VeeshanVault

What does anyone know about Killer NIC cards?

Warheart wrote:What does anyone know about Killer NIC cards?

The first rule about NIC cards is you don't talk about NIC cards.

Is Killer a brand or are you just looking for a good NIC card?

If they're a brand I've never heard of them. If I've never heard of them, don't buy one. Get yourself a nice D-link, Intel, Linksys, Netgear, Realtek, etc. or better yet, get a real motherboard that has a NIC built-in. (it'll end up being either a Realtek or an Intel in almost all cases)

noel wrote:Is Killer a brand or are you just looking for a good NIC card?

If they're a brand I've never heard of them. If I've never heard of them, don't buy one. Get yourself a nice D-link, Intel, Linksys, Netgear, Realtek, etc. or better yet, get a real motherboard that has a NIC built-in. (it'll end up being either a Realtek or an Intel in almost all cases)

I've heard of them, and they claim all sorts of crazy shit from lowered pings to increased frame rates. None of which they achieve to a level which would go close to justifying their price tag.

Get an http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833106123 (Intel PCI NIC) and save yourself $200 for the same thing.

Oh, and as to the suggestion of using a realtek NIC, onboard or otherwise, shame on you Noel.

http://www.killernic.com/

Now that Noel has heard of them, you can purchase one!

Zaelath wrote:

noel wrote:Is Killer a brand or are you just looking for a good NIC card?

If they're a brand I've never heard of them. If I've never heard of them, don't buy one. Get yourself a nice D-link, Intel, Linksys, Netgear, Realtek, etc. or better yet, get a real motherboard that has a NIC built-in. (it'll end up being either a Realtek or an Intel in almost all cases)

I've heard of them, and they claim all sorts of crazy shit from lowered pings to increased frame rates. None of which they achieve to a level which would go close to justifying their price tag.

Get an http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6833106123 (Intel PCI NIC) and save yourself $200 for the same thing.

Oh, and as to the suggestion of using a realtek NIC, onboard or otherwise, shame on you Noel.

The only reason you heard about problems with Realtek NICs is because there are so many of them. I know of many installations with Realtek NICs that have no problems. I actually know of one that only had problems when they switched to a 3Com NIC for all the PCs at their site without enough testing and then had to switch back to the Realteks.

Spang, I've been a network engineer for ~12 years. It's not just my job, but also something of a hobby. Just because companies like Killer, Alienware, etc. come into the picture promising copious amounts of bullshit that's improved over the norm, doesn't mean it's true. Companies like Intel, 3Com, etc. have a lot more money and vested interest in ensuring that they have the best performance/compatibility on the market. At present, unless you're running a server or need some truly advanced NIC features like Adapter Fault Tolerance, Etherchannel, QoS enhancements, you can choose just about any reputable NIC vendor. I can be 99% accurate when I say that unless there's something actually wrong with the NIC's hardware, in almost all consumer applications, the NIC is not the problem.

I know, I just found your arrogance to be humorous in this particular thread.

I do try to be something of an expert in the field of networking, so I wasn't trying to be arrogant. Sorry if I came off that way, I assumed most people here knew what I did for a living.

noel wrote: The only reason you heard about problems with Realtek NICs is because there are so many of them. I know of many installations with Realtek NICs that have no problems. I actually know of one that only had problems when they switched to a 3Com NIC for all the PCs at their site without enough testing and then had to switch back to the Realteks.

If they never put them under load, yeah, no problem. I've seen quite a few dodgy 3Coms too... but the 8129 chipset (at least I think that's the one they used for years) was a complete and utter dog if it ran full 100Mbit for more than a few seconds. You could put one (or 4) in a firewall and never see a problem because the choke point was the internet, so the thing never had to do more than a fraction of a MBit, but put the same card in a PC/Server and run it at 100Mbit full duplex for a while and you'd get constant link loss.

On the other hand, any (PCI) Intel NIC I've used has been pretty much flawless. Can't say the same for their motherboard chipsets...

Perhaps they're manufactured in a different plant for the US market, the same way I've heard people on VV enthuse about Gigabyte motherboards which I wouldn't use if they were giving them away for free.

If I've never heard of them, don't buy one.

You could have left out the above quote and still gotten your point across, while being and appearing knowledgeable in the subject. All the above quote tells me is that you're arrogant.

Spang wrote:

If I've never heard of them, don't buy one.

You could have left out the above quote and still gotten your point across, while being and appearing knowledgeable in the subject. All the above quote tells me is that you're arrogant.

It tells me that if a network engineer has no idea what this NIC is that the OP is asking about...it might not be a good idea to waste your money on it at this time.

It's a pretty common-sense approach to technical products. If you've never heard of the company before, there's a good chance the quality, support (including drivers), and features of that product are sub-standard or even faulty. I don't see how that's being arrogant, as opposed to helpful...

After looking around, I finally found info on the Killer nic card and a review from IGN where they tested it with only one game (the game that comes with it) and stopped short of giving it a score. $280 network card to try and squeeze out a few more FPS? no thanks. Neat looking card, though!

You can also check:
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2865&p=11

If you don't like the answer of I haven't heard of it so it must be "meh."

If I haven't heard of a particular new gadget that comes out for PCs. I generally check AnandTech, SharkyExtreme, or Toms Hardware and see if any of them has done a review. While there reviews aren't perfect and are open to a bit of bias, I at least feel slightly more informed.

On that note. I have heard of KillerNIC before, and to me, its not worth the price tag.
In general, I use software based NICs in my machines from whoever happens to be cheapest at the time NetGear or RealTek (~$8-$15), because there isn't a noticeable difference for games. Generally I wouldn't bother with Intel or 3Com for the software NICs, you're paying mostly for the name at that point. If I was building a web server (for home use), I would get a hardware based NIC from 3Com or Intel ($80ish last I looked but its been a long while).

The bottom line is that almost any modern onboard or PCI 10/100/1000 card will get you a maximum speed of ~486Mbps on a gigabit Ethernet link. If the device is using a PCI-E bus, you'll get a higher speed.

What does that mean? Your NIC will never be your bottleneck.

Realtek chipsets in NICs may be bad in general but the cheapo $9.99 Trendnet Gigabit card was better than a $99.00 Intel Nic for my Hackentosh setup!

If there was a noticeable real world difference in performance between a cheap NIC and expensive NIC (on a home network), I'd buy an expensive NIC for sure. This Killer NIC looks like a gimmick but I'd take off that heatsink and use it as a ninja weapon next Halloween if I bought one...then I'd have to buy two for dual ninja weapons...maybe that's their strategy for selling even more of them.

edit: holy grammar errors pre-coffee

I can tell when I've had 3 hours of sleep when they're = their and by = buy