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  • bunnyfubbles - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I love how they're moving away from the cheesy bling look, but more than $100 for a NIC is just too much. I could see myself maybe spending $50-75 just for the features as performance has never been impressive enough for me.
  • Arrakiv - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Yeah, we're much, much happier with the current generation's look. The Xeno wasn't too bad either, I don't think, but we wanted the 2100 to look more modern and attractive and less, well, like you said. Basically the as a reflection of where we're going as a company, too.
  • SanLouBlues - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    I'd consider paying in that range, but only if it had multiple ethernet ports so I could repurpose it as a router interface once it's obsolete.
  • shmuck - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    Repurpose nothing, you could daisy chain those suckers. Picture a LAN party with no hub required, no processor overhead from the daisy chaining, and only a trivial amount of additional latency. As long as the party wasn't huge it'd work really well.

    Mostly what's got me disappointed by this is that all the improvements seem to be in the proprietary Windows software. The appeal of having a little Linux box that fits inside my Linux box is dampened somewhat by lack of Linux compatibility.
  • HangFire - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    You wish to repurpose Ethernet into a token ring protocol, or go back to broadcast only?
  • shmuck - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    Well it is a ring topology, but no token needed. And it's not repurposing, it's expanding capability.
  • kmmatney - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I'd be more interested to know if a dedicated sound card can improve performance in cpu-limited situations. I've heard it could help, but maybe that's just a myth - you can have a mythbusters article about that...
  • shangshang - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    a dedicated sound card will improve gaming performance, not to mention sound quality. It's been discussed over the years. Google it.
  • Guspaz - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    This is less true today than it used to be for several reasons:

    1) Sound quality. This is entirely dependent on the quality of the DACs used in the onboard audio versus the dedicated sound cards (the SNR). There are good and bad of both varieties. There are onboard solutions that have better noise margins than discrete cards. If you're buying a discrete card, verify that the noise margin is better than your existing onboard solution, or you're throwing money after bad.

    2) Performance. Performance differences are pretty much a thing of the past, especially on modern multicore computers. Virtually no soundcards, discrete or otherwise, have hardware-accelerated 3D sound support anymore, and the only two APIs that support that (DirectSound3D and OpenAL) are either deprecated (DS3D doesn't exist in anything newer than WinXP), or third party (OpenAL requires support from individual games).

    The majority of sound processing is done in software these days, be it by Windows or by the game itself. This was necessitated by the varying capabilities of sound hardware; the only way for a game to be sure that sound mixing and effects would be consistent between different computers was to do it themselves. It was around the introduction of Id Tech 4 and Source that this became the norm.

    Furthermore, many people these days have quad core processors; not many games can effectively utilize all four cores completely due to the difficulty of splitting the load completely evenly. That often means that there is spare CPU resources available for sound processing. Even if there aren't, Moore's Law has ensured that the amount of CPU time required for audio processing has dropped to an extremely tiny amount relative to the overall performance of the processor.

    Gone are the days of 40% performance drops when using unaccelerated 3D sound on tbird Athlons. You might see a few FPS difference by spending $200 on a soundcard today, but you'll see a far bigger difference if you put that $200 into a faster CPU or GPU.

    So, what conclusion can we draw from this? That the only reason to buy a discrete sound card for the vast majority of users is purely audio quality; it's impossible in this day and age to get a big enough speed boost from a soundcard that the money is better spent there than on the CPU/GPU. And even then, you need to buy fairly high-end to get a noise margin that's better than onboard.
  • Zorlac - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Exactly!!! And what most "hardcore" PC folks dont know is that your sound card funds are much better off going to an external dedicated DAC if you are looking for "quality". Great post by the way. :)
  • afkrotch - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I prefer to stick to dedicated soundcards for 1 reason. Low chance of having crackling sound with onboard audio. Been sticking with my Audigy 2 ZS for the past like, 4 years.
  • jphoto801 - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    "Been sticking with my Audigy 2 ZS for the past like, 4 years."

