I have a nice bridge, it has 8 lanes!  The road leading to the bridge only has 4.  Anyone interested?

Originally posted by mxmissile
I have a nice bridge, it has 8 lanes!  The road leading to the bridge only has 4.  Anyone interested?

I think that was an attempt at a witty analogy, however it fails since plenty of bridges in NY have a lot more lanes than the roads leading to them. It also really has nothing to do with how the Killer NICs work.

Any of those bridges in NY for sale? 

I have one for sale... :-)  Still interested?

 

 

see below...

Originally posted by Agent_X7

Originally posted by gagaliya
FYI, this is just a big scam. You dont need to be an expert, just use common sense. The amount of load a nic card adds to a cpu is minimum, and lag is caused by the connection between your PC and the ISP, you cannot fix network latency by upgrading your NIC card!

On top of that, even if it DID WORK. You would be MUCH MUCH better off spending the $180 on a new video card, 2GB of ram or the often overlooked 10K rpm raptor HDD. Each will provide REAL performance gains and extend the life of your PC.  Paying $180 for this NIC card will do absoutely nothing.

The reviwer is either totally clueless or just trying not to piss off the sponsor.   Do you honestly believer Big Network will continue to pay  mmorpg.com if they gave a bad review to their flagship product?  Not a chance in hell....


What a load of BS,  dont buy this useless piece of crap.  Go ask around in some of the more well known tech sites like tomshardware and anandtech forums, and people will laugh their ass off if you wasted $180 on this garbage...

 

Just a few points:

1 - Did you read the review? Did you miss the big section where I point out that advertising money has nothing to do with me? It doesn't make one bit of difference to me if someone stops advertising here or not. It has nothing to do at all with my reviews.

Yes i did read it, but how do you expect the readers to take you seriously after this review?  you have lost your credibility.  Anyone with just a slight clue and understanding of PC hardware will realize how silly this "killer" network card is. But just in case you are actually clueless and not marketing this for the sponsors:

The $200 killer nic card justifies its price tag by claiming the following:

1) Reduce CPU utilization - The CPU utilization of nic card is negligible at best even back in the pentium days. Now with core2duo and x2 processors, to market a $200 nic card over this is comical, nic cards wont even make a dent on the modern day CPU processors.

2) Reduce lag - Even more ridiculus, the network latency is bound by your ISP and the network between your pc and ISP. It is NOT limited by your network card, so how does upgrading your network card help?  The analogy someone made about the bridge is dead on - doubling a 4 lane bridge(network card) will not help if the traffic is delayed because there are only 2 lanes onto the bridge...

2 - If it did nothing, I imagine there would be quite a few irritated customers demanding their money back and filing lawsuits.

Are you really this naive or just pretending? ever heard of false marketing or hype?  If you are really this clueless, turn on the tv and buy a few of those "instant millionare" or "lost 20 pounds in a week belt" infomercials....or remember all those "increase your internet speed by 70%!" softwares a few years back?

Instead, we have the rants of people who have no experience with the card, and believe they are qualified to make a judgment based on that lack of experience.

You dont need to buy this card to realize how stupid it is, like i said as long as you have some basic hardware knowledge.

3 - Some of the well known tech sites have given Killer NICs awards. ([H]ardOCP for one)

The award for the worst hardware?  from anandtech's article apparently bigfoot network was using viral marketing and posting false positive reviews on neweggs a while back to promote the card.  Anandtech usually NEVER bad mouth any hardware company, so when they have a problem with a vendor it's not a good sign.

Here's the conclusion from anantech (you can search the site for the full article)
[quote]
This is the real irony of the Killer NIC as the systems that show the greatest amount of improvement (in a very limited number of titles) belong to owners that would never consider spending $279.99 on a NIC. Those who can afford the card are probably running system specifications in which the game performance improvements would never be noticed. In fact, we could simply overclock our systems by 5% or a little more and end up with the same frame rate improvements. That leaves a very small audience of buyers who would potentially purchase the card for the gee-whiz factor or the professional gamer who has the ability to take advantage of a 1ms or better improvement in ping rates in Counter Strike: Source or could tell the difference between 58 fps or 53 fps in F.E.A.R..
 [/quote]

Here's a conclusion that summarize this whole scam pretty well from:  www.legitreviews.com/article/478/7/

[quote]
After spending an evening of gaming with and without the Killer NIC and Killer K1 on both our Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista Ultimate test systems it was the unanimously agreed by all that the Killer NIC and Killer K1 is not worth the added $180-$250 cost. The Killer NIC and Killer K1 did reduce our pings and improved frame rates, but by less than 5%. The difference was so small that no one could correctly tell when the Killer NIC was or wasn't installed in our 'blind' taste test, which was rather alarming. If someone is going to spend $180-$250 on something they better be able to see and notice the difference when they game.

