Another killer card!

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geno

geno

Lifer
Dec 26, 1999
25,074
4
0
Originally posted by: spidey07
Originally posted by: geno
As much as I believe this card is junk for the money, Anandtech reviewed it and basically said while the numbers prove nothing positive, the "feel" of any given multiplayer game is affected in that it performs and reacts more smoothly while playing online. Who knows, but reading anything positive about it, especially an AT review, was the last thing I expected.
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Read up on Placebo Affect.
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Supposedly these were blind back-to-back tests where they seated people at systems to play online and didn't tell them which card was being used to help eliminate the PE. Think "Pepsi Challenge" :p

I think the card is BS and is answering a question no one asked, however, I can't believe someone as credible as AT has any good things to say about it.
 
geno

geno

Lifer
Dec 26, 1999
25,074
4
0
Originally posted by: JackMDS
Originally posted by: geno
As much as I believe this card is junk for the money, Anandtech reviewed it and basically said while the numbers prove nothing positive, the "feel" of any given multiplayer game is affected in that it performs and reacts more smoothly while playing online. Who knows, but reading anything positive about it, especially an AT review, was the last thing I expected.
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So they are selling a useful product, but they are liars.:shocked:

Quote:
# Optimizes and speeds network operations
# Prioritizes game network traffic to ensure game data is always injected into the game the instant it arrives.
# Offloads packet processing for latency intensive applications, like VoIP, to provide clear and clean communications
# Frees up the CPU to do more game logic and other computations.

End of Quote.

I would not say a word if the above was simply replaced on their Data Sheets with.

"It does improve technical performance but the "feel" of any given multiplayer game is affected in that it performs and reacts more smoothly while playing online".
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But it does do all of the things you just mentioned, they're not liars for saying that much. The problem is : what it does has virtually no effect! The shady part comes in where they fail to quantify just how little any of the above has any effect on anything at all. "Offloads packet processing" is probably freeing up .1% total CPU power (just pulling that number out of thin air, who knows), but they'd never mention just how little their several-hundred dollar card is processing. The marketing hype is unbelievable, but it does do what you listed above, just in very tiny amounts / with little effect. It's simply a hugely complex solution to a simple problem.
 
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OVerLoRDI

Diamond Member
Jan 22, 2006
5,490
4
81
This card does seem mostly worthless, but it would be interesting to play around with. I like the fact that it can do bittorrent completely separate of the OS and CPU, that is nifty. ~150 dollars worth of nifty? Not really, but nifty nonetheless. In my case whenever I do do gigabit transfers it uses more than .1% of my cpu, but on a standard internet connection this card would not really make a difference. Perhaps in situations where there is a lot of cpu crunching and a lot of network traffic this kind of card could maybe make a difference, but it would have to be stripped of all of its gamer nonsense and made at a reasonable price before anyone in the business world considered it.
 
S

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
Originally posted by: geno
I think the card is BS and is answering a question no one asked, however, I can't believe someone as credible as AT has any good things to say about it.
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Being too expensive doesn't mean it's bad. Example: Ferrari sucks ass because there is no justification for the cost, but the overall product is still good.

I like the fact that it can do bittorrent completely separate of the OS and CPU
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This claim from the video sounds like total BS. The reason I say it's BS is because the majority of file sharing CPU demand is not caused by anything internet related. This would include:
-doing check sums on pieces as they are downloaded
-managing a queue and known clients list
-keep track of upload/download statistics for all of those known clients


edit:
Overall this product does have its uses. It has been my experience that router-based QoS only goes so far to help prioritize things. Setting QoS to give TF2 absolute top priority while giving eMule absolute bottom priority can cut my ping down to maybe 100, but it still seems to lag out every now and then, as if I suddenly ran out of bandwidth. Restricting eMule to 30kb/s upload stops this problem completely. Maybe that wouldn't be a problem if QoS was applied before it even got to the router. The router won't need to sort the fast and slow data since it will see the fast data before it sees the slow data. $130 seems pretty expensive for such a task, but I've seen software QoS in the range of $50. Pay an $80 to have it handled on a hardware level instead of a software level? It might be worth it, depending on what you're doing, and that's not just gaming.

edit 2: I just noticed that Ananad's picture of it shows download control as well as upload control. That would be handy as well since I can think of numerous times where I've wanted to download things through firefox and it just does whatever the hell it wants. Downloading at full speed pretty much kills any chance of playing a game, and that's something that can't be control by the router (or at least not my router).
 
