DailyTech - Bigfoot Networks KillerNIC M1 Ships, $280

Haha

By gramboh on 9/8/2006 7:44:21 PM , Rating: 4

Unbelievable, I really hope no one buys this piece of junk. Can't wait for a real unbiased review showing how useless it is for online gaming.

$280? What's so expensive to justify this cost? 400MHz CPU and PC2100 memory? Right...

RE: Haha

By PT2006 on 9/8/2006 7:51:33 PM , Rating: 5

I saw them advertising on Hardocp. $20 says we see them give it a glowing review. Not based in benchmarks or reality, but based on "realworld testing."

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RE: Haha

By AllThingsSimple on 9/8/2006 8:15:07 PM , Rating: 2

http://gear.ign.com/articles/729/729733p1.html

Its been reviewed a few time.

Games use alot of small packets and dont underestimate how usefull this could actually be.

I would never buy one though. 280$ is way better spent elsewhere.

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RE: Haha

By BladeVenom on 9/8/2006 8:53:43 PM , Rating: 3

A few times? That's the only review of it I've seen. So far there's no reason to believe that it's any better than any decent NIC.

Really all you have is one poor review comparing it against a Dell on board solution. And that from a site not really known for any in depth hardware reviews. If it was worth anything they would have sent samples to sites like Anand's or Tom's.

For $280 they should at least have a professionally printed driver disc instead of a homemade lightscribed disc.

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RE: Haha

By oopyseohs on 9/8/2006 11:34:43 PM , Rating: 2

The IGN review is simply a regurgitation of the in-house tests done by the bigfoot guys. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying this. ;]

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RE: Haha

By meatbites on 9/9/2006 5:35:13 AM , Rating: 2

Well, it's compared to laxatives here: http://www.apcstart.com/site/ndavis/2006/09/1265/b...

They don't seem to have review units yet though.

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RE: Haha

By Googer on 9/9/2006 8:45:32 AM , Rating: 2

The final disc is not lightscribed and is professional silk-screened

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage.asp?Image=...

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RE: Haha

By George Powell on 9/9/2006 4:07:23 AM , Rating: 2

The very fact that IGN used hardware that was so far out of date is incredible. Anyone who is even likely to spend this much on a NIC is almost certainly going to have some pretty awesome hardware. Think dual core CPU, high end crossfire or SLI graphics, quite possibly Physx as well. Not something which is decidedly low rent by todays standards.

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RE: Haha

By Desslok on 9/8/2006 8:24:30 PM , Rating: 2

Is that is USB port?

That might be the reason for the high price point. We all know how much USB ports cost. /sarcasm

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RE: Haha

By dilz on 9/9/06, Rating: 0

By dilz on 9/9/2006 4:14:40 PM , Rating: 0

No one debates the cost of a Ferrari, but all it does is get you from point A to B. I think its funny how the "groupthink" here is trouncing this card based on price.

People who buy bottled water do so because it has a perceived quality enhancement over tap. For many people they're just wasting their money, but they feel better about spending it because their consumer experience is better.

Try to tell someone with a terribly paired CPU/GPU that their gaming is CPU-limited, and they're likely to tell you that "they can notice a difference." That's what this product is for. People will feel good about dropping $300 on a network adapter, because they're used to getting it for free now, and will notice minute differences whether actual or not.

Congratulations on being able to spot a developing niche product in an otherwise stagnant market.

If you have 10k to throw around on a computer, what's wrong with spending $300 on some part that will give you an extra .1 FPS? If you think its too expensive, don't buy it. The fact that the company's marketing research shows that a high price tag will be supported is interesting at the very least.

No, I'm not going to buy one. If it proves to provide any kind of a demonstrable improvements or desirable features, I'll be waiting for the technology to trickle down to a more reasonable price point. Cool it, people!

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RE: Haha

By theprodigalrebel on 9/10/2006 5:04:58 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
No one debates the cost of a Ferrari, but all it does is get you from point A to B.

What if I said making love to Jessica Alba and Rosie O'Donnel is the exact same thing?

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RE: Haha

By rykerabel on 9/11/2006 10:43:55 AM , Rating: 2

I'd be willing to be Rosie would be better :P

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RE: Haha

By dilz on 9/9/06, Rating: 0

By dilz on 9/9/2006 4:14:41 PM , Rating: 0

No one debates the cost of a Ferrari, but all it does is get you from point A to B. I think its funny how the "groupthink" here is trouncing this card based on price.

People who buy bottled water do so because it has a perceived quality enhancement over tap. For many people they're just wasting their money, but they feel better about spending it because their consumer experience is better.

Try to tell someone with a terribly paired CPU/GPU that their gaming is CPU-limited, and they're likely to tell you that "they can notice a difference." That's what this product is for. People will feel good about dropping $300 on a network adapter, because they're used to getting it for free now, and will notice minute differences whether actual or not.