    That means you have zero first-person experience with onboard audio for four years. I've used onboard audio exclusively for dozens of games, several motherboards, on (minumum) two computers at once and I have no idea what this cracking you refer to, is.
  • Integr8d - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    It's a buffer issue with both on-board and discrete audio cards. Just a settings fix in Win/Lin. No biggie.
  • Knowname - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    Output for integrated sound-cards IS still pretty decent (though, keeping account of the dire lack of pci or pcix1 slots nowadays, your lucky if you get two, if you listen to a lot of music you will want an upgrade... but it's good in a pinch), much better than it was. HOWEVER in most cases recording on these things is a REAL cr@pshoot to say the least. good output is NOT a guarantee to give you good (or even decent) input.
  • AnnonymousCoward - Sunday, May 16, 2010 - link

    I have a hard time understanding how this:
    http://tinyurl.com/23zsjgz

    can compete with this:
    http://tinyurl.com/l9vq7j

    in audio quality.
  • haplo602 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    If it get's a solid iSCSI offload implementation, it can be a killer product. Until then, meh ....
  • Exelius - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    That would make it a much more expensive card, indeed. I can't see a home use case for iSCSI though; things like Windows Home Server and mapped drives make more sense to me there. A home user isn't likely to have the switching infrastructure (managed switch with large port cache for jumbo frames, flow control, QoS, etc) to make iSCSI faster than CIFS.

    If you're just looking for a cheaper iSCSI card than you can get elsewhere... if they added iSCSI offloading to this, the price would likely be a lot higher. :)
  • nsx241 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Still useless for 99.9% of people out there. Are they even making money off of this thing? How many have they actually sold so far?
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I think the only reason its useless is because for it to have any real impact all users must be using one. The limiting factor is the upload in many cases, not the download. You're still waiting on responses from other users computers to reach the game server, then be transmitted to your PC. When you consider the miles crossed, the time between user actions, etc you can see why latency will always have some slight effect. Nothing is instantaneous, and this card is great but there isn't a magic cure all. A better investment would be for every gamer to put forth $100 to improve fiber optic networks.
  • wavetrex - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I wonder how this handles online gaming when the bandwidth is already saturated by a bittorrent client transferring at full speed, using 100+ active connections

    Did any review site test that ?

    Normal windows stack is unable to squeeze the game packets in the already clogged pipe, and lagspikes happen often.

    Anandtech, if you get your hands on this baby, please run uTorrent and download/seed 10-20 linux distributions at the same time, with a 50 peer limit per torrent, and check game lag under this conditions.

    You might ask... why not close/pause uTorrent while gaming to be lag-free ? Well... every kilobyte of upload counts... on some sites ( not going into detail ). Maybe I don't WANT to stop uTorrent, ever...
  • Arrakiv - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Torrenting + Gaming you say? You can do that, and actually in the Xeno, too. The bandwidth control features of the 2100 let you manage how much bandwidth any individual application on your computer is using at any one time. So, if your torrent application, or steam, or something else that you're doing major downloads with are taking up as much bandwidth as possible, you can cut them down so that more is freed up for the game. Plus game packets will get prioritized above the torrent's even without that.

    I'd love to see some reviewers bust out that test, because I pretty much agree with you. I also do an awful lot of HD streaming of podcasts, TV shows through netflix and what not... And, you know, I like to do that while gaming.

    (This is where I tack on a disclaimer that I do, indeed, work for Bigfoot.)
  • Guspaz - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    In my opinion, QoS is properly performed on the router rather than the NIC. Your NIC can't do jack about other users on the network (and we all know how much roommates and family members like to torrent at the most inopportune times), and even if you have QoS on your router, adding another layer of QoS on your NIC would be redundant at best, and could possibly conflict with your router at worst (your NIC can't make intelligent decisions based on the activity of other computers since it doesn't know what is happening on the network).
  • Klinky1984 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Looks like they're trying to cut production costs. It's sad that people are falling for this. This type of tech might have some use in the enterprise field(there are already high performance solutions in that field though), but for the power-user it's simply a waste of time. The amount of data & CPU time used for on-line gaming is pretty minimal. If you can ping your router in a matter less than 1ms, then your ISP adds 20 - 300ms, this card is going to have very little influence as the main factor to latency is your connection and where the server is located, not what NIC you have in your machine.

