Bigfoot Network's Killer K1 NIC review
Staff Writer Jeremy Star takes an in-depth look at Bigfoot Network's Killer K1 NIC.
A couple of months ago, I reviewed the Killer NIC here at MMORPG.com. While my testing concluded that the Killer NIC did indeed smooth out the MMORPG experience, a common complaint in our forums and elsewhere was that it was just too expensive to justify purchasing one.
The people at Bigfoot Networks have heard the complaints, and have answered the call for a cheaper version of the Killer NIC with their newest product: The Killer K1.
The Hardware - My what big ports you have!
The Killer K1 is a PCI NIC designed to replace your onboard ethernet ports. Just like its big brother - the original Killer NIC, now designated M1 - the Killer K1 runs its very own Linux operating system on an onboard processor and 64 MB of RAM.
Unlike its older sibling, however, the K1 runs its OS and LLR technology on a 333 Mhz Network Processing Unit (NPU). The M1 has a 400 Mhz NPU. Does this make a big difference in performance? Not according to Bigfoot Networks. They told me that the extra processing power on the M1 is used for the FNApps programs, so the K1 and the M1 should have almost the same performance effect in games. If you are running a game and an FNApp, then the M1 has the decided advantage, but at a higher cost. (FNApps are Flexible Network Architecture programs, designed to run on the Killer's NPU so they don't slow down your gaming.)
The Technology - Whatcha got in that there thing, anyway?
Just like the Killer NIC M1, the K1 uses LLR technology to bypass the Windows networking stack and deliver information to the game faster, while using less CPU cycles to do it. Basically, the K1 skips Windows in the networking process so your CPU is not being utilized for networking, which leaves it free to devote more time to your game. At the same time, skipping the Windows networking stack lets information travel between your game and the server faster.
The K1 also uses the LLR component Game First to prioritize your networking packets and make sure your game info comes in before Aunt Mabel's "Chocolate Death Surprise" recipe. (We always wondered what killed Uncle Fred...)
Appearance - Deceiving, or not so much?
The Killer K1 is a standard sized PCI card, and looks much like its older brother, the M1. That is to say, it's a black PCB (printed circuit board) with a PCI interface, one Ethernet port, and one USB port. Unlike the M1, the new K1 does not sport a giant aluminum K-shaped heatsink. It merely has a silver K1 embossed on the top of the chip. Bigfoot Networks assures us the heatsink is unnecessary due to the slower clock speed on the K1.
Of course, my favorite physical feature of the M1 remains on the new K1 card: The cool red blinking lights. Ooh, pretty lights...
Disclaimers - For those who read beyond the title of the article.
One - We are still not a hardcore hardware review site. MMORPG is concerned with whether or not a particular piece of hardware makes MMORPGs run better, play easier, or just plain makes them more fun. We still are not going to chart you to death. There are still plenty of places left that love to print charts for you. Big charts, small charts, skinny charts, tall charts. Starbelly charts, and those without. Just don't bring it back here, we don't want to catch anything.
Two - Yes, Bigfoot Networks advertises here. No, I don't get told by anyone that my review has to go one way or the other. No, I don't get any kickbacks. What is my point? This review is my opinion, and nobody influenced it one way or the other.
Testing Procedures - Aw, man! Don't put that there!
The test machine:
Athlon 64 3000 CPU
Foxconn Winfast NForce 4 motherboard
2 GB Corsair XMS DDR RAM
BFG 7600 GT video card
Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum
120 GB IDE Seagate HDD (7200 RPM)
Running game at a resolution of 1680 x 1050 (22" Widescreen LCD)
All tests were run with driver version 3.0.0.8
All gaming was done through a D-Link Gamer Lounge router with the latest firmware.
When I tested the Killer M1 NIC card, I wanted to see if the technology actually worked. After all, most of us are used to having the NIC come built in to the motherboard, or at most paying twenty dollars for a PCI Intel NIC card. I wanted to know if paying for a high end NIC with a built on network processor was actually worth any amount of money. Well, the M1 - to my surprise - performed as advertised.
I couldn't replicate the feeling of performance with the actual numbers I was seeing for a very simple reason: In order to accurately test performance differences between the Killer NIC and a built in Ethernet port, you really need to have two identical machines running side by side, one with the Killer NIC and one without. Then you need to basically have two players running about in game following the same path and doing the same thing, side by side.
Of course, I don't have two identical machines. Even if I could scrounge up two identical machines, my wife would move me in to the garage, and I would probably freeze to death. So, I did the second best thing. I played each game with the Killer NIC, and without, trying to replicate the same actions and paths I took at the same time of the day. I could notice the performance difference, but the numbers really didn't show what I was feeling.
But Jeremy, you say, this is the Killer K1 NIC review, not the M1 review, why do you bring all of this up? Patience, all will be revealed shortly.
You see, I know the technology works. I can feel the difference. I lost the use of the Killer NIC shortly after completing the article, and had to go without it for a couple of weeks. I found myself lamenting its absence. So I am not going to try to prove the K1 works. It's the same technology.
Bigfoot Networks assures me that the performance difference between the K1 and the M1 is almost negligible when just gaming, so I am not going to contrast the two. I will tell you the only difference between them that I noticed was a slight slowdown on the K1 when downloading a ton of Torrents and gaming, where the M1 just chugged along without a hitch.