Congratulations on being able to spot a developing niche product in an otherwise stagnant market.

If you have 10k to throw around on a computer, what's wrong with spending $300 on some part that will give you an extra .1 FPS? If you think its too expensive, don't buy it. The fact that the company's marketing research shows that a high price tag will be supported is interesting at the very least.

No, I'm not going to buy one. If it proves to provide any kind of a demonstrable improvements or desirable features, I'll be waiting for the technology to trickle down to a more reasonable price point. Cool it, people!

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RE: Haha

By Hare on 9/9/2006 4:28:30 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
No one debates the cost of a Ferrari, but all it does is get you from point A to B. I think its funny how the "groupthink" here is trouncing this card based on price.

I can damn sure tell the difference between a Ferrari and a Toyota Corolla. Bottled water is a poor example because a bottle costs very little and it's convinient to buy bottles. Getting a 280$ NIC that has no benefits is different. If you want to compare it to something compare it to expensive snakeoil hi-fi cables that have no effect.

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RE: Haha

By mikeblas on 9/9/2006 10:06:30 PM , Rating: 2

I'd be happy to debate the cost of a Ferrari. They're quite overpriced; Porsches perform about as well, and cost substantially less. Corvettes do pretty good, and cost nothing compared to how much Ferraris cost. Their styling is overly aggressive and customization options are limited compared other cars in that class.

But all this shows is that you've chosen a poor analogy.

There are lot of cards which are much better than the onboard sets. Intel cards are a fraction of the price of this rig, even the best ones. They're substantially more configurable, and have much better drivers.

The problem is that the cited review is absolutely unscientific. The nture of the test is completely unclear, and therefore it isn't reproducable. The definition of the platform isn't well-explained; the method for eliminating variance in the test isn't discussed, either.

So what is it that really makes the card better? Why doesn't the text isolate it by comparing it to a craptacular onboard chip, a good Intel card, and this super card?

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RE: Haha

By Burning Bridges on 9/10/2006 4:14:39 PM , Rating: 2

It is worth noting that older corvettes where confused by things like corners, though. ;)

Still amazing for the money, mind.

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RE: Haha

By rushfan2006 on 9/14/2006 2:31:17 PM , Rating: 2

Your comparisons/examples are atrocious.

On the car thing -- personal I *DO* debate the cost of a Ferrari -- you are an idiot if you are paying that much for a car just for a name because you can damn sure get equal or better performance for a fraction of the cost.

Moving on to your bottle water - this is just to subjective an example. Some people buy bottle water due to convenience more than anything else (you know especially for when youe exercising, packing lunches , etc.) and some folks buy it because HONESTLY their tap water sucks and you VERY MUCH can tell a difference in taste. So as far as I'm concerned the water comparison is totally moot.

Perhaps the most entertaining thing your thing on "CPU/GPU". Unless you are talking about a doorknob of a technical person, it is as obvious as sunshine of a difference that a CPU or a GPU makes. So that isn't a purchase for just "comfort" feeling or "perceived" improvement.

The reason for the passionate debate AGAINST this product is because there is no hard factual data comparing it against other network cards -- just folks who made the card saying pretty much "yeah it *should* make a difference" or "theoretically"......and they are charging $300 for it? And somehow you find the debate unjust? You are either filthy rich (ie dropping $300 means nothing to you), work for the company who makes the card or you are just one of the most naive people I've ever come across in a long while.

The card is specifically targeted to the "gamer market"....what the hell does it do?....Don't tell me in theory or in uncertain language like "it can"...or "it might"....tell me what it DOES. And finally how is this NIC going to help my online gaming's network performance beyond the first hop?

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The amount

By hellokeith on 9/9/2006 3:23:25 AM , Rating: 3

.. of uneducated rambling you guys make is staggering.

No one is forcing you to buy it, any more than anyone is forcing you to buy watercooled overclocked Quad-SLI, which obviously is mandatory? [sarcasm, for those who can't read between the lines]

802.11a can support multiple high definition video streams.. so you aren't going to saturate this wired nic (or the PCI bus) any time soon by playing games and downloading illegal pirated movies simultaneously.

There are some legitimate uses for this card, as there are for other add-in cards like video and sound (less someone forget these are add-ins just the same). If the market is there, then this nic will survive regardless of your opinions on its utility and pricepoint.

RE: The amount

By Hare on 9/9/2006 4:18:33 AM , Rating: 5

quote:
There are some legitimate uses for this card, as there are for other add-in cards like video and sound (less someone forget these are add-ins just the same). If the market is there, then this nic will survive regardless of your opinions on its utility and pricepoint.

Please give me ONE good reason for anyone to get this card. It doesn't matter how "crappy" your NIC is because the first hop to your router or ISP is just 1 ms! After the first hop there is no way you can control the data sent or QoS. This means that your NIC has no way it can improve latencies. This card is a huge hoax. It will do absolutely nothing so there's very little you can say about "legitimite use".