    I'll use my onboard Intel Gigabit or if I don't have gigabit onboard, I'll splurge on a $10 Intel Gigabit card off e-bay. Then put the other $120 towards a boot SSD, better video card, more ram or a bigger HDD...etc... Something that will make a bigger difference than this gimmick.
  • Arrakiv - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    We actually did beef up the card a bit which sort of overrides much in the way of savings, but... Yeah, USB and audio jacks were basically just costing extra, and not doing anything, so I can't really deny that part of it. But, it isn't because we're trying to screw over our customers, it's because the features were basically pointless with the direction we're taking the card.

    When we launched the Xeno, we did it with the intention of having applications running on the card, instead of your computer. We then discovered over time though, that this basically just ate up the CPU on the card, and it stopped doing its main purpose effectively: improving your gaming. Actually it was doing that not so much at all.

    So, those were scrapped primarily for that reason, because we're taking a different focus on this card. It is designed to give you straight up, raw performance across the board in all of your online applications, and a better experience over all. Effectively, the original plan wasn't a good idea. Which sucks, because it's a neat concept.
  • SunSamurai - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    The issue with NIC cards around the 100$ area is that even if they did have some functionality of weighting bandwidth, and possibly offloading some CPU time onto the card to add a few FPS or shave a few MS off, its just not worth it by itself. It needs another big feature, liking 1-3 more Ethernet slots and the ability to become something more than just another NIC.

    It seems like what you guys have so far is the icing, and you forgot the cake.
  • Per Hansson - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    Last time I checked the Killer NIC's only offloaded UDP, which is a small subset of the traffic most online games use
    A full TCP offload engine (ToE) is expensive to implement and costly to maintain (with the driver support)

    I bought a Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708 Single Port Gigabit NIC w/TOE, PCI-e
    I bought it because I wanted to do testing on that NIC (because the website I run use such a NIC)
    The price was below $100 on Dell...
    So unless this thing can beat a card like that there is absolutley no reason for it to exist, and I bet you 100% it does not beat such a card...

    Anandtech; please test this NIC against such servers offerings, it would be most interesting to see
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Offload_Engine

    Also note that for gaming you can just change a setting in Windows which will reduce your ping, because by default Windows waits untill it has a few packets to send off (which increases network bandwidth but increases network lag at the same time...)
    http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-Le...
  • taltamir - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I am more then a bit curious about a benchmark that shows their hardware is better AND is open source to verify there is no cheating.
  • heycarnut - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link


    @ taltamir:

    Bravo for your demonstration of skepticism and sanity. This company ranks up there with the producers of $25,000 speaker cables IMO.

    I wrote this http://pcgamingtips.blogspot.com/2010/05/perplexed... (check out the tail end) yesterday, before seeing this announcement. LOL.
  • ciukacz - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    take a look at cfos speed, a lot cheaper and in pure software.
    torrents + games with low ping required work better.
  • Byte - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    A nice NIC is fine and well, but you still need to go through a router or at least cable modem. This will be more important. I remember using a few dozen routers that couldn't cope with full BT + gaming. I would drop all the time. Now i use a Buffalo with a 250Mhz broadcom and 0 problems whatsoever.
  • zzing123 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    IMO, Bigfoot are absolutely stark raving bonkers. The Killer NIC is effectively a computer on a chip that uses Linux to try and do a better job than Windows with accelerating TCP/IP. Instead of doing just that, Bigfoot could get a whole load of additional value from this Linux core, by using the lagg interfaces to manage a multi-port NIC, and also add a mini PCI slot or two on the card, and sell an array of mini PCI cards with a variety of Layer 7 acceleration coprocessors.

