Bigfoot Networks Killer Network Interface Card
FPS and Ping Performance
How We Tested: We tested the Killer NIC on an Athlon 64 FX-60 powered system, equipped with 2GB of RAM and a GeForce 7950 GX2 graphics card. The motherboard used was an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe. The Killer NIC's performance was compared to the integrated nForce network controller that is integrated into the A8N32-SLI's nForce 4 SLIX16 chipset. Our network components consisted of a Netgear WNR854T broadband router with integrated Gigabit switch and the ISP used was Optimum Online (cable). All tests were run on the same game server, with the same map and players. Framerates were recorded using FRAPS. And Ping times were reported by the game engines. LLR (Game mode) was enabled throughout.
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In three of the of the four games we tested, the Killer NIC offered a measurable increase in framerate, in the neighborhood of 5-12%. World of Warcraft and F.E.A.R benefited the most, but Quake 4 actually showed a slight decrease in performance. We should note that it is basically impossible to get a true apples-to-apples comparison between the Killer and another NIC because they can't both be used at the exact same time to duplicate the exact same on-line gaming scenario.
Improvement to Ping were mixed. WoW and F.E.A.R. showed slight benefits, whereas CounterStrike and Quake actually got a bit worse. Please keep in mind though, that once a packet leaves the host PC, there's nothing the Killer can do to affect it, so internet traffic or any number of issues can affect ping.
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Although Bigfoot makes no claims that the Killer superior to any another NIC in normal day-to-day, non-gaming use, we thought we'd experiment with it anyway. For this test, we monitored CPU utilization while performing few network-related tasks. What we did here was manually copy a the SpecViewPERF 8.01 installer from a NAS device, and while it was copying we opened Internet Explorer, browsed through a five-page HotHardware article, and then launched and played Internet Checkers until the file copy was complete. Overall there was very little different between the nForce integrated NIC and Killer. The Killer's CPU utilization averaged of 8.7%, while the nForce averages 10.2%. The majority of the CPU resources consumed here though, were likely due to other web browsing workloads, and not actual network processes.
