Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: killer, m1, nic | Themes: Networking
5. Summary and Conclusion
At a price of over $200, the M1 Killer NIC costs as much as a good motherboard, and twice as much as a decent budget motherboard. Obviously, it must deliver sufficient value to justify the added expense, at least for gamers serious (and well-heeled) enough to care about the benefits that this card delivers. As our testing illustrates, those benefits come in two tangible forms—namely, reduced latency in network access times and improved frame rates while playing games online. We saw only modest reductions in CPU utilization on our QX9650 test systems, but believe those differences should increase on slower CPUs with fewer cores inside them.
Our own testers (which included a couple of diehard full-on teenaged gamers from our neighborhood, as well as author Toby Digby and his cousin, Steven Tran) also reported a definite improvement in the fluidity and smoothness of their gaming experience when using the Killer NIC as opposed to the built-in Realtek GbE interface on the Gigabyte motherboard. Such comments are hard to quantify or pin down precisely, but gamers reported quicker reaction times in their virtual worlds, a better ability to anticipate and track opponents and general improvements in their scoring as well. Tough though these qualities may be to measure objectively, they should (and apparently do) constitute a powerful lure for serious gamers.
Only you can decide if a smoother ride and better scores are worth the extra outlay—the M1 Killer NIC will set you back anywhere from $220 to around $250, depending on where you buy it—but for an increasing number of existing owners, that outlay appears to have already been justified. If you’re willing to part with the cash, you can probably turn it to your advantage in online gaming by acquiring an M1 Killer NIC. Bigfoot also makes a K1 Killer NIC that we did not test, which lacks the fancy heatsink, offers no developer support code and its NPU runs at 333 instead of 400 MHz. You can find the K1 Killer NIC in retail channels for between $160 and $180 if the M1 is too much for your budget. We’d also like to share one final and unrelated technical observation: Having recently worked with the 65-nm QX6800 and now having spent some time with the 45-nm QX9650, we couldn’t help but notice their differences in heat output and operating temperatures. Whereas the QX6800 clocks operating temperatures in the high 40s (all temps mentioned here are in °C) at idle and climbs into the high 50s under load with occasional peaks in the low 60s, the QX9650 idles in the high 30s to low 40s and seldom breaks into the 50s at all. The highest temperatures we observed with the QX9650 were in the 53-55 °C range, using the same Zalman CNPS 9500 cooler on all builds. We’re impressed!
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Um they use the vendors tool to monitor their ping times? With margin of error and internet as a fluctuating cloud of chaos I fail to see these differences as valid.
How about testing it against a decent pci nic instead of onboard... that'd be interesting.
That price has to come down to at least 100$ before gamers can afford it! C'mon 200 to 250$,that's just ludicrist.
I'd like to see this thing compared to a Intel PRO/1000 PT. I've added these adapters to most of my systems and saw a noticable improvement in CPU usage and network utilisation compared to the onboard ones. I'm sure most readers will agree that comparing the M1 to the crappy onboard nic of the mobo is not a fair fight. On a last note: Why is a $200 nic still using PCI instead of PCI-E 1x?
What this article fails to mention is that this NIC is one picky pos about what motherboards it will work on. I got mine a few weeks after it came out and it was a disaster. After 3 RMAs and since, 2 motherboard upgrades later, I STILL cannot get mine to function reliably. And even when the hardware would be detected and the drivers/firmware would install correctly, it did odd things like randomly disconnect me from the network, pause traffic at odd times and the tray app would crash or act strangely. Their tech support tried, I believe, in good faith but in MY experience, the thing is extremely flaky at best. And lastly, when on those rare instances when I could get it to work, I noticed no tangible improvement in my games and in a couple it increased my latency. Some people swear by the thing, I just swore at it...
I'd be curious to see how big of a difference the card would make on a some weaker setups... I mean yeah you're working the cpu with all the heavy graphics settings but that puts more of a strain on the gpu. Basically I'd be curious to see if it makes a big difference for a machine that is struggling to keep up with current games... not a computer that is built for them. Like a 2ghz cpu and ddr1 or something silly like that. where you're going to be running 100% busy cpu then add the nic and see the difference it makes.
Super internet performance, USB2.0, BitTorrent, buypass the CPU, they should (and obivously do) constitute a powerful lure for serious game, music, and video downloaders.
You know I plan on building my next major system when Nehalem hits and I have considered one of these as a nice add on. What is funny is that I think the 6800GT and P4 Dual core I have now would probably benefit more. Check you again in 6 months Killer...