In theory if you are close to your NIC limits this card might do better than your onboard NIC. In practise no one will see any benefits or the benefits are barely measurable in extreme conditions and definately not worth the price. For that price you can get a professional Cisco-gear (for a lot cheaper that will perform identically). Not this crap that is obviously just a gimmick to take away the loose money from idiots.

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RE: The amount

By Mysoggy on 9/9/2006 5:12:55 AM , Rating: 4

This has nothing to do with latency from the ISPs perspective. I completely agree that this card is freakin useless for most gamers HOWEVER, certain applications really benefit from upstream and downstream QoS and from my understanding, this card supports this.

VoIP and other latency sensitive applications will be positively impacted by offloading the prioritization to the card and not on the cpu.

Imagine this as well. If you are doing a lot of transferring, encoding, ripping of video files to a NAS drive this will allow you to make gigabit transfers without expending the CPU cycles needed for other tasks. Believe me, running a gigabit transfer on any other nic uses a staggering amount of CPU power. Additionally, this may be able to do gigabit at line rates. That is what most cisco, extreme and juniper gear does (albeit at much higher rates). It's just one of those things you may end up needing down the line when EVERYTHING in your house is running on a network. Who knows.

At any rate, I do agree that phys and ai should be software apps that run on dedicated cores. That way the software could be ported for sonys SPEs and MS execution cores. There is little reason to add more cards to your system when the resources you already have aren't being fully utilized....

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RE: The amount

By Hare on 9/9/2006 5:24:12 AM , Rating: 3

You can get an equivelent of better NIC from Cisco etc for a lot less. This is marketed to gamers and gamers won't benefit anything as you said (my main point). If someone want's a high performance gigabit NIC I'd recommend they get a real NIC from a bigger player. Also most QoS operations are commonly done at the WAN-router not on the computer itself. In a highly networked environment it's best to let your router handle the QoS. In theory with huge local network activity this card might make a difference with its local QoS but at this price? Why not just get another card with same specs, 150$ smaller pricetag and without the chrome "K".

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RE: The amount

By tuteja1986 on 9/10/2006 6:13:49 AM , Rating: 1

I rather get a Wii than an powerpriced nic

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RE: The amount

By The Boston Dangler on 9/10/2006 1:57:05 AM , Rating: 2

Anyone that thinks this crap will improve their VOIP is mistaken. QoS packet priority and control is entirely dependant on the ISP, and not up to the client. My VOIP customers' packets are handled like eggs, while Skype and Vonage is treated just like email. A NIC isn't going to change that.

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RE: The amount

By flexy on 9/10/2006 5:29:59 AM , Rating: 2

>>>
certain applications really benefit from upstream and downstream QoS and from my understanding, this card supports this.

VoIP and other latency sensitive applications will be positively impacted by offloading the prioritization to the card and not on the cpu.
>>>

this card is targetted at "gamers" where [obviously] a few more FPS matter.
If i am a gamer and REALLY am *so* fixated looking at my FPS i would never run other apps simultaneous [to the game] - and especially NOT apps doing filetransfers the same time as i am online gaming :)

And *only* then comes QoS into play...if you have a bunch of tranfers running and want to prioritize one protocol over the other. (Which, btw, you can do fine with a $70 linksys off-the shelf router already [speak: 3rd party firmware]

So..we all know the latency argument can not stand (ping times to a router < 1ms)....and the NIC for sure cant influence all the internet topology in between me and a server :)

And..QoS argument doesn't really stand either...you can do that already, cheaper - and their marketing would make MUCH more sense if they argued with the benefits of QoS in an environment where many transfers/protocols (VoIP/P2P/gaming) happen at the same time.
But a real hardcore gamer would NOT run P2P anyway while he is online and looks how he can get a few more FPS or better latency.

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RE: The amount

By PrinceGaz on 9/9/2006 8:00:02 AM , Rating: 3

This card might be useful for gamers at LAN parties where the ping-times are very low. If this card could minimise latency in getting data to and from the network then you might be at a slight advantage, but only if onboard and cheap PCI network adapters do actually add noticeable latency- and I'm not convinced that they do.

If you've got money to burn, then this has to be the best looking network card available. Only problem is that I don't have any spare PCI slots, and I don't have money to burn. Not $280 on a network-card, anyway.

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RE: The amount

By Hare on 9/9/2006 11:24:21 AM , Rating: 2

My crappy integrated Intel NIC has <1ms latency for the first hop. With just few kb/s traffic seen in games this card will do nothing!

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RE: The amount

By mindless1 on 9/9/2006 2:32:01 PM , Rating: 4

The best looking NIC is one so tiny it impedes no airflow.

