I'm interested in the Killer NIC and the Killer K1 nic's?  
 
Anybody have any thoughts on these. I know some people say they are paper weights, I see some newegg reviews that state the opposite.  
 
I'd like to have the best gaming setup possible and I was wondering if these would be beneficial at all.  
 

carp get a high end nforce chipset and use you open pci slot for a sound card.
 

Yeah KILLER NIC works well IF u have a premium CABLE connection, and a high end gaming pc, it wont work with DSL or Satellite or wireless.

LoL @ that response.
 
Anyone with a brain care to chime in? I found two other threads which say it sucks so I'm leaning that way. Just wondering if topping off my gaming setup with this NIC would be worth it or beneficial what-so-ever.
 
 

I don't think you'll get any more performance than what you would get with a router that has port priority.

It will not make any noticable differance in gameplay. They are a waste of money.
 

You're better off wasting your money on an AGEIA PhysX card.
 

 
         
WHS ^^^
 
Id find it hard to believe a pci nic can have any faster response than onboard, it may reduce cpu overhead tho... by like 0.5%
   

Yea thanks for the replies. This sounds like a rip off for sure.
 
I just picked up a nice Hawkings 1gb nic and say good enough.

Complete Waste.
 
Most on-board NICs easily handle 100/Mbs Ethernet connections without an issue while communicating to 100s of computers at the same time while handling Network Server traffic. (Not everyone uses high end NICs or boards in their servers.)
 
The traffic will also pass from your PC to 10-20 routers over the internet to the Game Server and back across 10-20 routers back to your PC.  This is where the delay is happening.
 
1) Ping your Local Router and Check The Speed.
2) Next Ping the Game Server or a distant Internet Server and check thetime.
 
In my case I'm showing less than 1ms.
So if I had a really good NIC I guess it would be even further under 1ms.
Which would be less than a 1ms gain.
 
Don't buy it.  Don't consider it.

Id buy it just beacuse it looks so dam cool
 
no really it does look cool.  If it incorporated the dual gigabyte ethernet thing like i believe the 680i has...

you know reviews were done on this killer nic and it does help with lag and fps to a certain extent, wether its worth the 200-300 dollars is really up to you
 
imo its really not that moeny should be going into 4gb of ram, a better gfx card or proc, unless you have the best single card, best processor or maximum ram, you realy have no reason spending the money on a killer nic

No not worth it at all.  Glad to see you didn't buy it.

NO WAY i say

 
Zen is totally right here, 100 percent !
 

 
Well, no, he's not really 100% right, as there are quite a few positive aspects to the Killer NIC.
 
Let me be clear here, no average user has any need whatsoever to spend the money on one of these BUT:
 
Zenmaster's hypothetical test was completely beside the point.  The Killer NIC bypasses the Windows stack, this is where the latency reduction comes from, not from magically changing the speed of bits coming into and out of your modem.
 
Second, if your system isn't exactly top-of-the-line, you can get a nice little FPS increase.  However, if your system isn't tops, you shouldn't spend hundreds on a freakin' NIC either.  
 
Finally, you can do some pretty interesting things with the Killer.  It has a USB port that can accept hard drives, runs linux, and can be programmed to perform any number of tasks.  While it's not groundbreaking, it is unique.
 
Again, no reason why anyone REALLY needs one of these things, but it is rather cool and unique.  The cost is just too prohibitive.  But, if you have already upgraded every concievable component in your system, have a kiddie pool full of hundred dollar bills that you swim naked in, and are familiar with Linux, go for it!

 
Oh really, why dont you time you round trip ping time to a game server and tell me the percentage difference a killer  nic would actually make, once it hits your router, your packet is subject to the mercy of the phone lines or your cacle companys lines, so how is shaving off a tiny bit going to help ? Even at a lan party the difference is probably negligible. Next you'll be saying that the difference is NOTICEABLE between 80 fps and 85. In REAL actual life, he'll never notice his more responsive stack , and if he needs more USB ports, he'd be better off with a new MB with the money he saved. Sure if it is worth it to him, then fine, but Zen's argument holds water, period and is correct.
 

 
Hahaha, I know it seems like I'm being the Devil's advocate here, but the argument was invalid.  No one claims that this NIC improves the speed of your actual internet, it just reduces latency caused by windows overhead.  
 
And the roughly 5% gain in ping and FPS you get will only be "noticed" by the most hardcore speed junky.
 
The reason I mentioned the USB port is because it's completely integrated into the NIC - i.e. you can host a server off your NIC without introducing any latency onto your computer.  I didn't mean you should pay 250 for an extra USB port.
 
Hopefully tech like this will become available at a less ridiculous price.  Somewhere between 10-50 bucks would be acceptable for the performance gains offered.

I ping my local router..........
 
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.1.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
 
I ping TomsHardware.Com
Reply from 208.48.160.11: bytes=32 time=94ms TTL=50
Reply from 208.48.160.11: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=50
Reply from 208.48.160.11: bytes=32 time=95ms TTL=50
Reply from 208.48.160.11: bytes=32 time=93ms TTL=50
 
My local ping is under 1ms which could be as low as 0.1ms but let's go for 0.75ms for a reasonable high estimate.
 
Now, The packet needs to leave my PC to be processed by my router and returned.  Let's assume 0.00ms wire time and 2/3rds of the time is taken by my PC.  This leaves 0.50ms response time for my PC.  Now, lets assume that your NIC is twice as fast which would cut the delay on my PC from 0.5ms to 0.25ms.
 
Now, 0.25ms reduction in a 94ms trasactions is close to one fourth of one percent.  So, if I was getting 400FPS, this may get me to 401FPS.
 
Anything less than 200FPS would get me less than 1fps :>
 
And I have seen the reviews, and none showed results different beyond standard deviation.
 
I also work in very large environments so I fully understand the impact of "idle" chatter which you claim to be trying to overcome.
 
One network I was working with had an idle chatter of about 2,000-3,000 packets a second.  This is what I would pickup on a PC sitting idle and not talking to anybody.
 
(Most was Windows Desktop PC chatter due to browswer announcements, etc... between about 15,000 PCs on our local portion of the WAN)
 
I was able to quickly reduce this to under 100 packets a second by tweaking the Windows OS on all of the PCs.
 
The result was that I was that I could still not measure any performance difference using the network, even with analysis tools.
 
So, I highly doubt the small number of stray packets on a home persons network is limiting the performance of the PC.  The special stack to bypass this small amount of traffic is pointless as best.