Some time ago, our own Carolyn Koh attended Bigfoot Networks' Lag Boot Camp. Today, she files her report.

Bigfoot's mission was to educate us about lag. A term all MMO gamers are familiar with. That's the term we use to describe the frustrating anomalies in the online games we play that are usually blamed on internet latency. The rubber-bending of mobs, the game freezing, the stuttering of our screens. The time that elapses between when we type in some text and when it shows on our screen. The slight pause in our game when someone speaks over ventrilo or one of the other voice chat programs we use and the dreaded link-death, when we actually lose connection with the server long enough to be kicked out of the game. All those symptoms are what we simply call lag.

Read Bigfoot Lag Boot Camp Report

Problem is that today kids call everything lag.

So when someone complains in general chat : "I have lag" ... it can be anything

Back in the times: LAG = Network Latency ( high ping )

The term is now destroyed. It should be scraped completely

MMORPG.com links to a story it wrote on the KillerNIC, however we all know how that turned out...a big fat fail!

Did it though? I thought the jury was still out on this?

Quite a few sites have now reviewed this card so what's the final outcome?

LagMeter may be found here.

Page not found

Sorry, it seems you were trying to access a page that doesn't exist.

Please check the spelling of the URL you were trying to access and try again.

---

Originally posted by boinged
Did it though? I thought the jury was still out on this?
Quite a few sites have now reviewed this card so what's the final outcome?

---

The only one that was every really reviewed was the original...all the sites that I've found through Google are not doing a 'review' but more of a product announcement.

Any attempt I made to download their 'lagmeter' failed in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.  In order to do this you have to supply an email address.  The download link goes directly to Bigfoot Networks, the KillerNIC company's website. Each attempt I made stated the page didn't exist.  There is no mention of a 'lagmeter' anywhere on Bigfoot Networks website. At this time it looks more like a company fishing for email addresses.

The most recent review,dated January 2009, of the KillerNIC is here.  Essentially it says you /might/ see a 5% improvement in 'lag' if you stay out of busy areas in your mmorpg and have a marginal computer. This minor improvement is worth a score of 8.8 out of 10.  Here's the summary paragraph of that 'review'.

"All in all, the Killer NIC is a must have if you’re going to build a high-end gaming rig. As far as simply adding it to boost performance, you might be better served with a faster video card or CPU, as the Killer NIC on an old Pentium 4 was no match for a high end Intel Core 2 Duo for raw frame rate. (emphasis added-grunty) Still, it did beat out the newer computer on ping times in some games, so it might be a worthwhile investment if slashing a few milliseconds off your ping time is what you need to get the most out of your game! Not to mention it looks great, with its stylized K heatsink. Make sure you put this in a computer with a view!

Score: 8.8 (out of 10)"

LAG or lack of LAT was public enemy number one for me. I solved my issues with a simple program I found, I hope it works for you as well as it worked for me.

http://download.cnet.com/SG-TCP-Optimizer/3000-2155_4-10415840.html?tag=mncol

I'm checking on the LagMeter download with Bigfoot.  It worked when I filed the report in February.

Cheers

The problem is, is people think this "magical" card is just going to obliterate lag which as someone stated is wildly thrown out of context and is no general definition anymore. At any rate as the technology is now the performance is minimal and barely noticeable. You want better performance get a better ISP nuff said.

---

Originally posted by grunty
The most recent review,dated January 2009, of the KillerNIC is here.  Essentially it says you might see a 5% improvement in 'lag' if you stay out of busy areas in your mmorpg and have a marginal computer. This minor improvement is worth a score of 8.8 out of 10.  Here's the summary paragraph of that 'review'.
"All in all, the Killer NIC is a must have if you’re going to build a high-end gaming rig. As far as simply adding it to boost performance, you might be better served with a faster video card or CPU, as the Killer NIC on an old Pentium 4 was no match for a high end Intel Core 2 Duo for raw frame rate. (emphasis added-grunty) Still, it did beat out the newer computer on ping times in some games, so it might be a worthwhile investment if slashing a few milliseconds off your ping time is what you need to get the most out of your game! Not to mention it looks great, with its stylized K heatsink. Make sure you put this in a computer with a view!
Score: 8.8 (out of 10)"

---

Again, that review is for the original KillerNIC (PCI version), not their new XENO Pro or Ultra both of which are PCIe....

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Problem is that today kids call everything lag.

So when someone complains in general chat : "I have lag" ... it can be anything

Back in the times: LAG = Network Latency ( high ping )

 

The term is now destroyed. It should be scraped completely

It overjoys me to see other people with the same mentality as me.

I cannot stand what the term has come to and I actively try to defend what 'lag' used to mean.  Usually it just ends up with me being attacked by complete ignorance.  I've turned to trying to say 'latency' instead of 'lag', but it's harder than it would seem.

Being a PC tech and trying to troubleshoot someone's 'lag' in today's world is just.. ugh.

As a network engineer, I can't believe these guys are still in business.  This card is unnecessary and overpriced.   You can get a decent gigabit NIC for a fraction of the cost and I guarantee you will not be able to see the difference.   If your system is so low on resources that the NIC can't do it's job, you could better spend your hard earned cash on a RAM upgrade. 

Most people have a NIC that can handle 10x the throughput of their internet connection... and even if you were to waste your money and buy this overpriced card, are you going to be able to talk your ISP in to upgrading all their network equipment too?  We are talking about a couple of milliseconds response time here, and even that is being generous IM-professional-O. :)

I guess the market for their cards is people with more money than brains.

