Is it for real?

Basically, if it'd really work as advertised, I'll continue with my order...
What do you guys reckon??


http://www.killernic.com/

 

it seems that it wokrs a bit... definitly not worth the cash though IMO

http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Bigfoot_Networks_Killer_Network_Interface_Card/

 

seen it, its so not worth it, a load of marketing bs

 

Improved Responsiveness
Bypasses the Windows® network stack reducing in-game ping and giving you the edge you need.
The windows stack isnt slow to start with.. making a new stack isnt going to do much

Smoother Gameplay When it Matters Most
Offloads all network processing from the CPU to boost frame rates, especially during moments of intense action.
Games still have to process that data to find out what the data means etc, and what would you rather, one of your dual core's running at 2ghz (average?) processing the data, or some random 100mhz chip built in the network card? (it would probably be faster, but i couldnt find anything about how fast it actualy runs), i doubt it can beat any CPU tho

Faster Game Data
Game network packets are prioritized so they get to and from your game faster.
Most network wrappers that games use can already do this, directPlay can even go further and say if packets need to be delivered or if its ok if they are lost (updating a players position, its better to drop a late packet than apply it 10 seconds later after newer updates have already synced the players position)

It'd be worth it if you got it for free or something, but i wouldnt pay much

 

Doesn't make a new one, bypasses it all together from my reading


400MHZ, but that would be for sole cores, like 2ghz sole cores such as my old amd, the nic does the network processing freeing up your cpu to do other task

*Crap Brb, client*

 

hehe... lol.


But anyway:

It looks to me like it's not worth it. I mean, come on, if you're downloading something using a command-line tool, with no other programs open, is your CPU really maxxed out? It'll probably peak at 2% or something. Games, I would imagine, don't need to be making heaps of connections; only one or a few.

Wikipedia says "Gigabit TCP communication using software processing alone is enough to fully load a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor", but how can that be? *Processing* the data, maybe, but certainly the networking stack can't strain it that much.

+1 weesals from me

But still, very interesting idea, and apparently it is efficient for >1Gb/s connections.

 

Actually, they work lol...
I found one lying around in our stock! Chucked it in, and a standard Nic, inet speeds increased by 2mb on the Killer, both nic's were 1gbps
So the Killer brang the speed from 10mbps download for a standard nic to 12mbps, which is now in a server I was gonna buy it from work lol

 

if you dont replace it, there will be no networking

arent internet speeds limited by your modem?.. the way i see it, a 100gbps connection to a modem on 256k would be just as slow as a 10mbps connection
it could be compressing the data, but i didnt read anything on their site about compression (but only read the home page), and then the NIC on the other side would have to support compression too

anyway, i think its BS

 

Limited by both, but if you have a 500mbps router/modem setup like we do, then they are of no issue, its limited by your NIC/Cableing.
We are on 80mbps inet connection so that has NO problem traveling through a 500mbps modem, but the NiC aside from being limited to 1gbps for both the NiC's I tried, the Killer had a clear advantage, how that would translate ingame is another story, but for general inet browsing and downloading it was a more then obvious improvment
There site says bypass, so I'll say they are right

 

why did you ask us if they work when you've tried one and found that it does work for your self?

 

quote: toby

There site says bypass, so I'll say they are right

But as weesals points out, how can it network? You can't send raw Ethernet data to the program, unless the program is specifically modified to handle such data (and there'd be a ludcrious amount of code to include in a game. Games should not have to each implement an entire decoding libraries for so many network protocols).

There *has* to be something, somewhere, decoding Ethernet frames, TCP/IP packets etc. If it's not Windows, and it's not in the NIC, where is it?

It looks to me like all it does is offload all of the network stuff to the NIC. And $250, USD, would make the difference between a low-end dual-core and a high-end quad-core. With change to buy a few movie tickets.

Sure, it might go faster, but you're better off looking at cheaper solutions to tighter bottlenecks before you get that card. I just downloaded hotmail homepage 100 times at the same time; it was less than 1% of my CPU usage.

So I say, cut your losses and get a quad and watch a movie. Unless you already have a quad, in which case I bow and drool. In high performance, *then* this card seems to make sense.

