Conclusion
TH: Does Bigfoot have any plans to revamp the Killer NIC into PCI Express, based on enthusiasts that have boards which lack proper layout to support the Killer NIC because of dual or 3-way SLI?
Harlan: In short, yes. The issue is one of technology limitations. There will be no big “latency” differences in a PCI-E versus a PCI version, since our benefits come mostly from ‘bypassing Windows’… only slightly more throughput performance and ability to fit better into some folks’ PCs. Good news is that the PCI version just recently hit $149.99 MSRP (deals are everywhere), and we’re dedicated to making that version continue to be best-in-class... Many folks have an open PCI Slot, and there’s no reason to wait (for who knows how long) for our engineers to finish PCI-E when it won’t be better from a latency standpoint, and will continue to carry any new features found in PCI-E forward with it.
TH: Finally, are there any new cool ideas being tossed around at Bigfoot? For example, a consumer router with BitTorrent capability so that consumers can turn off their PC but have a router that will continue torrenting with an external hard drive? Or maybe a a consumer VoIP solution for gamers in the form of an external device acting as a server/client?
Harlan: Tons of cool ideas, and many underway. Right now, we’re not announcing anything new, but I will leave you with a few industry observations. First is that Online Gaming continues to grow and get more complex and more ‘social’ and more “experience rich”. It is my expectation that VOIP is going to become a ‘standard’ feature of games, and video is not far behind. Second, the idea that an MMO has to be slow-paced is frustrating to me. Why can’t we play Battlefield 2 and Age of Conan as one game?
I believe that our final goal – The End of Lag – is to make it possible to play twitch-MMO games that let you ‘take aim’ in a massive battle and experience the VOIP bloodlust calls of your friends while you hack into real players in real time on a massive scale. This vision is why I founded Bigfoot Networks, and technologies and products that enable it are what you can expect more of from Bigfoot in the future.
TH: Thanks to Harlan Beverly, CEO of Bigfoot Networks Inc. for his time answering our questions!
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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