Distinguishing Features
TH: The Killer NICs offloading capability definitely benefits in the realm of UDP traffic which is the method used by nearly all on-line capable PC games. We understand that UDP offloading is what sets the Killer NIC aside from other controllers — by offloading the interrupts required to process UDP traffic from systems main processor.
What sets the Killer NIC aside (FNA Excluded) from other controllers such as the Intel Pro 1000 PT and its interrupt moderation feature, and PCI-Express factor?
Harlan: I actually helped design the silicon used on the Intel Pro series when I was architect in charge of Networking Acceleration products at Intel. I know it well, and I also know other “desktop” network cards very well. Killer is so vastly different then these products it’s hard to describe. In short, it goes back to the reason I founded Bigfoot Networks. Intel, Broadcom, Marvel, Adaptec, Linksys, etc. have always been focused on three factors of network adapters
1. Link Speed (10/100/1000 etc.)
2. Form Factor (PCI, PCI-E, etc.)
3. Throughput Performance.
Bigfoot Networks and the Killer NIC exist because of a different paradigm. We believe that lag is caused by three separate entities (Client, Network, and Server), and that it’s the interplay of the three that determines overall performance of a game, not just the link speed of the NIC or what form-factor it has. Our first product, the Killer NIC, was designed to be optimized for Gaming and reducing Client Lag. This means that Killer actively avoids lag-causing features like interrupt moderation, because that’s a throughput optimized feature that increases latency (via batching). Killer interrupts the system instantly whenever there is new networking data! This is just one example of the many features of Killer that are tuned for gaming, and the overall gaming experience, over what a typical NIC can do.
Another major feature that distinguishes Killer above any other standard NIC is its ability to completely bypass the Windows Networking stack for User Datagram Protocol (UDP.) Let me explain what this means, because it is vastly different than what Intel’s Pro 1000 PT does. Intel’s Pro 1000 PT does Checksum Offload and Large Segmentation Offload, Killer does Windows Stack Bypass. Huge difference here. In order to do Stack Bypass, you need what only Killer has: a dedicated Network Processing Unit (NPU) that can track each connection and determine which application should get which data.
Checksum Offload is a ‘dumb’ NIC feature these days (and Killer can do it too, of course,) where inbound and outbound checksums are calculated by the hardware.
Large Segmentation Offload is only for large data file transfers over TCP/IP (as you point out, not the language of games)... and it is designed to optimize for throughput, and can actually hurt gaming performance for those few games (like World of Warcraft) that use TCP/IP.
Killer takes a different approach. We intercept all game function calls to the Winsock API and redirect those calls to our hardware with an immediate interrupt to, or from, our card. That’s a hardware interrupt for every send or receive, right from our card to your game. How? Because our NPU filters the traffic and knows which application gets which data, and then we send it directly to the game via the top of WinSock.
Even better than that, we’ve spent countless hours with game developers and in our own labs and optimized the entire offload system for games. Interestingly, along the way something cool started happening. We were making the games faster in frames per second (FPS) as well. The framerates were getting higher and we didn’t understand why or how! After many long weeks in our lab, we finally realized what was happening. Since the game could get a response from its Winsock function calls in only one cycle (send, receive, select, etc.) the game spent less time deep in the Windows Kernel (which is synchronous and can basically run on only one core at a time)… this meant the entire game loop could run faster. This is only possible with a dedicated NPU, and those are only available for gamers or any desktop folks via a Killer NIC. When we found this out, we understood why we loved Killer gaming: it was more responsive (lower ping), and faster (higher fps) and smoother: when the crap hit the fan, the Killer kept things sorted out.
Other features tuned just for gamers include the ability to actively determine how much bandwidth any and all applications are allowed to use and the priority between them. Another is to run an entire firewall inside Killer so that you can bypass your router’s slower solution. Another is Flexible Network Applications – anybody can write a Linux program to run on our card just like a separate computer. Another is the ability to respond instantly to game data request in user mode. And even more are available and more always coming out.