But yeah... it is weird that it sped it up by so much for you, toby. But hey, if it works, it works!

 

Didn't know we had one when I posted...
I showed Mathew and he said they work ok, and then randomly ran off, came back a few minutes later and threw one at me and said find out for yourself...
I was like ":o mad, Im buying this man if it works", but then Jamie stole if off me to see if it improves our Exchange Server which is running like a dog lately *Its amazing how crap Dual Quad Xions and 16GB of ram is*
So I'll find out tomorrow if it helped the Exchange, Exchange has been lagging hard lately, but it also is running 10 VMWare Servers and Exchange haha, so its 16GB ram and Dual Quad is not enough.
*Boss has a tendency to overload servers with VM images*

 

go task man, i doubt the server would be using more than 50%
my windows install is using 5% of my CPU, so 10% of 900mhz (10% if it was 1 core, 900mhz cos my CPU underclocks when its not in demand) is like 90mhz
if you have dual quads, running at 3ghz (?), you could run Opera, MSN, VC, Notepad * 2, Explorer * 2, winamp 33 times over per core, times 8 cores, thats 267 times over

remote desktop sessions and VM's take quite a bit more CPU tho, probably double what im using, so you could still run > 100 VM's or sessions before it should lag due to CPU

I think the lag would be caused by lack of network bandwidth, although terminal services.. alot goes on behind the scenes (cant say the same for M$ Exchange email server, if thats running badly, thats purely microsoft's fault)

 

"Weesals uses maths attack. It's a critical hit!"

I first saw "10 VMWare servers" and thought "man, that poor machine!". However. that's 2GB RAM, 2/3 of a very decent CPU core per machine. (assuming the host OS usage is negligible).

Where do you go when dual quad is not enough?

 

I never knew you knew so much about OUR servers...
The Dual Quads are maxed, 100% on each quad, ram is maxed aswell *Well, 15gb used*, Its Dual Quads running at 2.8GHZ Per C
The lag is not network lag, typically, a 10gbps network card + the cableing doesn't get reached in max bandwidth.
VMWare machines take LOTS of CPU, I run Workstation on here last night as you know, but it used 70% CPU and that was a SINGLE VM Machine, Ram was up to 1.4GB.

And like I said, its an Exchange Server, running an additional 10 server's in VM including a sql server
Exchange and in particular the store, uses a SHIT load of Ram *Store ram usage grows per email*....
Basically, the Store is never ending in CPU and Ram usage, it uses the ram it can get, same goes for CPU.
The larger the store, the more it uses, and the store grows depending on emails coming in, out, and as the name suggests, stored, aswell as accessed, modified *for drafts*.

About Store...
Exchange Store will grab as much RAM as it can if it thinks it needs it, yes. But - we constantly monitor the performance of the system in regards to memory usage and we can use this data to infer when we need more memory and when other applications or the OS needs more memory. We then use this data to act accordingly. This scheme allows the system to act as if there is explicit control when in fact it is actually a few autonomous applications cooperating in a disconnected manner. That means that we should NEVER see a "out of memory" message by any application on the server because of the Store - unless there is a leak on the server, of course... or the page file is too small. If there was a malfunction in this Store mechanism it would cause a lot of paging. That is a big performance problem, but shouldn’t cause actual errors.

About Sql...
Exchange Store is not the only product behaving like this... SQL does something very similar, for example. That is one of reasons why we do not necessarily encourage putting SQL and Exchange on the same server, as they will be fighting over whatever RAM is in the server.

Store CPU Issues...*Per Microsoft*
The Store.exe process uses almost 100 percent of CPU resources

The CPU Usage issue is due to a corrupt email font name, however, when you have mailboxes galore, and thousands *Literally* of emails, its IMPOSSIBLE to not have corrupt emails, if you've ever read a report coming from Exchange, then you'll already know that.







8 Core CPU's...
And yes, they exist....Typically for the 'real' servers *Like google* and CAD Designers,
Never heard of one?
Neither had I, until It came in the other day *Think i already mentioned it in another post, in another thread* had an 8 Core cpu, Photoshop Enterprise Premium can optimize upto 100% CPU usage over 6 cores.
Photoshop CS3 can use 4 cores to 100%