D

drebo

Diamond Member
Feb 24, 2006
7,034
1
81
Originally posted by: ShawnD1
Originally posted by: geno
I think the card is BS and is answering a question no one asked, however, I can't believe someone as credible as AT has any good things to say about it.
Click to expand...

Being too expensive doesn't mean it's bad. Example: Ferrari sucks ass because there is no justification for the cost, but the overall product is still good.

I like the fact that it can do bittorrent completely separate of the OS and CPU
Click to expand...
This claim from the video sounds like total BS. The reason I say it's BS is because the majority of file sharing CPU demand is not caused by anything internet related. This would include:
-doing check sums on pieces as they are downloaded
-managing a queue and known clients list
-keep track of upload/download statistics for all of those known clients


edit:
Overall this product does have its uses. It has been my experience that router-based QoS only goes so far to help prioritize things. Setting QoS to give TF2 absolute top priority while giving eMule absolute bottom priority can cut my ping down to maybe 100, but it still seems to lag out every now and then, as if I suddenly ran out of bandwidth. Restricting eMule to 30kb/s upload stops this problem completely. Maybe that wouldn't be a problem if QoS was applied before it even got to the router. The router won't need to sort the fast and slow data since it will see the fast data before it sees the slow data. $130 seems pretty expensive for such a task, but I've seen software QoS in the range of $50. Pay an $80 to have it handled on a hardware level instead of a software level? It might be worth it, depending on what you're doing, and that's not just gaming.

edit 2: I just noticed that Ananad's picture of it shows download control as well as upload control. That would be handy as well since I can think of numerous times where I've wanted to download things through firefox and it just does whatever the hell it wants. Downloading at full speed pretty much kills any chance of playing a game, and that's something that can't be control by the router (or at least not my router).
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Er...every single packet that comes into your computer has to be examined. Where does this happen? The network stack...which is processed in CPU. The most meaningful aspect of these "killer NICs" is the fact that it offers TCP offloading, which means that the Windows network stack that is processed in CPU is no longer processed in CPU, but rather on a dedicated processor on the network card itself. Depending on how much data you're moving, this can free up quite a bit of CPU resources.

TCP Offload Engines have been around in server hardware for quite a while. Whether or not they're useful in the user-space is a matter of debate, but I can definitely understand how it could potentially increase the performance of a game...if you're doing a massive amount of network traffic in addition to said game.

Also, the processor on these devices is programmable, and there is a bittorrent client that runs entirely on the network card and writes to a USB drive plugged directly into the network card, effectively taking the CPU entirely out of the loop.

Would I buy one? Not a chance. But, some people want it.
 
S

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
Originally posted by: drebo
TCP Offload Engines have been around in server hardware for quite a while. Whether or not they're useful in the user-space is a matter of debate, but I can definitely understand how it could potentially increase the performance of a game...if you're doing a massive amount of network traffic in addition to said game.

Also, the processor on these devices is programmable, and there is a bittorrent client that runs entirely on the network card and writes to a USB drive plugged directly into the network card, effectively taking the CPU entirely out of the loop.
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I was checking out Newegg to see if there were any other products that offered anything similar to what this Killer NIC does (or is supposed to do), and the answer is maybe.

Rosewill gigabit NIC with offload - $31 CDN
D-Link gigabit NIC "designed for voip, gaming,..." - $28 CDN

Just for shits and giggles I went into device manager to see what my motherboard's integrated Marvell Yukon supports (Asus P5LD2 motherboard). Here are some that sounded interesting:
IPv4 checksum offload
Large Send offload
TCP checksum offload
UDP checksum offload

Does that mean my cheap motherboard already has most of the Killer NIC features? It says offload, so I assume that means it doesn't use CPU (or not entirely) for those tasks.

On a similar note, why are Intel network cards so damn expensive? There are probably some features on there that I just don't understand the importance of.
$70
$49
 
bob4432

bob4432

Lifer
Sep 6, 2003
11,727
46
91
just lost a ton of respect for evga on this one, if they sell this, how can i take them seriously w/ anything? why don't they put a water block on it too - that will sell to gamers.

what a joke...:thumbsdown:
 
C

CurseTheSky

Diamond Member
Oct 21, 2006
5,401
2
0
Originally posted by: bob4432
just lost a ton of respect for evga on this one, if they sell this, how can i take them seriously w/ anything? why don't they put a water block on it too - that will sell to gamers.

what a joke...:thumbsdown:
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That's what I was thinking the whole time. I really respect EVGA as a company (their products and customer service tend to be top-notch), and I can't believe they're stooping this low. :(
 
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