Killer LAN

pp111 · 12 Nov 2018 at 12:42

I have this on my motherboard and have completely ignored it becuase of the bad reports and general negativity from people.
Over the past month or so though I have had chance to properly test it, and I have to say I am absolutely amazed that it has so much negativity surrounding it. It's amazingly good! The nice little utility that comes with it, allows you to instantly click on an application and change it's priorty, you can also adjust the upload and download limits of application in the same way. It's just so simple. It provides a list of running applciations, you just click on the one you want and adjust the slider to the limits you want. It even offers a marginally lower ping than the intel card in the same PC. The only negative thing is that it offers a slightly lower top download speed than the intel, but it's less than 5%. It's run perfectly for a month now, not even the slightest problem.
The uility is particularly handy if you have a lot of applications ( games and launchers ) when you want to adjust bandwidth very qucikly and easily.
So I am really amazed. This is a good product! I really don't understand why there is so much negativity about it!! I am going to be using it from now on.
I just wanted to say that lol.

Rainmaker · 12 Nov 2018 at 14:05

The gap has closed over the years, it's true, but Intel is by far superior for networking. For example Intel will use 4x to 6x less CPU than Realtek or Killer for the same network traffic, and Intel will manage double the throughput of Killer on 'gaming sized' packets (18-256 bytes), despite them reaching almost parity at higher packet sizes and jumbo frames (albeit at much higher CPU usage for the Killer chip). Because it's software based, Killer's 'optimisation' doesn't work on anything but issues stemming from its own machine. It can't account for or react to other network nodes in the same way a proper Intel NIC can. This is just the first search result I found, but there are plenty of others showing some testing.

bledd · 12 Nov 2018 at 14:37

Personally I've found zero difference in ping (ping is all I care about) between my onboard Killer NIC and onboard Intel NIC. I use the Intel NIC.

Steveocee · 12 Nov 2018 at 14:51

How often do you saturate your gigabit NIC to the point where you need to prioritise packets going through it?

Sin_Chase · 12 Nov 2018 at 21:06

The negativity started when this was being sold as a standalone product and not integrated into motherboards. Its snake oil.

The software 'value adds' are achievable with software without a Killer NIC.

The advertised benefits are total nonsense.

Caged · 12 Nov 2018 at 21:20

My Dell laptop has a 'Killer' wireless card in, and it's never given me any problems but I'd have picked an Intel one if it had been an option.