Bigfoot Networks Unleashes Killer 2100, World's Fastest Gaming NIC

[btarunr]

Bigfoot Networks, the networking technology company behind the Killer line of gaming networks cards, today announced Killer 2100, its next-generation network interface card (NIC) for online gaming. Killer 2100 combines elements of speed, intelligence and control demanded by gamers with major throughput and latency enhancements and an innovative and easy-to-use software interface. Killer 2100 epitomizes blazing speed and maximum performance as the fastest Gigabit NIC on the planet for gamers.

At the heart of Killer 2100 is Bigfoot Networks’ groundbreaking Game Networking DNA technology, comprised of a dedicated network processor (NPU), Advanced Game Detect, Windows stack bypass, Visual Bandwidth Control and other optimizations designed to deliver the best online gaming experience possible. Game Networking DNA accelerates latency-sensitive game traffic while reducing stuttering, freezing and other symptoms of lag, giving online gamers a competitive edge.



"Killer 2100 is the fastest network card available for online games, period," said Michael Howse, CEO, Bigfoot Networks. "From its completely redesigned user interface and race-inspired outer casing to its high-performance Game Networking DNA software, everything about Killer 2100 screams speed and maximum performance."



Using the Gaming Network Efficiency test, a new benchmark that measures network latency during gaming scenarios, Killer 2100 clocked in at more than ten times faster than standard network interfaces on multicore gaming PCs with high-end graphics cards. The additional speed provided by Killer 2100 means players can achieve quicker response times, better in-game performance and higher scores.

"We saw a dramatic performance advantage over standard network interfaces in our Killer 2100 tests—an advantage that's big enough to change the online gaming experience,” said Jon Peddie, president of Jon Peddie Research. “The Killer 2100 repeatedly delivered superior network latency on mainstream and enthusiast-class gaming PCs, and this difference could easily provide a winning edge to online gamers."

Killer 2100 is a plug-and-play solution that enables gamers at every level of experience to improve their online gaming with minimal setup. But for those who want to tune their PC, Killer 2100 offers powerful tools for monitoring and optimizing network performance. Visual Bandwidth Control provides real-time feedback about how Internet bandwidth is used on a per-application basis, making it easy for gamers to limit or block network-hungry applications. The Online Gaming PC Monitor feature gives players at-a-glance graphical displays and detailed logging so that they can track performance statistics such as CPU usage, memory usage and frame rate along with networking activity.

“As gamers, we don’t want anything to get in the way of our skill,” said Alex Garfield from top eSports team Evil Geniuses. “Killer 2100 gets our reactions and commands to the network faster than any other network card, letting us concentrate on the game without worrying about lag.”

Specifications:

• 10/100/1000 Ethernet
• PCIe interface (x1 form factor)
• 400 MHz dedicated network processor
• 128 MB DDR2 RAM
• Performance-inspired housing
• Advanced Game Detect
• Visual Bandwidth Control
• Online Gaming PC Monitor
• Windows network stack bypass
• Optimized for use with voice chat applications
• Support for Windows 7, Vista & XP 32

Killer 2100 products will be available in coming weeks in retail and online stores in the U.S., Europe and Asia from Golden Arrow, Leadtek, TUL and VisionTek. MSRP $129 U.S. For more information, visit this page.

[buggalugs]

wow why does it need 128mb of ram?

[Cheeseball]

Useless. Really. The only thing good about this is that it doesn't put any stress on the CPU like an onboard-chip does, but ANY stand-alone ethernet card does this at a cheaper price.

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

No x64 bit support? Fail!

[TheLostSwede]

Uhm, not all stand alone cards does that.
Besides, some onboard Ethernet controllers are good.
I think you're mixing up the cheap crap Realtek stuff with other decent solutions here.
And this is a new version of their stuff, so hopefully they've made it do something, as the previous one was pointless, although the one prior to that actually worked, but then again, that was a PCI card so...

[cdawall]

Does this one have a shitty little celeron on it too?

[Phxprovost]

even though these cards are about as useful as gold plated monster cables...didn't the first one at least have usb output? I like how they took away that dumb ass "heat sink" to make it look like less of a joke.

[btarunr]

Originally Posted by [I.R.A]_FBi

No x64 bit support? Fail!

No XP x64 support. Supports Windows 7/Vista x64.

Originally Posted by buggalugs

wow why does it need 128mb of ram?

Because of the way it's designed. 128 MB is the main memory of the tiny SoC on that card. Sort of like how 64 MB is the main memory (written as "cache") of the SandForce SoC on SSDs that use it, or 128 MB / 256 MB memory on RAID cards that have their own SoCs that offload the host of processing.

[Necrofire]

If I were worried about latency, I'd first look at my router, then my switch if I had one, then my modem, then I'd ask my internet provider about it. Then and only then would I look at my onboard network.

It's a shame really, the people I see as potential buyers of this are the same people that have 4+ GB of ram, thus having a 64-bit OS.

At any rate, that 128MB of ram need to get addressed by the OS, leaving even less available ram to the user if they have over 3GB already.

Sigh...

[Mescalamba]

Great, now please produce some "gaming" xDSL modem/router. Cause all I had sux.. (havent tested D-Link yet..).

[newtekie1]

Even more useless then the orginal. At least the original had a direct USB connection, so I could run my torrent programs and file transfers directly on the NIC freeing up system resources(not that utorrent really takes up a whole lot of system resrouces)...

