LAUGH. OUT. LOUD. - Gaming network card?

ray_gillespie

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I saw this an ad for this flashing up on OSNN:

Killer Gaming Network Card!

Well worth $175! I laughed out loud: what a waste of money! Or so I thought.

Then I read this:

IGN Review

And now I feel a bit strange. Can anyone shed any light on these cards? Has anyone ever used one? Surely that kind of money would be better off spent on more RAM, or a new graphics card?
 
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Newegg Reviews

Here's 86 ratings from no-name average Joes. Less than half rate it a 4 or better.

The rest were not impressed or even infuriated by the card.

Here's my favorite, and it was actually BOUGHT by the reviewer as noted by newegg themselves. Apparently the manufacturer also deletes posts critical of their views. It appears it's all viral marketing, purchased reviews, and squelched criticism.

IronFalconTech Level: high Ownership: 1 month to 1 yearThis user purchased this item from Newegg.com 12/30/2006 8:24:00 AM
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Viral Marketing Terrible Card!

Pros: Awesome concept for a network card, I hope some company can actually make a product like this that works!

Cons: Drivers are changed almost every week which should be a good thing, but its not! The card changes windows networking registry so frequently that it will actually come to a point where it corrupts it and unless you have enough technical understanding you will be unable to ever switch to another network card again without a full reinstall of windows!! This card is a stability nightmare with everything from blue screen attacks to random lockups when exiting games even with all the driver updates. The drivers are alpha at best and the company has a viral marketing campaign to convince people that the product is something it’s not. Bigfoot Networks should be sued for what they are doing; when I say viral marketing just look at the supposed to be customer review on NewEgg here from “Serious Gamer Guy” posted October 24th 2006, that is not a customer of NewEgg, that is a Bigfoot Networks employee, no customer writes a spiel like that!

Other Thoughts: I am an IT professional for a small company in Southern California and I don't buy things without researching them... When I researched this product it looked great, but now after I've had the product for over a month and the consumers have really started to speak I find that what I had read was part of the viral marketing campaign by Bigfoot networks and I bought because of their lies. Main games I play: World of Warcraft & Warcraft III on Battle net. It does not lower ping, it does not increase fps on machines whose owners can afford the card and it will be unstable in any system it is set in! BUYERS BEWARE! Do not buy this product!! Any positive reviews you've read here in the on Newegg were quite possibly planted by Bigfoot Networks as Newegg has already taken some of the reviews down per Bigfoot’s request! (Bigfoot is getting a bit concerned about liability which they should be!) Need more info? Go to anandtech.com the hardware review site, they have a very detailed review. Manufacturer Response:The Killer NIC has been proven by hardware reviewers, even AnandTech, to have measureable and noticable improvement in online game play especially in games like World of Warcraft. See the links to independent reviews down below for more information.

The only viral marketing Bigfoot Networks engages in is having its technical folks answer questions on forums around the web such as HardOCP. They identify themselves as employees and most people in the forums love the direct interaction with the people who created the Killer NIC.

Our driver update program has been praised by reviewers, and has made our customers very happy. Some of our initial drivers that were shipped in September did have problems and we apologize for that, but those have all been addressed now for many months.

Bigfoot Networks stands behind the Killer NIC, and if you own one and have experienced any issues please contact us at support@bigfootnetworks.com so that we can work with you to get things right.
External Link(s): HardOCP's Review & AwardMMORPG.com ReviewPC Perspective Review & Award
 
Ah well thanks for clearing that up - I wonder who got bunged at IGN to give such a nice review? :)
 
I have been saying from the start that of when this was released that it was a bad idea. The concept sounds nice, but in reality it does not matter. Most computers these days that are newer like what gamers would use have gigabit network cards. Those gigabit network cards to attain the speeds that gigabit allows do checksum off-loading, what this means is that it checks if a packet has arrived properly and has not been corrupted (I am so happy that this is going away in IPv6, more on that some other time).

For the rest, the packets still have to somehow arrive in Windows, and somehow be dumped into the TCP/IP stack to properly get to the destination (the game) which means clock cycles still have to be used for that.

The only cool thing is that the card runs Linux and thus theoretically could be used to run a firewall on the network card and not let any bad traffic hit Windows itself. Other uses that people have found is running bit-torrent.

As for the impressive gains that that IGN article shows, they are absolutely bull****. They could have had the same sort of gains if they used a dedicated network card instead of the onboard ethernet controller. Onboard ethernet controller is run by the Northbridge, whereas an dedicated network card is run over PCI, and only passes through the Northbridge, but for the most part is directly from CPU to network card.
 
If you think this is a stupid innovation, what about all those gaming routers and gaming wireless adapter?! What you make of them?
 
its not stupid per se, its just most new cards do what this card claims to do
 
If you think this is a stupid innovation, what about all those gaming routers and gaming wireless adapter?! What you make of them?

I have a D-Link Gamerlounge router and it does what it claims it does. Reliable, fast, and has all the features that were promised; it delivers.

The Killer NIC is a different sort of beast. They make outlandish claims for their product and back it up with smoke and mirrors. Even the legitimate abilities it claims for the card have already been done for years. I spent $30 on an Intel network adapter, and I'm fairly certain that a $249 400MHz Killer NIC isn't going to give me 800% performance for the cost. According to the Anandtech review, it might not even give me 0% difference in what I'm doing.
 
if it gave you uber pwnage download speed when getting your pr0n might be different :p
 
Now THAT'S targeted advertising :) Somehow I don't think it'll work on this thread!
 

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