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RE: The amount

By AndreasM on 9/9/2006 11:36:01 PM , Rating: 3

quote:
Not this crap that is obviously just a gimmick to take away the loose money from idiots.

Woah. That has to be the first time anyone has used the word 'loose' correctly in the history of the internets! I'm so shocked that I had to call myself to see if I've fallen into a parallel dimension. Whew. Otherwise agree with you completely, good post.

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RE: The amount

By Hare on 9/10/2006 5:57:19 AM , Rating: 2

English is not my native tongue so maybe that's the reason. ;)

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RE: The amount

By rushfan2006 on 9/14/2006 2:42:40 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
.. of uneducated rambling you guys make is staggering.

So impart on us your great wisdom then...

Because I read your entire post you didn't say a damn thing that "uneducated rambling folks" can't glean off a 5 second google search.

And dude...you are yammering about multiple video streams and playing games and downloading at the same time....is this the best you have? Is THAT your point about "uneducated gamers"? LOL

It is a card TARGETED for G A M E R S.......what hardcore gamer (this is quote obvious at the $300 price point)....is concerned about download and doing multiple tasks in the background while they are G A M I N G!! (not to mention the few times I download a mod while gaming I had ZERO problem with my like $40 intel NIC....so even in that regard I still fail to see your point).

Don't compare this to video or sound cards.....that's lame. Yeah there are legitimate uses for video cards because they add BLATANTLY obivious graphic improvements and game performance improvements over not having a video card. And Sound does the same for the audio experience.

So what are the uses then?

Aside from the "it might do this" or "it could do that"....

One of the posts was "well its like a second computer and comes with Linux".....um...soooo.....WTF good does that do me if its marketed as a GAMERS NIC for $300?

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Totally overpowered

By alexsch8 on 9/8/2006 8:46:17 PM , Rating: 5

This thing sits in a PCI slot... which will give you a max transfer rate of 133MB/s... might be useful if you're dealing with encrypted traffic... but add some more devices in other PCI slots...

Anyhow, this would have been interesting if it was PCIe.

RE: Totally overpowered

By Darth Farter on 9/9/2006 8:32:53 AM , Rating: 2

my thoughts exactly.. also a $280 price for it seems a bit too steep even in enthusiast circles.

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RE: Totally overpowered

By Olaf van der Spek on 9/9/2006 9:54:24 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
This thing sits in a PCI slot... which will give you a max transfer rate of 133MB/s...

Of course, everyone has gbit internet these days, so 133 mbyte/s isn't enough. :)

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RE: Totally overpowered

By ergle on 9/9/2006 11:51:18 PM , Rating: 4

133MB is more than 1Gb.

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RE: Totally overpowered

By gsellis on 9/11/2006 7:48:09 AM , Rating: 2

Barely, and that is for the entire bus IIRC. Therefore, not really.

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For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By darkfoon on 9/9/2006 2:33:36 PM , Rating: 1

For a piece of hardware that is targeted at the enthusiast market (read: people with more money than brains) I am suprised that it doesn't come as PCI Express. PCI-e x1 is closer to reaching the theoretical transfer speed of gigabit ethernet than PCI, and PCI-e greater than x1 surpasses gigabit ethernet's theoretical maximum. With that dedicated processor on board, this NIC could actually do gigabit with very reduced overhead, too bad it's bandwidth limited by the PCI bus.

But, perhaps I shouldn't be suprised that it is not PIC-e, because most motherboards are designed so that with your SLI/Crossfire setup in place, only one PCI slot is available and no PCI-e x1 (at least the motherboards that I have seen).

It would be really neat if that on-board processor could handle IPSec encryption. If the driver supported that, then IPSec could be handled on the NIC and user applications wouldn't even have to be aware that they are travelling through an IPSec tunnel. Alas, IPSec isn't exactly an enthusiast feature.

For ~$280, I'd rather spend my money on more RAM or more CPU or more GPU than an oversized NIC. If I really needed the best NIC money could buy, I'd probably go with a professional NIC like a cisco. Some integrated NICs are on the PCI-e bus which, while taking more CPU, can give greater bandwidth than this card, and in my book, that's more important. Perhaps serious gamers have different priorities than I; I am still content to play Firearms mod on my Pentium III 866Mhz with a 10/100 PCI NIC.

RE: For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By JeffDM on 9/9/2006 4:51:49 PM , Rating: 2

I thought one lane of PCIe was 2.5Gbps. Even if you max out gigE at full duplex, that's still only 2.0Gbps being used, with 0.5Gbps to spare.

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RE: For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By JeffDM on 9/9/2006 4:51:51 PM , Rating: 2

I thought one lane of PCIe was 2.5Gbps. Even if you max out gigE at full duplex, that's still only 2.0Gbps being used, with 0.5Gbps to spare.

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RE: For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By Lifted on 9/9/2006 5:07:12 PM , Rating: 2

What's with all of these references to Cisco NIC's? I've never seen a NIC from Cisco, so please explain.

