Rivet Networks Announces Killer E2500 Ethernet Controller

[btarunr]

Rivet Networks Thursday announced its latest gigabit Ethernet controller, the Killer E2500. The E2500 is characterized by advanced QoS features, such as the proprietary ASD 2.0 (advanced stream detect). ASD 2.0 is a feature with which the NIC driver shapes traffic specific to applications. It senses which kind of applications deserve priority over the others. The driver also provides optimization for the top-500 websites on the Internet, by squeezing out the best page-load performance at the web-browser level. The PHY itself offers checksum offload, interrupt moderation, frame-spacing, and large-send offload.

Another major change on the software-side is the new Killer Control center, which gives you manual control over network performance specific to not just games and apps, but also specific websites. The company's asymmetric teaming tech DoubleShot Pro also received an update, giving you control over which app/traffic you want to send through which pipe. The company claims that it has already scored design wins for the chip with motherboard makers ASRock, MSI, Gigabyte; and notebook design wins with Dell-Alienware, Dell-XPS, Lenovo, Clevo, Acer, and Razer.



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[MxPhenom 216]

I hope im not the only one who thinks Killer NIC is rather pointless. I havw noticed zero diffetence between my new msi board that has killer NIC vs my previous one that had Intel NIC.

 

[RejZoR]

I wonder how this compares to CFosSpeed. Essentially it's doing the same thing. Hm.

 

[Dethroy]

I avoid Killer like the plague. I really hope that this NIC will only show up on super duper gaming branded boards with even more ridiculous names ...

 

[TheLostSwede]

I hope im not the only one who thinks Killer NIC is rather pointless. I havw noticed zero diffetence between my new msi board that has killer NIC vs my previous one that had Intel NIC.

Got Intel and Killer on the same motherboard, did a few tests and it comes out pretty much exactly the same...

The only advantage Killer has is if you're running something that starts a download in the background, it'll put a low priority on that while you're gaming.

Not had any problems with their drivers, although I've admittedly only had this board for a few weeks.

QoS really needs to be router level or it won't matter at all unless you're the only person using the internet connection, which I guess a lot of us aren't so...

 

[alucasa]

Intel NIC is all you need.

I also avoid mobos with Killer NIC.

 

[Frick]

I hope im not the only one who thinks Killer NIC is rather pointless. I havw noticed zero diffetence between my new msi board that has killer NIC vs my previous one that had Intel NIC.

I assume it's better than Realtek though ..
but so is Intel.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Why everybody is hating KillerNIC ?? Personally I don't care about improvind the download speed, but mostly about decreasing the servers PING when playing online. Does this card provide that?

 

[Disparia]

Realtek had trash 100Mb controllers/adapters but their 1Gb models are acceptable enough to shake off that early reputation IMO. Not to say that I wouldn't prefer Intel, but I wouldn't shy away from a board with another brands controller.

Speaking of speeds, it's possible we'll see 2.5Gb Ethernet (a current IEEE 802 project, along with 5Gb) next year. That's when we'll all be excited about a new controller press release

 

[rtwjunkie]

I hope im not the only one who thinks Killer NIC is rather pointless. I havw noticed zero diffetence between my new msi board that has killer NIC vs my previous one that had Intel NIC.

Oh I've noticed. I've noticed about how it likes to just drop out and need driver reinstalls. I've noticed that it is not faster. I've noticed that I will think long and hard before buying another MSI board, due to their lovefest with Killer here in the last few years.

 

[Nosada]

Why everybody is hating KillerNIC ?? Personally I don't care about improvind the download speed, but mostly about decreasing the servers PING when playing online. Does this card provide that?

Speaking as a Wintel/VMware engineer who talks to datacenter network engineers on a weekly basis, I can assure you Killer NICs are a gigantic joke to them. The simple truth is that your network card, whatever brand it may be, has no impact whatsoever on what happens to your packets beyond the first hop. This first hop is either the switch or router in your home.

The idea that you could somehow make your packets faster worldwide by something you install in your local machine is right up there with homeopathy level bullshit.

What it can do is take work away from the CPU in high bandwidth scenarios, freeing it up for other tasks. Their usecase is that this would be true for gaming and should improve fps. If your CPU is so weak that it cannot handle a Mb/s stream of data while gaming, your money would be MUCH better spent on a new mobo/cpu combo though.

These things have no reason to exist, but for marketing.

 

[Grings]

oh wonderful, another generation of gaming motherboards to ignore half of

 

[Mussels]

Why everybody is hating KillerNIC ?? Personally I don't care about improvind the download speed, but mostly about decreasing the servers PING when playing online. Does this card provide that?

only if the high ping was caused by something on your machine itself. If its another device (PC, phone, tablet, console etc) on your network, your modem, your ISP, distance, the game/web server itself... nope. Does nothing.

 

[baobrain]

Killer NICs are pointless, they're Qualcomm NICs but without good drivers and Linux support, and there's a Mem leak

 

[Jism]

I hope im not the only one who thinks Killer NIC is rather pointless. I havw noticed zero diffetence between my new msi board that has killer NIC vs my previous one that had Intel NIC.

Intel NIC's are actually 'good' enough. It's the budget NIC's that cause troubles. Please, put an old fashioned Realtek 100mbit nic in your PCI slot, and start copying at full speed. Your CPU usage will explode, lol.

 

[dozenfury]

Not only have I seen zero performance improvement from Killer nics on a number of motherboards that I've owned that had them, actually they've had more issues for my by far than any other nics. Their software for the Killer nic is awful in my experience and causes all kinds of app/gaming problems, and their performance increases that they market are mostly from the software not their nic itself. So it's no faster with or without their buggy software installed, and it does some poor QoS that causes system issues. Plus you have another app running in the background using cpu and memory cycles. Even their drivers alone are more buggy than most and you have to experiment that find a version that works well.

On my next motherboard I was already planning to make sure it did not have a Killer nic for these reasons and my bad experiences with them. The nic is just something you are better off with have a standard 1000 Mbit one from Intel that is solid and works well, and do QoS in your router if you feel it's necessary. Your network speeds are far more reliant on other things like ISP congestion and bandwidth, the servers you are connecting to, etc, than your nic. It's a bit like the companies selling loud overpriced mufflers for a compact car and marketing it that it will magically turn it into a fast race car.

 

[Jism]

Well a louder muffler can add a small footpound of torque if designed correctly. The problem with killer nics (marketing) is that they dont do what they advertise. You dont need a killer nic compared to an intel nic. Back in the old days, having a realtek 100mbit PCI-ethernet card would cause HUGE CPU usage when fully ultilitizing the NIC. In theory the killer nic should offload the CPU and get a 'greater' ping and all that.

But the problem is that in between there's often a router or modem doing all different sort of things. You still cant bypass with better latency's towards any DC interconnect.

 

[Keullo-e]

I seriously can't understand why manufacturers use overpriced PR-BS like these, since Intel NIC's are the best?


...well, I'm using WLAN via 4G hotspot from my phone even for gaming

 

[lorraine walsh]

The only thing this does is rate-limit other apps. It might be smart about it, but its hardly anything magical, and its all happening in software (not the hardware). For similar effect, you can set a rate limit on your torrent client.

 

[Jetster]

My mobo has both Intel and Atheros Killer E2201. Absolutely no difference other than the Killer QOS. I've used them both for months at a time