Killer K1 or M1 Network Card...worth it?

[Gymkata]

Wondering if either version of this network card is a must? Anyone with first-hand experience?

Thanks,

[saphalline]

I don't have any first-hand experience with the Killer NIC's, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night!! :D


You can read the reviews for yourself online, but it basically boils down to: Killer NIC's really are better but not usually needed.

NIC performance itself is hardly ever a bottleneck for home users since a standard gigabit network adapter is capable of reaching far higher throughput than any internet connection available for residential zoning! While this is sad :( it also means that most people don't have a need for a high-end network adapter like a Killer NIC or server-class NIC. However...

Network performance with a Killer NIC is better. Not usually better enough to actually spend extra money to buy a component that is basically free with any modern mobo, but it is still better. Most of its better-ness comes into play with load saturation or network stack saturation. In other words, if you routinely find yourself butting up against the 80% mark of your current network adapter's throughput (ie, 800 Mbps on a gigabit connection) then a Killer NIC would definitely help. Or if you like to download, upload, and play MMO's all at the same time, then the sheer number of connections will cause a standard built-into-the-mobo network adapter to really eat away at your system's resources - in which case a Killer NIC would also help. Network latency is also helped with a Killer NIC (no miracles here!) so if I, for instance, went to a lot more LAN games, then a Killer NIC would be on my wish list. Multiplayer games over the internet, however, would not be worth "accelerating" with a Killer NIC. At that point, the bulk of the latency rests on the network hops over the internet, whereas LAN games bring all systems physically close enough that network adapter performance can make a significant impact on latency.

But you have to realize where your bottlenecks lie. For instance, because your standard network adapters do not process the TCP/IP stack themselves and instead rely on your CPU and OS, improving network adapter performance has a far greater impact on less powerful systems. This means that a system lacking enough CPU power (or overall system performance) to run everything smoothly would benefit more from having the TCP/IP stack duties off-loaded from it than a modern quad-core gaming rig. If you've got CPU cores to spare, what do you care if 200 MHz from one of them is running jobs for your NIC? But if you've still got a single-core CPU, wouldn't a Killer NIC be more desireable?

It's a complicated isssue...

[Gymkata]

It's a complicated isssue...

It certainly sounds like it :eek: . So I think what you are saying is if my new rig has plenty of CPU power, I don't need this feature? "Icing on the cake" so to speak, but something I wouldn't be able to tell the difference?

FWIW, my next rig will have something like: I7 940 Quad, 6GB DDR3 RAM, NVIDIA GTX295 and all that jazz. CyberPower is charging $150 for K1 and $100 more for M1 (don't even know what the difference is between the two) and that is quite a bit of dough. Is this a pretty good set up that won't need the help of Killer NIC?

As much as I'd like to have an awesome rig, I wouldn't want to pay for something that I don't need.

[saphalline]

The K1's CPU is clocked at 333 MHz and has no heatsink. The M1's CPU is clocked at 400 MHz and has a heatsink.

For that kind of price, you could easily get yourself a server-class NIC! However, the Killer NIC's are more SoC devices, so they can run full-blown applications on their embedded Linux-based OS w/64MB of RAM. Do you happen to have any applications you need to run on your NIC? :p

Basically, I wouldn't get one unless I needed the extra functionality of a NIC that can run its own programs. Even for something like a dedicated LAN gaming machine, an Intel server-class NIC with dedicated I/O processor would do the job of reducing latencies as well as a Killer NIC. So it's an extremely niche product. If you want the bragging rights of having an expansion card with an onboard microprocessor, I'd suggest you spend the money on a Sound Blaster X-Fi sound card instead. At least then you'd have an extra CPU that would actually be useful for all types of gaming.

[Gymkata]

I found review of Killer NIC...a blind test...

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/478/1/

Basically all show and no go. :D