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RE: For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By Knish on 9/9/2006 5:14:56 PM , Rating: 2

Cisco owns Linksys.

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RE: For an enthusiast piece...something's lacking

By JeffDM on 9/10/2006 10:29:58 AM , Rating: 2

Then it's a Linksys part, they are still different divisions and I would hope that Cisco parts are better because I am not happy with any of the Linksys stuff I have used.

I think Cisco used to make wired NICs, but maybe they only make fiber NICs. They also make wireless NICs too, but that's beside the point in this discussion.

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I'm in for two!

By bigboxes on 9/8/2006 7:40:22 PM , Rating: 2

Well, if I could have a custom initial instead of a "K" and have it mounted on the other side that could actually be seen when installed then I might consider this beauty. Only then. ;)

RE: I'm in for two!

By KristopherKubicki

(blog) on 9/8/2006 10:26:45 PM , Rating: 5

What if "K" is your initial?

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RE: I'm in for two!

By AzureKevin on 9/9/2006 1:06:36 PM , Rating: 2

K is my initial!

Almost 300 bucks for a network card?? Screw that, I'll even stick to 10/100.

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Worst Idea Ever

By Flunk on 9/8/2006 8:35:54 PM , Rating: 2

This is the most overpriced hunk of junk I've ever seen. More processing power won't yeild better latency and the onboard RAM could actually increase latency. How stupid do they think we are?

RE: Worst Idea Ever

By Griswold on 9/9/2006 3:26:36 AM , Rating: 3

Well, the onboard RAM certainly does not increase latency to a point where it would matter in any shape or form. Network latency is [ms] while DRAM latency is [ns].

Other than that, I agree. I cant see how one could justify the pricetag. Any other decent NIC will do the same job, also for gaming - and much cheaper.

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RE: Worst Idea Ever

By mindless1 on 9/9/2006 2:29:48 PM , Rating: 2

Single point network adapter latency is < 1 ms, while coprocessor - memory latency is n * ns.

It wouldn't be much worse (unless a defective design), so you're right that it should not matter, just as it shouldn't matter whether one has this nic at all. The other alternative need not be supposed "decent NIC" either, any $3 special should suffice.

Frankly I think the linked IGN review is a blatant deceit, that they had to go out of their way to contrive the results.

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wow

By Quiksel on 9/8/2006 8:16:06 PM , Rating: 2

After some of the comments about the AI Accelerator referencing this product, I'm LMAO at this pricepoint.

LMAO-like-a-crazy-man kind of LMAO.

Good luck with this one, dudes.

RE: wow

By Jetster on 9/8/2006 8:33:46 PM , Rating: 2

with this, ai and physx accelerator and 800 bucks video card, any game would be totally awesome that gamers will stop enjoying games and just staring at monitors all day long

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RE: wow

By Fenixgoon on 9/9/06, Rating: 0

RE: wow

By Acanthus on 9/9/2006 3:27:51 AM , Rating: 2

Read the latest review, driver updates and developers that arent just tacking on the feature are getting a lot of use out of physx.

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super !

By flexy on 9/9/2006 8:39:02 PM , Rating: 2

the one i got right now - i am cooling with liquid hydrogen, down to -296F ..and i overclocked the NIC to 5 billion mhz !

The ping to my router is now *minus* 500ms !

In effect, this means i can kill people online now half a second BEFORE they even know i am coming !

I am having a blast....very well spent money !!!

Thank you, Killer Nic !

RE: super !

By zam786 on 9/10/2006 5:28:18 AM , Rating: 2

and then you woke up realising it was just a dream!

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RE: super !

By lemonadesoda on 9/10/2006 7:22:23 AM , Rating: 2

please... dont wake him up... party-pooper!

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Its more powerful than my old computer

By Maximilian on 9/9/2006 7:05:21 AM , Rating: 3

What a thought.... Poor old PII-333 with 32mb SDRAM has been eclipsed by a network card ;/

RE: Its more powerful than my old computer

By Kraenar on 9/13/2006 11:49:51 AM , Rating: 2

ROFL!!!! That's awesome and SO true.

Your talking, what, a decade ago? Somewhere around there. Just think what there will be in another decade!

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msrp?

By GnomeCop on 9/9/2006 3:26:34 PM , Rating: 3

wait, how is it higher than msrp?
it was always announced at $279.99...

RE: msrp?

By The Cheeba on 9/9/2006 3:40:48 PM , Rating: 2

It was changed to $250.

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The big question is

By Chillin1248 on 9/8/2006 10:01:30 PM , Rating: 2

Why they include the full version of FEAR? If I were trying to promote a product that had to do with online games, I would go for Battlefield 2, Unreal Tournament or some other online FPS that would require low pings and high CPU usage.

