$280 NIC

Clocker

Clocker

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Not that I would ever think of spending this kind of money on a NIC...but do the claims even seem realistic?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16833342001

The KILLER NIC gives your computer superior speed and performance in online games, which means you get more Frames Per Second and better Pings. KILLER's 400 MHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) and 64 Megabytes of DDR combine for some serious network processing power. If you're a gamer who sqeezes every last drop of performance from your system the next step is KILLER!

- Gives you the ability to run applications on the NPU?either applications you write yourself or that you download from KillerNIC.com.
- Bypassing the Windows networking stack means real advantages for you in online games.

Lag and Latency Reduction Technology is the power behind the KILLER NIC. LLR bypasses the Windows network stack and minimizes the interrupts on your CPU. Best part is, LLR is plug'n'play, and requires no software changes by game developers
Click to expand...
 
Didn't someone do some tests five or so years ago showing that a full-bore 100base-T NIC with crappy drivers uses maybe 3% of processor time? And that was with five-years-ago CPUs.
 
There may well be people here with something positive to say about Kyle and his site, but I'm not one of them. Made THG look pretty good, I always thought.

How could anyone take this complete crap seriously? Try pinging a router or other PC on your LAN: < 10mS (in reality, < 1mS). In other words, SFA or bugger all. So tell me again, how do you reduce this by 10-20mS?

As for prioritising incoming traffic: huh? You have a packet in the buffer, you open it to check its purpose, it's not what you wanted, so you do what exactly? Windows, a multi-tasking OS, would throw the address to the appropriate task and move on. The 'Killer' needs to push it onto a pending stack, so a whole bunch of overhead ensues. Can someone enlighten me?
 
I feel sorry for that kid who spent almost $300 for *another* 20 frames per second in Counter Strike.
 

Network cards using a TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) are really meant for IP SAN (iSCSI) usage more than typical networking. US$300 actually isn't too bad of a price for a TOE, but this is undoubtedly overkill for a single user workstation.

In the next several months, there should be mainstream server mobos hitting the market place with a built-in TOE.




 
The idea of having a fast-ish coprocessor with a builtin Linux system has a certain amount of appeal. I don't know if it's $300 worth of appeal, but given a decent amount of storage I could see setting up a transparent proxy - something that might ACTUALLY make your internet connection faster - or something similar.
 
If this were $50, I'd say that it'd be worth it for any hardcore gamer.

You'd probably get more from what they're charging for getting a second video card and setting up SLI/Crossfire.
 
I'd say this is only for the gamer that already has the fastest everything else. As has been stated here, better improvements can be had for cheaper elsewhere. However, after all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, this is cheaper than getting your own T-1.
 
ddrueding said:
However, after all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, this is cheaper than getting your own T-1.
Click to expand...

It is? Wow, I thought the US had cheap DSL?

If it is cheaper, it's still no substitute in any conceivable way.

The argument for TOE applies to 10GbE, and to a much lesser extent, GbE. It's only relevant where the bandwidth is saturated, which is really only likely with a SAN.

The figures I've seen suggest that sustained TCP/IP over GbE consumes the equivalent of 1GHz of CPU power (don't forget that this depends on the network interface, solutions that bypass the PCI bus have a smaller impact). If this is linear, then a 1Mbps internet connection will need 1MHz of CPU power.

IMO, it's a scam at any price.
 
DSL is cheap, but a T-1 is still about $400/mo.

Most of the games I care about (FPS) care more about ping than throughput. DSL in my experience has an average ping in the 40-120ms range, my T-1s average 5-10ms.
 
Good DSL is closer to 20-30 in my experience for close servers like your ISPs games servers or another company they peer with, I've seen it go below 10 but only once or twice.
Interestingly enough my wireless internet was consistently arround 25 to most Australian games servers.
 
The fact of the matter is that the extra $350 of a T-1 goes to quality measures which are fairly negligible to the vast majority of users.

For games, most of the ping time is on the other end of the wire anyway.
 
I would argue that a commercial T1 ISP is much more likely to be connected to a higher-level ISP (Fewer hops) than a retail DSL line. also that ISP is also much more likely to connect to redundant high-level ISP's that will allow for a better path selection (Again fewer hops). Further, a higher level ISP is more likely to have surplus (on demand) bandwidth that will produce less latency. The net result is faster pings, more reliability, and a much higher monthly cost.
 
I game with (relatively good) 2MB SDSL at home and a full T-1 rigged to a high-end smoothie with QoS at my game center. The difference is night and day, with the T-1 only costing twice as much.
 
Is it possible to get T-1's at an afordable price or is your SDSL expensive to begin with??
 
And if you get FIOS, they won't let you do anything with it...

I'm still stunned by a $400/month T1. The last one I priced was $600 + equipment rental.
 
Last place I worked for had a T1 for about $450-$500 a month, when bundled with VOIP (it used part of the T1 for voice), Runco supplied it.
 
I've seen similar prices as you. That's why I questioned how affordable it was for ddrueding. It figured FIOS doesn't allow you to do anything with the bandwidth... I'd consider hosting SF at home if FIOS allowed for it (and it's also why I asked about T1 prices).
 
It also helps that I've signed up for about 12 T-1 for local businesses all through the same local vendor. When I asked my rep what they could do for me they cut me a sweet deal for the home and my business.
 
The business fios isn't bad (5Mb/5Mb up/down should be enough) , but they aren't available in my area yet. However, they can offer DSL with crummy upload limits.
 
I dunno about all of you guys, but I can't get FIOS because Verizon isn't my ILEC. We're getting LightSpeed, which sounds a lot more exciting, and lot less like a European car.
 
The device includes a hardware AES-128 security-processing block, which accelerates the handling of DRM (digital rights management) schemes including DTCP-IP (Digital Transmission Content Protection over Internet Protocol) and Windows Media DRM 10.
Click to expand...

This is a very worrying trend. It's all too easy to foresee a future where TCP/IP is locked up in hardware.
 
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