Only after recording ping times for a couple hours with and without the Killer NIC installed could we see the difference on GRAW.  The 3ms difference was seen on a server that we pinged 103ms to normally. Is that worth $180? To us the answer is no, but at least we got together and had a good time gaming and hanging out!

............

For a price tag of $180-$250 the vast majority of gamers would be better off upgrading their graphcis card, processor or adding additional memory that will help improve gaming performance by more than a couple percent here and there.

[/quote]

i read your review and found from your own review that this card falls under waste of money....

if you can tell the difference in the slight change that is to improve your system then you might need to walk out side once a year.

I will not be buying this card......

And after reading your post here after people found your review lacking...I find I will not give your review to much credit from now on.

 

Staff Writer Jeremy Star takes an in-depth look at Bigfoot Network's Killer K1 NIC

also in your words  in-depth does not mean 2 mid level games to most gamers and we look for more from MMORPG

When someone reviews something, it is generally assumed that they have knowledge of what they are talking about. The problem here is that the writer gives no appearance of knowledge whatsoever. He is also making assumptions which simply aren't true.  This is like some guy off the street who drives a Honda Civic who jumps into a Viper and raves about what a great car it is, without having a clue that it handles like crap even though it's fast.

The K1 NIC is simply not price efficient for what it is. A RAM upgrade or a CPU upgrade is far more cost-effective as far as replacement goes.  For you to get such improvements on your ping leads me to believe that something is wrong with your network and/or computer, because that's all the K1 NIC will affect.  It will have no affect on your ISP's connection to the rest of the world. It will have no affect on your router's connection to your ISP.  From everything I have read about the card, the improvements are modest, at best and fairly miniscule in real world applications. The only application I can see this card being absolutely worth it, is in a LAN gaming environment for a FPS contest where ping is king. In a MMORPG environment, your ping honestly doesn't matter that much unless it's way up there. And if it is way up there, then you're having problems besides what this NIC can do for you.

I'm sorry, but this review is pretty bad and seeing that Big Networks is waving it about on their website like it's some big deal further makes me doubt the effectiveness of the review, as well as the card.

Originally posted by twhint
When someone reviews something, it is generally assumed that they have knowledge of what they are talking about. The problem here is that the writer gives no appearance of knowledge whatsoever. He is also making assumptions which simply aren't true.  This is like some guy off the street who drives a Honda Civic who jumps into a Viper and raves about what a great car it is, without having a clue that it handles like crap even though it's fast.

The K1 NIC is simply not price efficient for what it is. A RAM upgrade or a CPU upgrade is far more cost-effective as far as replacement goes.  For you to get such improvements on your ping leads me to believe that something is wrong with your network and/or computer, because that's all the K1 NIC will affect.  It will have no affect on your ISP's connection to the rest of the world. It will have no affect on your router's connection to your ISP.  From everything I have read about the card, the improvements are modest, at best and fairly miniscule in real world applications. The only application I can see this card being absolutely worth it, is in a LAN gaming environment for a FPS contest where ping is king. In a MMORPG environment, your ping honestly doesn't matter that much unless it's way up there. And if it is way up there, then you're having problems besides what this NIC can do for you.

I'm sorry, but this review is pretty bad and seeing that Big Networks is waving it about on their website like it's some big deal further makes me doubt the effectiveness of the review, as well as the card.

Would you like to cite some examples of the assumptions I make that are not true?

Where, exactly, did you read that it improves the ISP connection? I certainly did not write that. And you are right, something is wrong with my computer: Windows XP. The way it handles packets from games is pretty inefficient. Vista claims to do better, but I haven't had time to verify that yet.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Twice.

Originally posted by Agent_X7

Would you like to cite some examples of the assumptions I make that are not true?

Where, exactly, did you read that it improves the ISP connection? I certainly did not write that. And you are right, something is wrong with my computer: Windows XP. The way it handles packets from games is pretty inefficient. Vista claims to do better, but I haven't had time to verify that yet.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Twice.

Well, let's start off with the basics. Do you actually know how TCP/IP handles packets? I'd love to hear you explain how the Windows network stack operates. Let me hear you describe the model that TCP/IP is based off of, which everything operates using it, in one form or another.

Secondly, I'd love to hear your explanation of how a $180 NIC is a better investment than a CPU upgrade or a RAM upgrade, especially since most people have only 1 gig at most. Your review is riddled with all the little buzzwords that Bigfoot Networks uses in their advertisement flyers and such, with little or no understanding of what is actually happening, especially if you think Windows is responsible for your network having a 60ms overhead.

I know I'm being a troll here, but it bugs me that I see this kind of pandering on a site not even dedicated to these type of reviews. You say you're not influenced by their advertising and such, hey...I'll accept that. But if you think you're serving the community putting up trash like this, you might want to become a little more knowledgeable about what you're talking about. That is my only point.