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Surely the overall game network is only as fast as the slowest component. Your network card may be optomised but if it is waiting for slower player's systems to respond then where is the advantage? Is there any benchmarking to show an advantage for this technology and are millisecond gains noticable in the real world?
the game has to wait for windows to handle the IP normally. faster systems do this faster but its always faster if the whole stack is operated by specialised hardware. i think the reduction in latency is a 2 digit figure. thats noticeable in twitch games
There are people out there still using wires??
Bring me a killer wireless card, then we can talk.
lol at cablefree.
ive seen reviews on this card before, there's one on anandtech, the difference is about 1-2fps and a ping difference of 1-2... IMO the card is a waste of money simply because calculating the UDP and TCP stacks is not a process hungry task until LARGE amounts of data are being transferred, so in conclusion when gaming the only time this card will have an effect is when you are downloading a 600MB map, then don't forget that you router/switch/firewall will also be a bottleneck.
and if anyone wants to argue about the process hungry statement, please use common sense first, u are limited by your internet connection, even on a 20MB internet line your not passing enough data through your onboard NIC card for your Processor to break a sweat.
lol@cablefree too.
do you have any idea the kind of latency that goes on through a wifi stack?
also, given that wires toasts any wifi network no matter what the speed, both on latency and throughput, i'll continue to use wires for my main desktop machine..
do you happen to use a MAC by any chance?
i want to take back a comment i made just b4...
this card is a waste of money for gamming there simply isnt enough large packets going back and forth for it to be useful, HOWEVER in a file server or a desktop that is used to transfer large files over a gigabyte network a card like this would greatly increase performance of the PC since the CPU would not be doing as much.
To Tomshardware,
when you get the card can you do a test on normal gaming and transfer a large file over a LAN using a gigabyte network.
have a 10/100/1000 nic card?
who cares.
still have to wait for the crappy cable modem from comcast to process it or their bad switch in your neighborhood.
plus they use to regulate your traffic until recently to slow down your game or bit torrent traffic....
so much for a killer card.
The backbone company and the cable modem is the slow part...
since when do you see cable modem going to 100 mb/s to internet?
@Flakes
It wouldn't help with file transfers as this is only optimising UDP packets not TCP which file transfers use.
"do you have any idea the kind of latency that goes on through a wifi stack?"
That was my point - surely a good target for 'killer' hardware?
No actual benchmarks just a lot of blah blah blah.
I've owned the top end card since it first came out. I love the firewall (bear in mind I'm a security specialist). I must say though that when it comes to improving the fps of online gaming it REALLY ROCKS!!! I've mainly played EverQuest II and LOTRO and both improved greatly ( I did write down all the figures ) I've up graded my pc in the mean time so my initial system was a dual core clocked to about 3ghz with 2 gigs of ram and and AGP!! Gainward Bliss GS 7800 something lol. Now on a quad core clocked either 2.4 or watercooled to 4ghz
4 gigs of ram and 8800GT alphadog XFX. Both showed marked performance on paper but the Killer excels with the feel of the game. The claim that there's no more jerk-ola in Brie in LOTRO is absolutely spot on. Worth mentioning I have tried this on many ISPs and networks ranging from 2Mb/s to just over 21Mb/s actually measured speeds before the Killer. I find I often recommend this card to anyone who'll listen 
Buy one then see for yourself. I don't know if they off a money back guarantee but they should as they shouldn't need to pay out on it.
@ Alfin ,
So you 'feel' that it's faster but no actual figures to show us and then......
which you then go on to tell us
well i can tell you im running the same setup, q6600 @ 3.2ghz 880gtx and 4gig ram. with NO killer Nic and never had a second of lag or less than 60fps in any online game since i built it.
if there was then to be blunt i would send the parts back as faulty lol
@ Alfin ,
So you 'feel' that it's faster but no actual figures to show us and then......
which you then go on to tell us
well i can tell you im running the same setup, q6600 @ 3.2ghz 880gtx and 4gig ram. with NO killer Nic and never had a second of lag or less than 60fps in any online game since i built it.
if there was then to be blunt i would send the parts back as faulty lol