    Extremely low latency for games is one thing, but if I have a card that costs less than $300, has 4 ports, and accelerates OpenSSL using the 'engine' directive, or even offloading an entire OpenVPN connection on the card, then I'd buy it on the spot.

    In the meantime, given that there's a $250 budget, I'd like to see how an Intel Pro/1000 Dual Port ET combined with a Netgear GS108T and a DD-WRT/Tomato firewall with QoS set up correctly will outpace a Killer NIC with no other hardware.

    As such, when you test this can you test:
    - Jumbo frames and Standard frame throughput
    - Amount of SSL connections you can open against the test rig per second
    - Throughput against similarly priced NIC's such as:
    -- Intel Pro/1000 ET Dual Port Server Adapter
    -- Intel Pro/1000 ET Quad Port Server Adapter
    -- Intel Pro/1000 PT Server Adapter (Single port)
    - Effect of traffic shaping behind a DD-WRT/Tomato router that is doing traffic shaping and a second test when it's not.
    - On a modern server, also see if there's any virtualized offloading acceleration with ESX 4.0 as well
  • James5mith - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I still believe a good quality Intel Server Grade NIC will outperform this or any other "consumer" grade NIC.

    Not to mention a single port Intel Server NIC is only about $79.
  • BlueAqua - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    If they release another network card that doesn't have gigabit lan then they are just sealing their own fate.
  • Belard - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    And what about the overhead for installing the required software to run the card on Windows?

    But according to 1 or 2 posters here, those who use torrents and gaming at the same time will the improvements. Guess that'll be a fairly rare customer who does that and has $250+ to blow.

    Otherwise, from past reviews - no real world differences.

    Check out the link (page 1 of responses) about making changes to how WinXP~Win7 does its networking to severely reduce lag. Thats is cleaner and costs nothing.
  • Arrakiv - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    The overhead is pretty minimal at best, and much less than what you'll be saving with the card. We actually ran benchmarks with machines running the card + software vs machines without the software and card... While simulating some game network traffic while running the benchmarks, we found the killer-enabled machines gave consistently higher scores despite the overhead.

    I imagine that's something that'll pop up in the review over here, most likely.
  • jabber - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I just cant believe you guys are still in business. Any other product that gave as middling to none performance improvement over the years and from successive revisions would have gone under long ago.

    By all rights and logic you should have gone bust at least 3+ years ago.

    Not funded by a Saudi prince with more money than sense are you?
  • AssBall - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I'll see what the review has to say before I pass that kind of judgement. That being said, the concept is still intriguing to me.
  • HangFire - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    The selling point of previous Killer cards was not reducing network latency, but Window's considerable network stack latency (and jitter), plus some rather interesting (but hard-to-prove) claims about reducing CPU overhead.

    However, Windows 7 has a greatly improved TCP/IP stack versus previous versions. Have these improvements reduced or eliminated the need for Killer's bypass stack implementation? If so it may have bypassed any possible need for the Killer card.

    I hope AnandTech's upcoming review considers this question.
  • MustangMike - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I remember reading about the first Killer NIC, good concept still waiting practical use.
    Along with Windows 7 new network stack, maybe a benchmark showing multiple computer configurations.

    Single or Dual Core CPU with 1GB or so of ram running Windows XP
    And
    Quad or new Phenom II X6 with 4-8GB of ram running Windows 7.

    Might be a good way to see:

    Old Generation computers vs New Generation computers
    (I'm willing to bet that the old gen computers would show a
    greater performance boost with Killer 2100 NIC then new gen computers.)

    Windows Networking stack performance Win 7 vs Win XP
    (Just curious if Win7 changes actually make any difference)

    Killer 2100 NIC & in Single core
    versus
    Killer 2100 NIC & Multiple CPU cores
    (Using idle cores to run "Networking Services and other Misc tasks" making Killer 2100 NIC useless.)
  • HangFire - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    I like the suggestion of testing the new AMD hexa cores with virtual machines, which is one of the few justifications a home user could use for paying extra for one. Many software developers, software salesmen, and SysAdmins run such setups in order to test and learn without running a server farm.