You know, I have been doing network support for eons,  I am very good at it.

Cards like this are gimmicks.  More often than not it is your ISP that limits your throughput than a silly NIC. 

To the average gamer, cards like this are useless.  There are far better ways to spend $200 to get improvements in your system.

I think the reviewer did  a disservice to the readers by not at least noting that there are far better options for improving game performance. 

The analogy about the 8 laned bridge was precious.  The reviewer responding to that just made it clear of his lack of understanding of how computer systems work.

My analogy to this card is kind of like an old man living in a shack with no indoor plumbing going out and putting an expensive jacuzzi inside.  It certainly looks and sounds impressive, but it sure as heck is not going to make him smell any better.

 

Originally posted by twhint

Originally posted by Agent_X7

Would you like to cite some examples of the assumptions I make that are not true?

Where, exactly, did you read that it improves the ISP connection? I certainly did not write that. And you are right, something is wrong with my computer: Windows XP. The way it handles packets from games is pretty inefficient. Vista claims to do better, but I haven't had time to verify that yet.

Thank you for sharing your opinion. Twice.

Well, let's start off with the basics. Do you actually know how TCP/IP handles packets? I'd love to hear you explain how the Windows network stack operates. Let me hear you describe the model that TCP/IP is based off of, which everything operates using it, in one form or another.

Secondly, I'd love to hear your explanation of how a $180 NIC is a better investment than a CPU upgrade or a RAM upgrade, especially since most people have only 1 gig at most. Your review is riddled with all the little buzzwords that Bigfoot Networks uses in their advertisement flyers and such, with little or no understanding of what is actually happening, especially if you think Windows is responsible for your network having a 60ms overhead.

I know I'm being a troll here, but it bugs me that I see this kind of pandering on a site not even dedicated to these type of reviews. You say you're not influenced by their advertising and such, hey...I'll accept that. But if you think you're serving the community putting up trash like this, you might want to become a little more knowledgeable about what you're talking about. That is my only point.

I'm not going to feed the trolls. It is quite obvious by now that you merely wish to display your "superior" knowledge without really being concerened about the review itself. You did not cite any assumptions, you changed your approach and asked me to prove I know about networking. You state that you are knowledgeable about networking, but have yet to prove it yourself. I'm sorry, I don't have time to play your game.

In fact, this has come down to petty people trying to make themselves feel superior by claiming that I have no idea what I am talking about. If it makes you feel good, go for it, but I am no longer willing to waste my time replying to all the trolls.

Oh, of course. We bow to your knowledge. What do you wish for me to prove my credentials? I'll send you all the proof you need to show that I am quailified to back up any and all statements I have made. Your pride is pricked, and for that I am sorry, but you are simply doing the community a disservice by stating that this card is worth more than a CPU or RAM upgrade.  Here I'll even do your work for you and show you how networking actually works.

The 7 layer OSI model is what TCP/IP protocol is based on. The seven layers being Application, Presentation, Session, Transport, Network, Data Link, and physical. You can find this information in any second or third year college class or even on the web. Now, with that in mind, all of your packets that travel by TCP/IP goes through those 7 layers. If you wish for further clarification, I can give you a lecture on how the packet is processed through those layers.

With that in mind, you also have to understand how TCP works. I'm sure you know already that TCP is the transport method of IP. (That's a sarcastic remark btw, as I already know the answer.) It is also the more reliable transport method than UDP, which is what games use. Now, with UDP, the translation overhead of reforming the packets back from what was sent is much lower, meaning that it is faster than TCP, but far less reliable, because it doesn't require that the packets be numbered, tracked, or even remembered. The UDP packet is sent and then forgotten about. With that in mind, the NIC is not going to have to deal with a lot of overhead with dealing with the packets, ie. the translation time between Windows implementation of TCP/IP and the NIC is going to be fairly negligible. That's why I said if you were seeing such an improvement between your pings, you've got something else going on besides what you're saying.

All that crap that they're going on about, such as the LLR(tm) and such, it's not going to be much use to anyone but a hardcore FPS player, and even then, it's only gonna come into its own on a LAN during a tournament, or if you wanna bump up your pings to appear to be less effective than you really will be but that will just get you accused of cheating more often than not.

Now, if you further wish for me to educate you on network technicalities, or you have further questions about my own qualifications, I'll be more than happy to discuss them with you.

I normally don't necro; but after seeing all the vitriol directed at Jeremy for making a report that didn't contradict reports from reputable sources, before and after he wrote this, just annoys me.

Just recently my preferred choice for any hardware review Tom's Hardware took a look at Killer NIC and they said esactly the same thing the author did with more stringent testing guidelines. I hope the loudmouth know it alls eat crow.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/killer-m1-nic,review-1083-5.html

I'm convinced this will be a good buy.