The KillerNIC

This thread was made for two reasons, as both a collection of thoughts from the bit-tech community, but also a plea to the journo's to review this card. If you don't know what a KillerNIC is here is a link ; www.killernic.com.

If your too lazy to click the link, it is essentialy a linux computer on a PCI card that bypasses the windows network gubbins, and takes on all the network proccessing lowering the load of the CPU. As I live in a chronicaly lagged area, (On a good day il get 50 kb a sec, on a bad day your looking at 15) the delagging abilities of the card seem a logical choice for me. However, probably the nifftiest feature of the card is the ability to run so-called 'FNA-Apps' on the card, so firewalls, bittorent downloaders and other network centric apps can be run with no impact to the CPU

Sweet.

However, the pricing is not, 'cos it costs 170 quid. Yeah.
I am holding out on a new graphics card till november when Nvidia have promised a new range of wallet exploding lovlies, but the interwebs opinion of the card seems to be all over the place with IGN worshiping it to others taking a dump on that exquisitly chromed 'K'.

So to you, bit tech readers, tell me your opinions because from by my current crappy connection I have got to admit that dispite the price it looks rather appitiseing.

Certainly a lot better than a Physx.

 

I'll dump it as the difference will only be at most about 10-15% less resources on your single/dual core CPUs. If u've got a quad core, I see a point in having one @all...

 

Look at the reviews; it's basically ********.

Overpriced and offers no performance gains to speak of at all.

 

In my opinion, the KillerNIC is the biggest hardware joke of the 21st century.

 

i remember reading a review for them that contained a blind test review, no one could tell the difference, there recommendation was to upgrade your internet connection if possible instead

 

My opinion: get yourself the cheapest PC you can off the local paper (should get you a few hundred mhz PC for less than £20)

Either install linux and use it as a download station, or install linux and use it as a router.

then you have almost every feature the killernic can do at a huge fraction of the price...

The whole 'linux on a card' idea is great, but not worth it for the price, and the speed improvements they claim are laughable... your ISP's network is going to contribute 99%+ of the slowdown to ping times, not your network card.

 

I agree, I have a quad core, and most of the time in gaming, even in multicore gaming its running at < 40%, plenty of left overs for networking.

 

it is was too much for what it does

 

Now, if KillerNIC was a TCP offloading card (which I think it is trying to say in plain dummy language) it would be worth the cost. On systems with a huge network usage you'll see an improvement.

However, for gaming and such it won't be worth it...

 

I thought those PhysicsX cards are the biggest hardware joke?

 

Too right - this card will not help the speed of your internet connection (the slowest link and biggest bottleneck by far in any online transaction). If you've got a laggy connection, try another ISP.

This card is the hardware equivalent of go-faster stripes or a big exhaust on a chav-mobile. It looks flashy, but does nothing for performance.

 

Well at least with those AGEIA PhysX cards, if implemented correctly (which hasn't really happened yet), they can take a big strain off the CPU/GPU during physics-heavy tasks. But like I said, nothing currently available is physics-heavy enough to require a dedicated physics processor, though it could be useful at some point down the line.

 

I don't know, ive read both sides, bit to much for fancy network card though. On board Marvel Lan is good on my m/b, ping is low in games and frame rate is good.

 

I would seriously like to see Crysis and other DX10 games strain GPUs in physics calculations.