Is this worth buying? - Page 2

SanjuNana · 11-10-2006, 05:39 PM

Here's an unbiased review of the NIC from Anandtech: Killer Marketing or Killer product?

Here's another review from Hot Hardware, who I'm not familiar with, but found the link through [H]ard|OCP : Link here

Koenig · 11-10-2006, 05:41 PM

You can tell the difference from an onboard nic and a pci nic?

Calthine · 11-10-2006, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taelana

Ewww...no pepsi???

Actually, It's Safeway Select... /blush.

Niber · 11-10-2006, 05:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koenig

You can tell the difference from an onboard nic and a pci nic?

Yes, even at reboot. It offloads more onto the CPU, given its only 1-2%, but its the same principal the "Killer NIC" uses. Except, it costs like 1$ for a PCI nic.

Dio · 11-10-2006, 06:07 PM

I've heard that the girth of your hardrive increases too...

RadarX · 11-10-2006, 06:13 PM

I bet they bought a bunch of $20 NIC cards and threw a bunch of extra stuff on it that doesn't actually do anything....for that much?!

Illuminator · 11-10-2006, 06:15 PM

Wait for the company to get its drivers in order and then go from there. I'm curious how they're going about it... are they just replacing the stack driver file with one full of stubs?

Pinski · 11-10-2006, 06:19 PM

The best NIC cards you can buy offload the TCP/IP functions onto the NIC card itself. Most cheap PCI NICs do not do this, nor do most chipset-based NICs. If you have an onboard NIC that is a 3Com or Intel, more than likely you have a high-quality NIC, also I am pretty sure the Nforce chipsets offload the TCP/IP functions.

Either way, if you're replacing the Windows TCP/IP stack you are probably going to have problems which just make it not worth to do so. Shit, I wouldn't replace the TCP/IP Stack on any OS unless you're fucking crazy for every inch of performance for your FPS, even if it means degraded network connectivity.

LFG · 11-10-2006, 06:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SanjuNana

Here's an unbiased review of the NIC from Anandtech: Killer Marketing or Killer product?

Here's another review from Hot Hardware, who I'm not familiar with, but found the link through [H]ard|OCP : Link here

Interesting article from Anandtech.

I'm buying it.

They talk about 4 to 10 percent improvements in WoW, which were most noticable during peak network times. That's worth $279 to me.

The mfgr site claims: "41% improvement in FPS in World of Warcraft using Killer". They explain it like this:

Quote:

Killer bypasses the Windows stack delivering huge FPS performance improvements when they matter most: during intense online action.

and

Quote:

Killer’s fully interrupt drive networking model gets data to your online games faster. “10% Reduction in Ping in World of Warcraft using Killer,” - BootDaily (formerly gDHardware.com).

My biggest concern is that when I travel, this is the only computer item I would never attempt to take through airport security. Check out the photoz - the heatsink looks like a hunting knife blade - I wonder if the card will do a Transformer into a big ass Buck knife.

Pinski · 11-10-2006, 06:29 PM

There is no way a network card can result in 10% reduction in ping times across the internet. In fact, I would be willing to bet on this. Your network card will not improve your ping times by 10%, ever.