and fits in perfectly with the high performance products that EVGA offers."

EVGA also said that the Killer Xeno Pro is plug and play compatible with all PC games, and even offers a Windows network stack bypass to provide direct-to-game interrupts. The card features a network speed of 10/100/10000 Mbps (Gigabit) and not only provides an RJ-45 Ethernet port, but USB 2.0, and 3.5mm audio input and output jacks. The Killer Xeno Pro certainly looks tasty, however the card is not yet available, and EVGA did not offer any price points at the time of the announcement. Hopefully, that information will be available soon.

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Grims 03/24/2009 8:47 PM
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Another advertisement...?

wickedsnow 03/24/2009 9:10 PM
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Man, I can't wait.

Dreasconse 03/24/2009 9:11 PM
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May be an advertisement, but helps me. iv'e been looking for something good to stick in my PCIe X1 slot for a while. no room for anything else.

Zenthar 03/24/2009 9:14 PM
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Oooook, so Bigfoot Networks has licensed their Killer NIC to EVGA ... 250$ NIC anyone???

Come-on! Will they continue to off-load all of the MB's feature to external card just to gain 1FPS/200$ spent? I mean, it's like going back to the 80's when the MB's only features were CPU/RAM/ISA controller, anything else was an extension.

Hatecrime69 03/24/2009 9:40 PM
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I wish I had a 10,000Mbps network card :)

MrBradley 03/24/2009 9:49 PM
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To me, this seems like the DVD Rewinder in a different fashion. A Gigabit LAN connection is more than enough.

Anonymous 03/24/2009 9:57 PM
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What I find funny is the fact that when the BigFoot came out everyone complained it was PCI, they replied by saying it was because the PCI bus had less latency than the PCI-E bus (PCI being parrallel).

So what.... the Magical serial bus is now quicker? Amazering!

Anonymous 03/24/2009 10:00 PM
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Like some said, this is pure advertisement. Specially since there is no real need for a "network-accelerator."
They are just creating a "need" that doesn't exist so they can sell an overpriced product (these cards normally run from $200-$250) that nobody really needs. I use voip on both my Quad 9550, 8GB, dual raided 300 gb raptor PC and on my MacBook Pro and never had any hiccup. Some goes for my games.

mavroxur 03/24/2009 10:12 PM
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"network speed of 10/100/10000 Mbps (Gigabit)"

Because we all know, internet games require 10 Gigabit connections.

lire210 03/24/2009 10:31 PM
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put some leds on that and nicer case and 50 $ less and i still wouldn't do it.

apache_lives 03/24/2009 10:37 PM
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i want to compare this with an Intel PCIe network card - they usually have lower overhead and decent throughput

zaratustra06 03/24/2009 10:46 PM
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This is like packing and selling air.

Zenthar 03/24/2009 10:55 PM
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zaratustra06 :
This is like packing and selling air.

Or water ... oh wait :P

apache_lives 03/24/2009 11:02 PM
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$250 air

HTDuro 03/24/2009 11:05 PM
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funny how ppl will be dumb enought to buy this .. i mean ... onboard LAN is clearly enough for 99.9% of ppl ...they say it will unload the cpu .. a old single core cpu maybe will need this help ... but alot of game if not almost all got dual and quad core .... and for 200$-250$ you can buy a new mobo, a dual core, 2gb of ram and some other things ..so its BS :P

MU_Engineer 03/25/2009 1:19 AM
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Hatecrime69 :
I wish I had a 10,000Mbps network card



They do exist- Newegg even has some. Here's one and here's another. However, you'll need a motherboard with a 133 MHz 64-bit PCI-X slot, fiber-optic cabling, and the cards carry a price that will make the Bigfoot NIC look like a bargain.

ricin 03/25/2009 1:48 AM
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More Bigfoot snake oil. Please make it go away.

crisisavatar 03/25/2009 3:29 AM
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wow nice way of scamming people out of their money

rigaudio 03/25/2009 4:35 AM
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Their target market is those who already have the top-end systems. Why the hell would they think we'd need something this extraneous?