    If the latest Killer NIC could deal with being hammered by requests from multiple VM clients better than a standard NIC, perhaps some cost justification could be found. Right now, I'm not ready to give up on my Intel gigabit cards.
  • Focher - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I just don't understand how they are still in this business. This will be their - what? - third generation card? Each time, reviews have clearly shown that the cards give essentially no performance benefit in real world situations. It's a NIC designed for total geeks. The specs look great on paper, but don't deliver any practical value.

    The conversation about how the card looks versus what it can do reinforces how far down the rabbit hole we're getting.
  • afkrotch - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    For a regular home user, sure the card is a whole lot of worthless. Not going to get much benefit over a standard onboard nic.
  • v12v12 - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    I agree... I don't see how this "business" stays in biz; they probably do 3rd party work for other corps/businesses; it's how AMD manages to stay afloat in the CPU desk-top market....

    Still, who goes out and buys one of these things w/o already having a pretty expensive/maxed out rig? SSD, SLI/CF, i7/X6/DDR3/RAID 0+1 etc...

    Haha might as well just spend that money on a line upgrade from your ISP?!
  • dagamer34 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    If you're interested in this network card, I have some dark fiber in Alaska I'd like to sell you...
  • imaheadcase - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I like how they put "our tests show". /laugh

    They most have a great pitch team to put to investors is all i can say.

    Seriously lets break it down for you..

    1. Same card as before.
    2. claim to re-due code for card, without actually being able to show what they changed. AMAZING. Could be the exact same thing as before.
    3. took things OFF the card saying they was not needed. Like that did not occur to them before?

    Want to get a better internet connection/download/latency? STOP PLAYING ON SERVERS IN CHINA WITH GAMES.

    You can't fix internet congestion/problems with a network card people. BigFoot Networks is just making a useless product for people who don't know any better.

    Whats next Bigfoot Networks? Going to release a keyboard with a dedicated 1ghz CPU in it to support awesome features the ability to switch from a normal keyboard to a gaming keyboard? /sarcasm
  • HangFire - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    Lowering latency between the card and the application, and reducing CPU utilization, have always been their sales pitch. Lowering network latency is simply an IP prioritization feature that most cards have and not all networks honour.

    Still, some folks like to bash it for what it can't do, and what it doesn't claim to do, so if it makes you feel better...

    ...and no, I don't own one.
  • Necrosaro420 - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link

    I get max speeds (30 meg line) already with a $30 linksys, whats this thing do that a linksys card dont?
  • Arrakiv - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    You get your full throughput with the $30 linksys... You don't get max latency.

    Latency and throughput aren't the same thing. One is a measure of how much data you're receiving at once, one is a measure of how quickly those packets are actually coming in. A packet from your machine to a server, regardless if it is on a 30meg or 15 meg connection, will still go as 'fast' (latency) between your machine and the sever. The benefit of the 30meg connection isn't that packets go faster, just that you're having more coming and going at any one time, which is why you'll get a higher download speed.

    For file transfers, latency is pretty unimportant. For gaming (and VoIP, and video chat, and remote desktoping, and what not), throughput is pretty unimportant.
  • ciukacz - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    over at cfos.de there are some clear explanations how their software works and they make sense.
    maybe killer works similarly, but does those things in hardware (that doesn't mean it's better because it is a lower layer so it gets a chance to do something later than software).

    i know for sure that:
    torrents + gaming - better with prioritisation
    torrents + remote desktop - excellent with prioritisation, unusable without it
    torrents + browsing - better with prioritisation

    and when i say torrents i mean fully saturated 25/1,5 Mbps line (100-200 connections)
  • jabber - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    Just stop it, have a long think about your life and find something more worthwhile to do with your life.

    Torrenting TBs of data a month isnt a sign of a life well lived.

    It's a life wasted. Doesnt impress anyone.

