Killer gaming network card

If you paid a grand for your graphics and several hundred for an amazing isp then this might make sense.
Does it raise the top fps or the minimum, stopping a game bottoming out in its fps at a vital point in a game is usefull but top end fps is just for benchmarks, you wont notice between 101 and 100fps



mrk said:
Never would I have imagined the day that I'd see someone call someone else a smeghead on an online forum!
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smeeeeeegheeeeeeeed
 
Whilst the NIC's we sell were I work aren't strictly NIC's (ours are monitoring cards, although we have a NIC driver out there somewhere) our cheapest is still 10 times that price. Some of the server based Intel NICs are 400 notes.
 
The problem with this is that no matter how amazing your NIC is, it could be 9999999999999999x more powerful than all the microprocessors in the world combined, your latency is by and large dictated by your internet connection, and, ultimately, the speed of light.

A cheap 100mbit NIC can give you consistent ping times of <1ms to your router, so the gains are very minimal. Whereas most people in the UK on home internet connections have at least a 6ms ping to their ISP (many a lot higher).

Reduced CPU load may be of more benefit, but again, the amount of cpu time taken by a NIC during gaming pales into insignificance relative to the overall demands on it.

The bottom line is that to get a big performance improvement from any aspect of your computer, a new product needs to address a current bottleneck. A NIC simply can't do that for gaming performance.
 
“Speaking of which...wheres Pottsey? Havn't seen him in a while ”
Not been a lot to post about that interests me apart from the PoweVR GPU’s built into Intel’s next GPU.

I never really understood it, people spend 1000’s on a top end PC then go use a built in LAN socket on there motherboard. Even though the built in LAN sockets often cause a large FPS drop and eat up a lot of CPU power sometimes as much as 20%. I am not saying you should go spend £100’s on a network card but why build a top end PC then go use a very slow £1 network socket on the motherboard? Gamers are a crasy breed at times.
 
Pottsey said:
“Speaking of which...wheres Pottsey? Havn't seen him in a while ”
Not been a lot to post about that interests me apart from the PoweVR GPU’s built into Intel’s next GPU.

I never really understood it, people spend 1000’s on a top end PC then go use a built in LAN socket on there motherboard. Even though the built in LAN sockets often cause a large FPS drop and eat up a lot of CPU power sometimes as much as 20%. I am not saying you should go spend £100’s on a network card but why build a top end PC then go use a very slow £1 network socket on the motherboard? Gamers are a crasy breed at times.
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Tbh if a lan socket is used 20% of a gaming machine costing thousands so it would have at least a 3gh c2d or a 2.5-3ghz quad, then a network card would need one hell of a processor on it.
 
It's quite a cool card, and if you have money to spare then i'd recommend getting it. I spoke to a guy who worked for that company at i31 last summer, and he gave me and a mate one of those sodding big heatsinks on the NIC. It had a chain on it so you could ware it like a (geeky) chav!

One of the cool features is that you could run programs and things off the card directly so it doesn't use your computer's resources.
 
Try it you self. If you have a cheap inbuilt LAN socket look at your CPU usage then copy a large 600 meg files across your network and notice how the CPU usage jumped up. Many cheap LAN sockets built into motherboards require a notable amount of CPU power.
 
Pottsey said:
Try it you self. If you have a cheap inbuilt LAN socket look at your CPU usage then copy a large 600 meg files across your network and notice how the CPU usage jumped up. Many cheap LAN sockets built into motherboards require a notable amount of CPU power.
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My CPU usage jumps to 5-6% with a dedicated NIC.
 
Pottsey said:
Try it you self. If you have a cheap inbuilt LAN socket look at your CPU usage then copy a large 600 meg files across your network and notice how the CPU usage jumped up. Many cheap LAN sockets built into motherboards require a notable amount of CPU power.
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But if you have a top end gaming pc, you will certainly have a decent mobo, which won't have a chepo socket, but probably just a scaled down version of a net work card.
 
“Pottsey now wants to promote this Killer Nics since The Dedi Physics card is dead."
It’s not dead yet it just got a new lease of life due to extra game support now Nvidia is backing Physx and if the Nvidia GPU Physx is compatible with the dedicated PPU card it’s even better. But this isn’t the thread to discuss this. If you want to make a new thread I will happily continue talking about physics.

The Killer Nic does work and is useful but I am not sure it’s worth the price. I aways perfered dedicated hardware for each bit of the computer of cheap inbuilt things that use the CPU.
 
I think i remember some claim about the killer network card when it first came out that was discussed on these forums, and that was that it could speed up satellite internet connections to some fast speed. The problem that someone pointed out, is that its physicaly impossible for a signal to get to the sat and back down in the time they said, and even if it was somehow possible, the network card wouldnt speed it up.
 
I think this thread is in severe need of some proper benchmarks comparing onboard NICs and dedicated NICs.

I personally use to stick dedicated NICs in my new builds for some time, but eventually couldn't be bothered anymore and didn't notice any difference at all.
 
titaniumx3 said:
I think this thread is in severe need of some proper benchmarks comparing onboard NICs and dedicated NICs.

I personally use to stick dedicated NICs in my new builds for some time, but eventually couldn't be bothered anymore and didn't notice any difference at all.
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Well volunteered sir! :p:D
 
Pottsey said:
“Pottsey now wants to promote this Killer Nics since The Dedi Physics card is dead."
It’s not dead yet it just got a new lease of life due to extra game support now Nvidia is backing Physx and if the Nvidia GPU Physx is compatible with the dedicated PPU card it’s even better. But this isn’t the thread to discuss this. If you want to make a new thread I will happily continue talking about physics.

The Killer Nic does work and is useful but I am not sure it’s worth the price. I aways perfered dedicated hardware for each bit of the computer of cheap inbuilt things that use the CPU.
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Dream on m8, Nvidia will make it part of the Graphics Card (CUDA).

It was always stated from day 1 that it could be fitted onto a Sound or Graphics card.

There is no new Dedi Physics now.

And no thanks, I have heard enough of your talking about Physics to last me a lifetime lol.

You want to support the dead in the water Killer Nic also ? (its been out years nothing new and sales must be low).
 
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“Dream on m8, Nvidia will make it part of the Graphics Card (CUDA).
It was always stated from day 1 that it could be fitted onto a Sound or Graphics card. There is no new Dedi Physics now.”
Its not a dream its far from dead. Nvidia benefits the dedicated Physics card. Now Nvidia is backing Physics more game support should arrive. Once it on the GPU it can only be a good thing for dedicated Physics card owners. Then there are the ATI people who don’t want to buy Nivida. If it takes off on Nivida GPU’s ATI owners only option is to buy a dedicated Physics card or swap GPU’s.
 
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