Interesting article, but a shame you didn't test using both onboard NICs teamed and, as stated already by someone, a "normal" PCI card too. Those 2 extra "setups" would really put things into perspetive.
Well, it's not to late to do them and just add them in.
I've always been tempted to get myself a Killer NIC, simply because I enjoy keeping my machine on the cutting edge of technology...but honestly I cannot justify this card. I see three basic scenarios:
1) Slow/aging computer. Would this PC would benefit from a Killer NIC reducing CPU load? No. For a fraction more than $200+ this card will set you back, you can buy a budget mainboard, a dual core CPU and 2GB ram. Sure, it's not gonna be amazing...but the performance increase will be significantly more than a few percent.
2) Mid-spec "average" computer. Nobody with an average specced computer (read, not the sort of person that sees their computer as something to spend all their spare income on) is going to care enough about a couple of percent increase in performance. They'd be better getting themselves a new graphics card and some more ram.
3) High-spec "enthusiast" computer. If you have a top-spec machine because you know your stuff, then you'd know that getting a cheaper Intel Pro/1000MT card is the better option. If you have a top-spec machine because you have more money than sense, you'll get the Killer NIC, simply because you want the "best available".
With that said, it would have been nice to have seen a comparison to a decent TOE enabled Intel NIC, and it might also have been nice to have been told a little about driver support, 64-bit compatibility, and impact of the OS on the performance differences.
Most people would be better getting a decent router (like a Linksys WRT54GS/L and sticking DD-WRT on it) for reduced latency, for $80/£40.
The End.
I've always been tempted to get myself a Killer NIC, simply because I enjoy keeping my machine on the cutting edge of technology...but honestly I cannot justify this card. I see three basic scenarios:
1) Slow/aging computer. Would this PC would benefit from a Killer NIC reducing CPU load? No. For a fraction more than $200+ this card will set you back, you can buy a budget mainboard, a dual core CPU and 2GB ram. Sure, it's not gonna be amazing...but the performance increase will be significantly more than a few percent.
2) Mid-spec "average" computer. Nobody with an average specced computer (read, not the sort of person that sees their computer as something to spend all their spare income on) is going to care enough about a couple of percent increase in performance. They'd be better getting themselves a new graphics card and some more ram.
3) High-spec "enthusiast" computer. If you have a top-spec machine because you know your stuff, then you'd know that getting a cheaper Intel Pro/1000MT card is the better option. If you have a top-spec machine because you have more money than sense, you'll get the Killer NIC, simply because you want the "best available".
With that said, it would have been nice to have seen a comparison to a decent TOE enabled Intel NIC, and it might also have been nice to have been told a little about driver support, 64-bit compatibility, and impact of the OS on the performance differences.
Most people would be better getting a decent router (like a Linksys WRT54GS/L and sticking DD-WRT on it) for reduced latency, for $80/£40.
The End.
Interesting. After this review NEWEGG sold out.
If you look up this product at Ncix.com, one guy did a very extensive and very technical review of this product, comparing it to the 38$ intel pro NIC : http://forum.ncix.com/forums/topic.php?id=1304406
conclusion : Same thing as the intel NIC, except in Fear where it performed better.
Intel's PCIe NIC is only $35-45. Why would anyone buy this to offload networking from the CPU when intel does if for one third the price over a higher bandwidth bus?
Intel's PCIe NIC is only $35-45. Why would anyone buy this to offload networking from the CPU when intel does if for one third the price over a higher bandwidth bus?
Intel's PCIe NIC is only $35-45. Why would anyone buy this to offload networking from the CPU when intel does if for one third the price over a higher bandwidth bus?
Intel's PCIe NIC is only $35-45. Why would anyone buy this to offload networking from the CPU when intel does if for one third the price over a higher bandwidth bus?
Sorry about the double post. What this article did was make me do some research (like Honkytonkman) and order the Intel NIC yesterday. Seeing as how I only play online games I feel it was worth the $40 bucks and I already needed to buy a USB hub; it was a no brainer to pick up the Intel NIC.
The Killer NIC is just extremely overpriced. I wouldn't be suprised if the even cheaper $25 NICs from companies like Rosewell aren't also just as good.
Same conclusion as others. Unless you have a huge budget at your dispense, there no reason to get a Killer over a Intel NIC. None, at all, even if the Killer was priced at 100$.
Unless you have plenty of $$, there is no reason, none , at all, to get the Killer NIC over the Intel NIC. Even if the Killer was priced at 100$$.
Bigfoot is for Bigfools.