RE: The big question is

By paperfist on 9/9/2006 12:31:49 AM , Rating: 2

Wow what's that $22 in materials? I've never seen so much wasted space on a card before either...

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you know - for kids!!

By ilmdba on 9/9/2006 1:53:19 AM , Rating: 2

this is aimed squarely at the 14 year old counterstrike and halo crowd, who don't have a clue, and who's parents have the cash to let them cherry out their gaming rig.

given that it costs about 10 cents to make an external 32bit PCI NIC, another buck or two for the rest of the crap lumped onto this thing (including the fancy metal blade) means that probably something like 270 bucks of each card sold is pure profit for these guys.

they only need to sell a tiny number to the 'leet gamerz', to make some coin.

RE: you know - for kids!!

By JeffDM on 9/10/2006 1:00:03 AM , Rating: 2

While I agree that this card isn't worth it, and I do believe that this thing is a smoke screen for a problem that largely doesn't exist unless maybe you compare it to a Realtek chip.

Still, that method of counting the value of a device as the sum of the included chips for a custom design doesn't work. This isn't just taking some reference design, reference drivers and shipping a product, it takes a lot to get something like this to go.

There's a lot of development cost and engineering to make a custom circuit board and its software, then divide it among much fewer buyers because it is a niche market.

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pointless

By crazydrummer4562 on 9/9/2006 2:15:53 PM , Rating: 2

i would never fork out $280 for a NIC...it might be close to practical if it were around the $100 mark..but i think this along with the physx card will probably fail; they're just too expensive for what they do.

RE: pointless

By RMTimeKill on 9/15/2006 10:23:30 AM , Rating: 2

Dont count Physx cards out yet, while this NIC is a joke, more and more new releases are implementing full support for Physx and with the new versions of physx cards, they are lookin pretty sweet...

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The ONLY Question

By Dactyl on 9/9/2006 4:00:41 PM , Rating: 2

What I want to know is:

Does it do what it promises? Does it lower your ping by a meaningful amount, and/or increase your FPS?

The fact that Bigfoot has not sent its card out to be tested by many independent sources is a very good reason to be suspicious (like a movie studio not sending out a bad movie to critics before it launches). I certainly wouldn't recommend running out and buying one quite yet.

We'll find out soon enough how much of a performance boost (if any) it gives for online gaming. Until then, saying anything else (good or bad) about the card is mere speculation.

RE: The ONLY Question

By JonDoms on 9/9/2006 8:30:20 PM , Rating: 2

No. It only works for certain games and one that I care about is BF2 which it does not support. This from the horses, Err jackasses mouth, the CEO I met at showdownlan.

The only positive is that you can load linux programs onto the card and have a mini linux server in your box.

Otherwise if you have a crappy internet connection you are still hosed no matter how good of a job this nic does reprioritizing the packets coming out of your machine.

Now if the Killer Nic can login to your local DSLAM or HEADEND for cable and give you all the priority over your neighbors then it will be worth every cent.

Otherwise I do not see this product catching on at $300.

My money is this company will not last another 12 months.

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I actually have one

By EODetroit on 9/11/2006 10:16:51 AM , Rating: 2

And its not stable. Damn thing crashes my computer on a regular basis, especially if I try to do two things on the internet at the same time... like play WoW and use Vent. Or play WoW and look something up on thottbot.

I had to pull it back out of my computer due to this. Until they get this problem fixed, don't buy one. There's a 30 day return policy I plan on taking advantage of if I can't get stable performance AND determine its worth the $280 by the end of that time. The longer they take to fix the crash bug the less time I'll have to figure out if its worth it and the more likely that I'll return it.

One thing... everyone here is treating this as an overpriced network card... the network card part is a fairly poor reason to buy it. The REAL reason to buy this is the linux box on a chip... the so-called "FNA Apps" you can run on it. That makes this thing a lot more interesting. Unfortunately no one has had time to write anything for it yet, but that's the real reason I pulled the trigger and pre-ordered one... I'll be able to do some real cool stuff with it. Lowered pings or increased framerates is just gravy.

One more thing... this has been for sale from Killer/Bigfoot for the past week. Pre-orders shipped two fridays ago. Just a fact correction for the Dailytech editors.

RE: I actually have one

By JonDoms on 9/14/2006 4:28:27 PM , Rating: 2

Yea I like the ability to run apps off of it also.
I also have several Pentium III 1Ghz machines I'll sell you for $499! It is guarenteed to repriotize your packets and mess with some TCP headers for ya. Ohh best part it can run any BSD apps you want.

Parent

Viral marketing

By Schadenfroh on 9/8/2006 8:49:31 PM , Rating: 1

Now that you can buy it, does this mean that we are going to have more or less of those sub 15 post people sign up for the forums (anandtech GH/NW forums) just to post about it?