    Find another hobby.
  • numberoneoppa - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    rawr
  • ciukacz - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    would you stop using your internet during the download of a linux distribution ?
  • numberoneoppa - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    Well, let's not pretend any NIC, home router, and crappy DSL/cable modem can't handle this. If you're having connection troubles using Bittorent, then perhaps user-defined settings should be modified.
  • ciukacz - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    no one is saying that they cant handle that.
    however comfort may be a lot better with prioritisation.
  • SunSamurai - Saturday, May 15, 2010 - link

    I thought for a moment what is worse than someone torrenting and downloading what they like or collecting things, knowing they dont have to be on their computer 90% of the time to do it? Meaning they can go outside while things are torrenting?

    Hmmmm, whats worse? Some douchebag online trying to tell people how to live their life. Becuse that douchebag has to be online to do that.

    Take your own advice broseph.
  • 529th - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    If I was still using the Killer NIC, I would still be waiting for drivers.

    A BIG *UCK Y*U to Big "Ripoff" Foot Networks
  • numberoneoppa - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    Let's keep things civil.
  • SunSamurai - Saturday, May 15, 2010 - link

    I know what its like to have a company sit on their ass with driver updates. If this company is like that im staying far far away even if they have a good piece of hardware (witch they do not).

    He's being honest. I think what he said speaks volumes to me, and what you said was *useless*.
  • 529th - Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - link

    A long time ago, I was sold on this type of add-in network card when I bought a 3com 990 TX. In those days I was on a 423 socket P4. Being on the same LAN with a friend of mine who is a 'Computer consultant' playing UT99 and early Counter Strike, my ping was noticeably lower than his.

    I bought a Killer NIC around the time the M1 came out. There was a huuge lag between driver updates. All kinds of complaints on their forums, petitions were made on their forums, people were banned for complaining, and still they pushed on with the xeno without supporting the M1 with driver updates for close to a year. (small company)

    I just looked on their page and there are "new" drivers out.

    I used an M1 on a couple of Yorkfield rigs playing UT3 and the M1 didn't make a difference. On the AnandTech forums I posted questions about UDP packets, the Killer card, and all kinds of angles on networking with gaming to help reduce latency, and one term I can still remember used in describing the M1 was, snake oil. I'm referring to the older M1 cards.

    The subject still intrigues me as I hope to see a card do for me what my 3com 990 did back in the day but that day didn't' come with the Killer M1 and in my un-professional or scientific experience, I would wait for more reviews on their product before considering one.
  • 529th - Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - link

    I think the one thing I remember the drivers doing in the advanced section was changing the TcpAckFrequency from 2 to 1 and Cha-Chingingly enough, you can manually do this in your registry by Dword.

    Vista's registry string goes:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Servic es\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

    There will be a few different folders. Find the one that has your IP address on it e.g. 192.168.0.10

    You will have to add the Dword TcpAckFrequency. By default the OS will recognize every other packet or simply if a number was there = 2. Setting it to 0 will automatically revert it back to 2, 1 will make every packet recognized.

    Another thing is Nagle's algorithm which if turned off will send a packet immediately without waiting for the packet to fill up before sending and this can also be manipulated by registry.

    Vista
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSMQ\Parameters

    This one is a little trickier cause you have to add the MSMQ folder and the Parameters folder, then add the Dword TCPNoDelay and set it to 1 to turn off Nagles Algorithm, 0 will enable it.

    DISCLAIMER:
    I am going from what I remember, research this more if you are interested in trying this. Those tweaks mainly work for games like WOW.
  • Per Hansson - Friday, May 21, 2010 - link

    There is a small script developed called "LeatrixLatencyFix"
    It allows you to easily enable and disable this setting mentioned by "529th" above... (And me a few posts back)

    http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info13581-Le...
  • SolMiester - Wednesday, May 12, 2010 - link

    Isnt that supposed to read 'Fast forward', not 'Flash Forward'?
  • numberoneoppa - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    It doesn't really matter.
  • SSDMaster - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    Why would I buy one? I got it from a friend for super cheap. Right now its just too expensive, they need to add more ports/features or sell it for less.