There is no noticeable advantage with this over even the crappiers onboard cards. The big claim for fastest NIC comes from the claim it can lower pings, and it can in a lab environment. However, in the real world, high pings are caused by the public side, not the private. So changing anything on your side is pretty pointless, it might shave of 1ms, but that won't matter. When it takes 2ms to ping from my computer to the hub at the street, but my pings in games are 40ms, guess where the other 38ms came from. Thats right, the time it takes to for the data to to travel from the box on the street to the game server, and switching my NIC in my computer isn't going to change that.

[araditus]

Originally Posted by Mescalamba

Great, now please produce some "gaming" xDSL modem/router. Cause all I had sux.. (havent tested D-Link yet..).

D-Link is the best, and I have tested them all, being a hardcore FPS fan for 10 years routing was always important, in my personal expericent the best router now hands down for my needs is the DIR-655 for wireless and if you want just nasty speed and low latency my DGL-4100 works best for me, and it usually offers my speeds over my rated speed from my ISP, i get around 38-42mbs when I am on a 30mbs line.

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by araditus

D-Link is the best, and I have tested them all, being a hardcore FPS fan for 10 years routing was always important, in my personal expericent the best router now hands down for my needs is the DIR-655 for wireless and if you want just nasty speed and low latency my DGL-4100 works best for me, and it usually offers my speeds over my rated speed from my ISP, i get around 38-42mbs when I am on a 30mbs line.

The higher bandwidth has nothing to do with the router.

[araditus]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

When it takes 2ms to ping from my computer to the hub at the street, but my pings in games are 40ms, guess where the other 38ms came from. Thats right, the time it takes to for the data to to travel from the box on the street to the game server, and switching my NIC in my computer isn't going to change that.

I do not know if every ISP will do this, but they worked with me (live in Oklahoma) on some custom routing over the phone to take my ping to my previous Dallas Counter Strike match server from 17-19ms to 6-8ms they reduced the hops for mefrom 14 to 7, I know the Killer card wont work well, I am just notifiying that you can make a difference, just not with this. BTW my isp didnt charge me the $100 this thing will.

[araditus]

Originally Posted by DrPepper

The higher bandwidth has nothing to do with the router.

Its difficult for me to believe otherwise even thought what you may say is completely true in my personal expericence the 4100 is 25% faster than my other routers.

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by araditus

Its difficult for me to believe otherwise even thought what you may say is completely true in my personal expericence the 4100 is 25% faster than my other routers.

Still not due to the router. Probably on the ISP side of it that your actually getting more than you should or they've upgraded your package and its still labelled as the old. Same happened with virgin I was on a 1mb/s package and the next day all of a sudden it was 2mb/s because they upgraded long term customers.

[Easy Rhino]

this product reminds me of the old "make your house a giant antenna for free tv watching" product back in the early 90s. They are gimmicks. Were there not several independent studies done that showed no improvement for gaming?

[DrPepper]

Originally Posted by Easy Rhino

this product reminds me of the old "make your house a giant antenna for free tv watching" product back in the early 90s. They are gimmicks. Were there not several independent studies done that showed no improvement for gaming?

Yep. It's a gimmick and EVGA asfaik support it ?

[majestic12]

the killer NIC has blast processing, the Super NES doesn't.

[$immond$]

Originally Posted by Necrofire

If I were worried about latency, I'd first look at my router, then my switch if I had one, then my modem, then I'd ask my internet provider about it. Then and only then would I look at my onboard network.

It's a shame really, the people I see as potential buyers of this are the same people that have 4+ GB of ram, thus having a 64-bit OS.

At any rate, that 128MB of ram need to get addressed by the OS, leaving even less available ram to the user if they have over 3GB already.

Sigh...

Yes this is another expense that really isn't necessary for any gamer, however stating anyone utilizing more than 4Gb of ram is stupid enough to buy this is an insult. I have 6 Gb of ram, a x64 bit OS and I run virtual machines on my computer. No way in hell would I buy this, I don't think I will ever switch back to a 32 bit OS either.

[hat]

Yeah, really.. right now I'm using 1.5GB between the OS, BOINC, F@H, Steam, MSE, utorrent, IE, and a sticky note open. That would leave me 512MB for everything else if I had 2GB...

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by $immond$

Yes this is another expense that really isn't necessary for any gamer, however stating anyone utilizing more than 4Gb of ram is stupid enough to buy this is an insult. I have 6 Gb of ram, a x64 bit OS and I run virtual machines on my computer. No way in hell would I buy this, I don't think I will ever switch back to a 32 bit OS either.

He didn't say anyone with more than 4GB of RAM is stupid enough to buy this, I don't see anything even close to that in his post.

He is saying that the people that would consider buying this probably have 4GB+ of RAM and hence a 64-bit OS.

[$immond$]

Originally Posted by newtekie1

He didn't say anyone with more than 4GB of RAM is stupid enough to buy this, I don't see anything even close to that in his post.

He is saying that the people that would consider buying this probably have 4GB+ of RAM and hence a 64-bit OS.

And why would they consider buying it because they have x64bit OS and 4Gb+ of ram?

[newtekie1]

Originally Posted by $immond$

And why would they consider buying it because they have x64bit OS and 4Gb+ of ram?

Again, no one is saying the anyone would consider buying this because they have 4GB+ of RAM and a 64-bit OS. Again, you've got that mixed up. They have a 64-bit OS and 4GB+ of RAM because they are considering buying it.

Him, and I, are saying the small group of people that would consider buying this, likely already have 4GB of RAM and a 64-bit OS. Why do they likely have these things? Because they are considering buying a $130 network card for gaming, so they've probably already spent less money elsewhere. I don't think many people with 2GB of RAM or less are going to think this is the best place to put their money for a performance boost.

[$immond$]

Considering the cost of ram these days 4Gb of DDR2/DDR3 can be bought very cheap.