RE: Viral marketing

By JeffDM on 9/9/2006 11:03:38 AM , Rating: 2

Maybe we need some viral anti-marketing on this. Post on a bunch of random boards that this thing hasn't been proven yet and shouldn't be bought until five reputable sites test it against a dozen add-in network cards, each with a different chip.

Parent

This card is a joke

By xNIBx on 9/10/2006 5:22:22 AM , Rating: 3

Imagine if a company was selling a car ashtray which weighed 8grams instead of 10grams that the stock ashtray weighs. Imagine if that company claimed that the new ashtray increases maximum speed of the car, increases acceleration and reduces fuel consumption. And because it does all that, it costs 2000$.

In theory, having a lighter ashtray makes the whole car lighter. Since the car is lighter, it can accelerate faster, have higher max speed and use less fuel. But in practice, the difference is so extremely amazing tiny that it doesnt affect the behaviour of the car in any noticable or even in any measurable way.

Killer nic is 1 of the stupidest things ever created. Dont even try to support it. Its obvious by the way it is marketed and by its price, that this product is intended for retards.

awesome

By valkator on 9/10/2006 2:47:52 PM , Rating: 3

WOW!!! what a great network card. It not only has a big shiny K on it, but it is BIG too. I think i am going to scrape up the money to buy this puppy instead of my books for college. I mean it must be good RIGHT? I am a consumer whore and I think this would be a great benefit to my gaming experience and might even deliver my porn to me faster WHILE I GAME. LMAO!!!
/SARCASM

$280

By Webgod on 9/8/2006 10:32:27 PM , Rating: 2

I never thought bullshit could be so...

PURE !!

Make it a physics card as well

By kmmatney on 9/9/2006 1:11:34 AM , Rating: 2

If they can make that processor do some games physics as well as be a NIC, then maybe they'll have sioomething...

A 400 MHz processor and 64 MB of slow RAM. Sounds like a $80 video card.

Spectactular

By cessation on 9/9/2006 2:51:56 AM , Rating: 2

Now my gaming experience won't be limited by my NIC.

crap

By Missing Ghost on 9/9/2006 2:03:08 PM , Rating: 2

It seems like a lot of people don't know there is already high-end NICs. The difference is that they cost 200$ less. A lot of good NICs have functions like saving CPU cycles. You can do prioritization of the traffic using your 0$ older computer that sits in the basement and it will be as good to. Prioritization of the traffic is also only possible for the traffic that you send, btw. You can't control what arrives down the wires.

worse than fatality POS

By bigpow on 9/9/2006 2:27:24 PM , Rating: 2

Killer NIC?
Looks more like Killed NIC to me

Love this quote

By autoboy on 9/9/2006 2:39:04 PM , Rating: 2

From the review

quote:
Dropping $300 to switch between one generation of graphics card and the next will generally get you a lot less than a 10% fps gain. The Killer NIC can have an even bigger impact in particular situations, which makes it a relatively reasonable investment in terms of the general cost/performance equation in high-end PC gaming.

I didn't know that you only got a 10% increase going from a 6800 to a 7900. Man, i guess i'm wasting my money. Killer NIC is also a killer deal.

How much did they get paid for this review? If they got paid couldn't they have at least done a better job?

Word Of Wisdom ^__^

By SakuraChan on 9/9/2006 3:19:41 PM , Rating: 2

Instead of buying this peace of junk,
I'll just buy intel core 2 duo CPU instead :Dhehe...
^__^ true from my heart :D

just get another gfx card

By kitchme on 9/9/2006 9:13:39 PM , Rating: 2

One of the key selling points is that it somewhat improves your FPS (wtf? it's a network card). For that much money, and if I wanted to up FPS, I'd get another 7900GT card, and put it in SLi. Pure robbery (for a network card))!!

I'm dumb founded

By cubanx on 9/9/2006 10:53:17 PM , Rating: 2

I'm wondering how they came to the conclusion there was a market for a $280 NIC for "Gamers".

For the same price...

By RallyMaster on 9/10/2006 1:00:07 PM , Rating: 2

I would rather upgrade to a 7900GT. My university internet connection doesn't need anything more than my gigabit LAN onboard. Hell...I get 3-5 ping on a lot of Internet servers.

why not get a CPU or a PC even ?

By mforce on 9/10/2006 1:28:58 PM , Rating: 2

For this price you can get a PC and a 30 $ linux based router than can do QOS and stuff . Or you can get a new Core Duo CPU and not have to worry about offloading the CPU as one of those almost always sits idle due to the software we have today.
Networking CPU usage while playing games is probably not even noticable ( because of the low traffic level ) and so the impact on the framerate with a new dual core CPU is probably next to nothing .

Test?

By gsellis on 9/11/2006 7:51:09 AM , Rating: 2

I would like to see this card against something like the 3Com 3C2000-T. Any other card that does checksome or IPSec encode/decode on the NIC might be able to keep up or kill this card and at a fraction of the cost. The 3Com is just shy of $50USD.