    I have noticed that the card actually works. Specifically for one game I play "Armagetron". Or used to play... It did lower my pings around 5-15%. But the most important part was that the game was so much more stable. I think this is mostly because the game was coded so horribly.

    But for some reason in this one instance I could definitely tell that the card worked. All the other games I couldn't really see a difference. And the transfer performance was HORRIBLE.

    Overall, bang for your buck is a good $30 Intel NIC. But offloading UDP might be worth it for certain games. If you have extra $$$ and play WoW, this is for you. (I think I remember Reviews saying it made WoW more stable by a noticeable amount)
  • Per Hansson - Tuesday, May 18, 2010 - link

    WoW does not use UDP for the game data, only for the voicechat so it benefits nothing from the UDP offload capability of this card
    A card like the Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708 Gigabit NIC does however have a full TCP offload engine (ToE)

    Such a card would be very interesting to see in a review against the "killer NIC"
    Not least because this server NIC actually costs less than said "killer NIC" at Dell Sweden
  • UpperEast - Thursday, May 13, 2010 - link

    Anand,

    In addition to testing this killer NIC against on onboard Realtek, can you also throw one of the $30 Intel cards into the review such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    It would be interesting to note not only if dedicated NICs are faster than the cheap and free onboard ones, but also if this is really a $130 breakthrough or something that could be available at a lower price.
  • antx - Saturday, May 15, 2010 - link

    This thing runs linux inside - why not make it dual port, dual-wan capable, with network load balancing and for a price around $250. I'm sure THAT's what many ppl want. Instant win.
  • kiwik - Monday, May 17, 2010 - link

    How can they still be alive and releasing unsellable products.
  • Drakino - Monday, May 17, 2010 - link

    A little late to the thread here, but still worth asking.

    When the card comes in for full testing, I'd be interested in knowing how open the card is compared to the older versions. One potential use I see is in game development, where the card could be used to add latency, random ping spikes, and packet loss for testing online games. Being able to just hand this out to developers to test instead of putting a linux box in the middle of the connection would be handy.
  • jrgunte - Thursday, May 27, 2010 - link

    What's the hold up with this? Are we waiting on the Killer 2200?
  • karlitobrigante - Friday, June 4, 2010 - link

    Quote:
    Next week we’ll have our full review of the Killer 2100, in the meantime read on to find out more about what’s being announced today.

    ... it's been 2.5 weeks... any updates on this?

    Thanks,
  • Porkfist - Tuesday, June 8, 2010 - link

    Agreed. I anticipated a review maintaining the status quo, however the delay without explanation makes my mind race with speculation. I would appreciate it if you stopped tickling my rear with a feather and just gave us a snippet of information, such as 'it got put on the back burner in lieu of something more important'.
  • dherblay - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link

    Bump; put our minds at ease! Is there merit to their claims?
  • karlitobrigante - Monday, June 21, 2010 - link

    I'm crossing my fingers that this review has been delayed cause you're comparing it to lots of NICs...

    However, given the outcome of the original killer (http://www.anandtech.com/show/2111/1) I'm guessing this card was just thrown in the trash. If so please let us know.
  • irsmurf - Saturday, June 26, 2010 - link

    I would like to see a review of this card. Will it be reviewed in the future?
  • karlitobrigante - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link

    I don't think they check these comments lol
  • karlitobrigante - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link

    this card lived up to it's name and actually killed Ryan which is why there is no review o_O
  • karlitobrigante - Wednesday, July 14, 2010 - link

    This card is on sale at newegg for $110. There are lots of reviews online that are leading me to believe it's worth it. I'm thinking it will be similar to what X-Fi sound blaster did for me. Sure on board sound is acceptable but once you hear x-fi it's hard to go back... I'm hoping the killer 2100 will be similar.

    Really wish anandtech would review it but there are plenty of legitimate reviews out there.

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