---

All Alienware PCs now ship with a KillerNIC installed, and it is an option available on their Dell brand as well.

---

Gee, no shocker there. Alienware (and subsequently Dell now due to their partnership) have always been into selling horrifically overpriced crap. Their like luxury cars of the PC world, shiny, expensive, and complete shite. If you're stupid enough to pay $100 for a NIC card though, I guess you deserve no better.

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Problem is that today kids call everything lag.

So when someone complains in general chat : "I have lag" ... it can be anything

Back in the times: LAG = Network Latency ( high ping )

 

The term is now destroyed. It should be scraped completely

Yup one of my highest annoyances in game lately. Heck even fps drops they call lag now.

---

Originally posted by Kordesh
 

---

All Alienware PCs now ship with a KillerNIC installed, and it is an option available on their Dell brand as well.

---

 
Gee, no shocker there. Alienware (and subsequently Dell now due to their partnership) have always been into selling horrifically overpriced crap. Their like luxury cars of the PC world, shiny, expensive, and complete shite. If you're stupid enough to pay $100 for a NIC card though, I guess you deserve no better.

---

You cannot just say that about Alienware/Dell, look at all the enthusiast-level computer companies, they are also well overpriced.

---

Originally posted by tofke

---

Originally posted by Lobotomist

Problem is that today kids call everything lag.
So when someone complains in general chat : "I have lag" ... it can be anything
Back in the times: LAG = Network Latency ( high ping )
 
The term is now destroyed. It should be scraped completely

---

 
Heck even fps drops they call lag now.

---

You want a weird one, 2 years ago I was playing Rappelz on a Media Centre PC, it had the specs for some games, however to make the game run better I turned all the settings to minimum and started getting major framerate drops, etc. I turned all the settings back to medium and/or high and the game played smoothly.

Rubber Band effect

as skeptical as i can be about things like this.  especially considering my professional history in the tech industry.  my ears did perk up and take notice after reading this article at hardocp.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTIzOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

kyle has one of the best bs meters ive seen in the industry.  the guys known for calling people out when they let their mouths get ahead of their products.

theres something to their product.  if there wasnt.  kyle would have said so.

Its a joke, it always has been. Any reasonable network card handles functions in the same way, theres network standards for a reason, theres only so much you can deviate.

The Killer NIC is an overpriced piece of rubbish, anyone buying one is a fool.

---

Originally posted by cerebrix
as skeptical as i can be about things like this.  especially considering my professional history in the tech industry.  my ears did perk up and take notice after reading this article at hardocp.
http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTIzOSwxLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==
 
kyle has one of the best bs meters ive seen in the industry.  the guys known for calling people out when they let their mouths get ahead of their products.
theres something to their product.  if there wasnt.  kyle would have said so.

---

Again, as you can see there's been no recent reviews on their new cards, only product announcements...all reviews found are always about the first generation card.

and kyle will cover that too.  you can be sure of that.  bigfoot networks has offices in austin.  thats where they gave kyle a demo the last time.

i'm sure he'll ask to see it and if they say no, thing about kyle is, he'll make a post on the front page of hardocp to mention they said no.

or steve will meniton it =p.

either way, kyle always has our backs.

i think the biggest performance their seeing though is the bypassing of the windows networking stack.  it uses its own, considering how bad the windows stack is at concurrent connections this isnt a stretch by any means.  i still plan on getting one for myself.

I am still considering getting one and have been since they first came out, however I'd rather have a PCIe x1 sound card -- as my mobo has one specifically for that purpose -- they should have made these new PCIe card x16...yes I know a x1 card can fit in a x16 slot but that's not the point.

Originally posted by Salvatoris

As a network engineer, I can't believe these guys are still in business.  This card is unnecessary and overpriced.   You can get a decent gigabit NIC for a fraction of the cost and I guarantee you will not be able to see the difference.   If your system is so low on resources that the NIC can't do it's job, you could better spend your hard earned cash on a RAM upgrade. 

Most people have a NIC that can handle 10x the throughput of their internet connection... and even if you were to waste your money and buy this overpriced card, are you going to be able to talk your ISP in to upgrading all their network equipment too?  We are talking about a couple of milliseconds response time here, and even that is being generous IM-professional-O. :)

I guess the market for their cards is people with more money than brains.

couldnt agree more with this. this card wont do squat to eliminate network lag unless it can fix all the hardware between you and the game server.

most all PCs and Laptops these days have gigabit cards on them. I have the highest throughput option from my internet carrier 18mbps / 1.5 mbps. Even with it pegged on speedtest I cant utilize more than a few percent of the onboard cards real potential.

This is the most unbiased review I found and they cant find a reason to spend $200 on it.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/478/1/

This is such a marketing scam. $200! For real? Do yourself a favor and upgrade your video card, processor, or buy some more ram.

I think you could just make money selling flashy "PIMP" PCI cards. I think the only thing that sells these cards is the chrome K  that reflects some neon from the cold cathode or whatever. PCI fog machines, thats what would really reduce your lag. The fog would make the air more dense and thus improve cooling of the components allowing for better performance. I swear. In a week bet these babies are on sale somewhere.  

---

Originally posted by slipline

This is the most unbiased review I found and they cant find a reason to spend $200 on it.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/478/1/
This is such a marketing scam. $200! 

---

Look at the date of the review, they are reviewing the original PCI cards, I am not defending BFN, just pointing out any reviews you find will be for the original cards and not for their new PCIe XENO series.