So what am I going to do? Well, I am going to perform the same type of test I did while doing the M1 review. See, that's why I brought that all up before. It's all as clear as mud now, right? I basically wanted to test the K1 and see if upgrading a mid-range PC with it would help out, compared to, oh say - upgrading the processor to a dual-core model.
One note - In my Killer M1 NIC review, I noted that pings were all over the charts both with and without the Killer installed. I have since moved and obtained a new ISP, DSL instead of cable. My cable account had a 5Mb download speed cap, where my new DSL account has a mere 3Mb. However, due to the shared bandwidth nature of cable, my pings were impossible to nail down. I doubt I ever had enough bandwidth to myself to actually achieve a download speed even close to the limit. My DSL is testable and even. I can test any time of the day, and it almost always comes out right around 2.6 Mb per second. My point? This time I could, and did, average out ping scores. Does the Killer K1 lower pings? Let's find out.
Well it was better than the last review
A lot of people here will play one of those games and they do cover both ends of the hardware requirement spectrum. If you're playing VG though, that X2 CPU is still pretty mid-range. I got this and overclocked it to 3.29GHz.
I'd like to see how a card like the M1 performs with a CPU like that. /flex
Thank you for your comments. Please point me towards a more professional review of this card, and I'd be happy to read it over and see what I could do to improve my reviews.
Please keep in mind that the professional reviews of the K1 in print magazines such as PC Gamer consist of 5 short paragraphs, and they tested with 3 games. I think we are slightly more in depth than that.
and here's a decent review of the K1 I found on extremetech: www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2105487,00.asp but like the review on this site, it's only tested against one onboard network card and in only a few games.
The review on this site is actually the first time ive ever heard anyone report drastic changes after getting a killer NIC.
So you are basically not looking for "professional" but rather something more in a style that you like. I can respect that, but I cannot provide it for you. Bad review is your opinion, and you are entitled to it, although I must say your two major complaints seem to be invalidated by the example reviews you posted. Neither review tested on more than one processor, and neither tested more than a handfull of games.
When a review just throws out averages, without defining what they are averages of, I would say that it's enough to make a review bad.
I still think $180 for it is a bit steep. Talk to me when it is closer to the $100 range.
What I want to know is how it compares to the new nVidia 680i motherboards with their:
180?
Is still crazy for a NIC. Your reaching the cost of RAM again which would improve your systems performance way more than the POS products put out by Big Foot.
A better internet connection service and 1gig Ethernet port on any modern motherboard will easily compare or do better.
Why are you reviewing these products? Whats the point? You really out of stuff to write about? We mmorpg.com goers I believe would much rather see the performance differences in mmorpgs, and graphical setting differences than reviews of something that NOBODY BUYS, Cares for, or even has a market for.
Big Foot tried to cash in on the whole "gamer" hardware and failed. 180 bucks is better spent on water cooling parts, hardware, or some good'ol reading material about networking or optimizing your PC.
I am still waiting to see how it compares to a 10-15$ standalone nic.
How much of the performance increase is because it's "The Killer NIC" and how much is just because it's a standalone and not integrated?
In my experience anything integrated will have a noticeable hit on performance, be it a NIC, a sound card, a sata controller, a usb hub or anything for that matter.
Please correct me if I'm wrong. I was under the belief that cable internet is no longer a "shared" process. Now, I did think that some low quality providers still provided that old system, but doesn't larger companies in metropolitan areas, like Comcast, have a more dedicated line? You, alone, used to be able to consume your entire neighborhoods bandwidth with the old system which is no longer possible.
I just had my internet/phone/cable hooked up and this was the exact question I had asked: cable internet is a shared bandwidth so how is this going to affect my usage, or vice versa in terms of me affecting my neighbor? The guy who installed everything was a gamer; fps games, America's Army, BF1942, etc. He went over a plethora of technological changes that's been implemented by his company; also his ISP. I had already signed up for everything and wasn't "being sold" a product.
I am experiancing a better dl/ul speed and less packet loss with a 3mb cable connection then I was with my previous 8mb DSL service. I him hitting 12,000 bps whereas the old DLS was barely breaching 10,000 bps. The cable connection fluctuates between 10k bps -to- 12k bps and functions better then my old DSL ISP.
To the persons responding this review isnt "proffesional" enough. The review does have a disclaimer saying that it is not intended to be a "hardcore" review, its merely one persons experience with the card and whether or not they felt it improved. I have learnt something from this review, namely that the Killer NIC is for people with too much money to waste..
Thanks for taking the time to write it!
This card doesn't change the underlying principle of how TCP/IP works, but simply changes the prioritization of the network packets. If you still have a crappy connection, you're still going to get crappy performance. If you have a good connection, you may increase spead a slight bit, but not enough to justify the cost. The only market I could see this increasing performance in is in FPS, where getting the highest ping is king, but even then, it will only help you in a LAN setting, since your ping is deterermined by your ISP, not your network card.
IMO, it's not really designed to do anything except rob another rich idiot of his money.
Nah, to be on topic, I felt this review was quite bad.
First of all, the article it self is not well formed. Also, no matter if you say "it's not a real review", it certainly comes off as an attempt at it and, as such, it fails because it's almost purely based on the "feeling" of the writer, too few setups/games tried, and also not compared to any other NIC (that isn't integrated).
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.
2 - If it did nothing, I imagine there would be quite a few irritated customers demanding their money back and filing lawsuits. 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.
3 - Some of the well known tech sites have given Killer NICs awards. ([H]ardOCP for one)
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.