Double U Tee Effe

By Naviblue on 9/11/2006 11:23:24 AM , Rating: 2

I don't know if I'll have an extra PCI slot open for this amazing card! I mean, I have the PhysX Card, my Crossfire Setup, my X-Fi Soundcard and now I need to look for a motherboard so that I can fit in an NIC! Yes, the dual gigabit onboard NIC isn't enough, I NEED 3!! what the hell for, I don't know yet, but I WILL SOON! right?...

Will all joking aside, who in their right mind would buy this card for 280 dollars? I mean it's already hard enough to justify that PhysX card that's rotting away on some retailer's shelf and I should consider an overpriced NIC? Some companies really need to get a grip...

Tytus from Bigfoot: Killer is a second Computer!

By Tytus on 9/12/2006 9:34:29 AM , Rating: 2

Great discussion here.. I thought I'd throw in a few points (being as I designed the card):

First, there is a very detailed review available here:
http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/networking/bigf...

Second, the Killer is actually a second computer within a computer: attach a 250GB USB Hard drive to your Killer like I did, and you've got a full linux environment (card ships with full open source linux).

Finally, and a lot of your questions are answered in our FAQ Here:
http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/FrequentlyAskedQues...

And I'm always available to answer questions here:
http://www.endlagnow.org/ELNForums/

Harlan

What this card really is...

By Diginerd on 9/15/2006 6:01:15 PM , Rating: 2

So let me start by saying I'm a hardcore networking geek, and just passed my Cisco CCIE written, so this is coming with real understanding... Though of course you just have my word for that!

So, the card could realistically help with offloading some cpu cycles to it which in turn may give you a couple more fps. To be honest big deal, though some may get excited about that...

It won't significantly improve your overall latency (as discussed already) to a remote server, and the benefit on a LAN is also questionable (other than delays in the Windows TCP/IP stack, but meh not really)

What makes this card so potentially nasty, and I feel very unscrupulous is the Linux device on it. This essentially lends itself to being setup as a near undetectable proxy server enabling all kinds of packet level manipulation to be done.

Those that are still with me may remember the old StoogeBot for Quake (Think auto aimer). That essntially ran on a pc which intercepted the network traffic from the client to the server, manipulated the aiming and sent it onto the server. Having that on a card in the PC with a low latency PCI interface (Vs multiple network hops) could be deadly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimbot

Think about it, with the right code you can totally subvert a game to a horrific level, and no "Watchdog" application could detect it. I don't like it, but it may well become a fact of life.

The linux part could be used for good too though, by say installing a firewall on i o protect your pc, but I don't think that's what it was truely intended for...

What this card really is...

By Diginerd on 9/15/2006 6:02:04 PM , Rating: 2

So let me start by saying I'm a hardcore networking geek, and just passed my Cisco CCIE written, so this is coming with real understanding... Though of course you just have my word for that!

So, the card could realistically help with offloading some cpu cycles to it which in turn may give you a couple more fps. To be honest big deal, though some may get excited about that...

It won't significantly improve your overall latency (as discussed already) to a remote server, and the benefit on a LAN is also questionable (other than delays in the Windows TCP/IP stack, but meh not really)

What makes this card so potentially nasty, and I feel very unscrupulous is the Linux device on it. This essentially lends itself to being setup as a near undetectable proxy server enabling all kinds of packet level manipulation to be done.

Those that are still with me may remember the old StoogeBot for Quake (Think auto aimer). That essntially ran on a pc which intercepted the network traffic from the client to the server, manipulated the aiming and sent it onto the server. Having that on a card in the PC with a low latency PCI interface (Vs multiple network hops) could be deadly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aimbot

Think about it, with the right code you can totally subvert a game to a horrific level, and no "Watchdog" application could detect it. I don't like it, but it may well become a fact of life.

The linux part could be used for good too though, by say installing a firewall on i o protect your pc, but I don't think that's what it was truely intended for...

I just made my own PCI-CARD

By GhandiInstinct on 9/9/2006 12:56:33 AM , Rating: 1

It boosts your case fans speed and reduces the decibels by 50%!!!!

Retailing for $499, didn't want to directly compete with the PS3, launch is 2015.

The only advantage i can see...

By Acanthus on 9/9/2006 1:02:24 PM , Rating: 1

Is the thing basically has a driver side latency control, which is basically company-sponsored cheating, in the games where lag is an advantage.

um....wow..

By LumbergTech on 9/10/2006 4:47:07 PM , Rating: 1

did you idiots ripping on ign not read the conclusion?

"At this point in time, however, we're very impressed, and hope that Bigfoot will be able to tune the card for other games as well as they've dialed it in for F.E.A.R. Dedicated online gamers with a bit of cash for experimentation are encouraged to give the Killer NIC a shot."