spectrewind 03/25/2009 4:38 AM
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I guess I don't "get it" in what's being sold here.
Most games produced use UDP/IP data frames, They are quick, "connectionless," and lack the checks in TCP for receive acks to confirm that data reaches its destination. If there is a data collision or TTL problem somewhere along the hops, that packet is lost and the benefit of a device such as this is nullified and the user perceives lagg or "jumpiness."
Also, since we are usually using MTU's of 15000 bytes, this is another bottleneck caused by upstream router hardware and the resulting fragmentation (jumbo frames of 9000+ bytes are useless outside a LAN designed to support them). Lagg again.
The only possible "benefit" I can see to something like this is in a send/receive buffer for IRQ polling/vectoring and hosting that info on the card instead of main memory, which is "buffering" or delaying the game anyway.

...Sigh... I'm probably wrong...

spectrewind 03/25/2009 4:39 AM
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MTU 15000 should be 1500.

IzzyCraft 03/25/2009 5:53 AM
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Got to get that extra 2 fps no matter what i guess if you blow 5000$ on a water cooled illuminated over powered computer whats another 300?

Zenthar 03/25/2009 1:28 PM
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spectrewind :
I guess I don't "get it" in what's being sold here.Most games produced use UDP/IP data frames, They are quick, "connectionless," and lack the checks in TCP for receive acks to confirm that data reaches its destination. If there is a data collision or TTL problem somewhere along the hops, that packet is lost and the benefit of a device such as this is nullified and the user perceives lagg or "jumpiness."Also, since we are usually using MTU's of 15000 bytes, this is another bottleneck caused by upstream router hardware and the resulting fragmentation (jumbo frames of 9000+ bytes are useless outside a LAN designed to support them). Lagg again.The only possible "benefit" I can see to something like this is in a send/receive buffer for IRQ polling/vectoring and hosting that info on the card instead of main memory, which is "buffering" or delaying the game anyway....Sigh... I'm probably wrong...

I think they simply added a QOS (Quality Of Service) scheme over what is normally done by the OS. It might calculate trajectory MTU in advance to limit packet fragmentation and prioritize the encoding and decoding of "gaming" packets. The price they charge might be "appropriate" for the development cost, but still way to high. However, by releasing a product, no matter how "unsellable", they have a much better grip on whatever IP they patented.

Anonymous 03/25/2009 5:08 PM
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seems useless to me.
Most highband connections take about 100seconds to fill that 128MB ram.
I've never seen a lag that high on my simple $5 100mbit lancard!

murdoc 03/25/2009 6:33 PM
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Well said everyone. I'd rather spend that money on a nice headset with 7.1 surround sound like the SteelSeries 5H v2 instead.

Vorador2 03/26/2009 1:29 PM
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One the most worthless things i've ever seen. This piece of equipment is understandable on high load NAS environments, but gaming?? Get serious.

cseifer 03/29/2009 10:39 PM
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Will be available at EVGA.com for $129.99 + shipping....and they will be offering upto 30% discount coupons from what I hear in the next few weeks for existing EVGA customers.

From what I was told when I called evga...they expect them to be in stock on evga.com by April 15.

Anonymous 03/30/2009 4:54 AM
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I don't think you guy's know what your talking about. games are the most stressful thing to do to a computer. when they think up new games they have to make a guess on how good of a computer the average person has and will have so they know how much stuff they can fit into the game, and besides the bigger the game the more stuff that needs to be kept track of and sent through the net card. adding a card such as this will free up more of the cpu and memory to run the game which is why the say it will improve frame rate and all that. me and my brothers used big games to test computers to see if they were working fine or better then when we started to fix them after a virus or something. right now I think that it would be a waste of money but thats because they are treating this card as they do graphics cards and untill they can prove that doing it this way is more dependable, at least for home computers anyway, I most likely won't get one.

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