BigFoot Networks Killer NIC: Killer Marketing or Killer Product?
by Gary Key on October 31, 2006 2:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Networking
Final Words
Our primary purpose in this review - or better yet product evaluation - was to prove whether or not this product works as advertised. We have to admit that it does to a certain degree as shown in our benchmarks. However, benchmarks do not tell the entire story with this card. We will try our best to explain our experiences with this card and provide some additional insight into our results now.
Our experience with the Killer NIC was very frustrating at times. We exprienced everything from driver incompatibilities to botched driver installs. We explained it to technical support best last week by stating that, "It was time to toss the card out the window and get on with life." A scornful statement but one that perfectly described our feelings at the time after the uninstall program basically rendered our drive image useless. We were not the first ones to experience these issues and unfortunately we might not be the last ones either in our opinion.
Another area of frustration was the fact that we could not use FNapps. This is the number two feature on the card and from all indications accounts for a large portion of the card's cost. This feature has been hyped ad nauseam since the inception of the card and we still do not have one working applet to test. In theory, this feature sets the card apart and could become a viable reason to own the card depending upon your needs.
We do not agree with the aggressive marketing techniques utilized by BigFoot Networks. At least it seems overly aggressive to us and we believe the tone set by BigFoot Networks has led directly to some of the backlash on the Internet. While the claims about performance improvements on the website seem a bit excessive based upon our results we can fully understand a company using them to promote the product. What we found to be an issue was the lack of easy access to the card's technical information that we found in the reviewer's guide. This type of information should be easily accessed on the website. It explains the technical reasons as to why offloading the network stack onto a dedicated processor can improve both frame and ping rates no matter how minimal the increases might be in most games.
We also discussed the viral marketing instances that we have seen along with some of the outlandish performance claims on Newegg with BigFoot Networks. Their reply was that neither they nor their marketing group were involved in these activities. They also stated there might have been some enthusiastic owners or people looking for information about the card on the various forums along with hecklers adding outlandish performance claims about the card.
We did see several emails from BigFoot Networks asking Newegg to delete some of the more outlandish review claims about the card. Newegg complied with this request in most instances. While we truly believe most of what BigFoot Networks explained to us we have serious doubts about the forum posts. There were too many junior or new members in forums across the Internet posting about the card at time of launch to have been a coincidental series of events. We call it viral marketing, others call it enthusiastic owners and fans of a product. Whatever it truly is, it makes us want to wear the wading boots and take a hot shower after searching through the forums.
(Editor's Update - We spoke at length with BigFoot Networks personnel and those of their advertising agency about the forum posts we noticed at product launch. We believe they are now very sincere about not promoting the Killer NIC through viral marketing and they reassured us this is not their intent or practice. In fact, we have seen these types of posts start to disappear and now instead see BigFoot Networks technical personnel on several forums assisting users. We commend BigFoot Networks for this type of customer service. We also understand the price of the card has dropped to $249.99 and can be found with rebates at this time. Their first FNapp has been released and we look forward to testing the card again in the near future.)
Our comments above have probably led you to believe we truly dislike the product or the company. Actually, this is far from the case. As an example, during testing we came across several driver and application compatibility issues. In every case, the personnel at BigFoot Networks worked to solve our issues and those of users on their forums. Each driver release solved the issues we or others noticed. We would receive driver releases over the weekend and late at night. The technical support provided to us was superb the majority of the time.
We fully realize this is a startup company and a new product introduction so there will be growing pains but so far in our experiences the technical support functions have been top notch. The personnel in the company have been very open and always willing to communicate with us. We also believe they have very good hardware engineering expertise based upon their product design and implementation. The drivers are starting to mature rapidly and to be honest the product should be launching at this time based upon the performance of the card and its newfound stability. We just wish the owner's manual was up to par. The multitude of options in the control panel that are available for configuration are briefly described from a technical viewpoint but the descriptions do not explain how or why changing these options would improve system performance.
When we discuss performance, it is not only about how well the card performs in games but how well it performed as a standard NIC. Up until the 1.8.3.0 and 1.8.5.0 driver releases we noticed several issues with extended system startups, sluggish Windows Explorer performance, long load times for Explorer, Firefox, or Opera pages, and download speeds suffering when compared to our onboard NICs. These issues along with the capability to use Skype while in game mode have been addressed in the latest 1.8.6.0 driver release. While Skype operation is not perfect yet it now works properly in game mode. You are required to start Skype in APP mode and then switch to game mode. We fully expect this step to be removed shortly. Our point is that when an issue arises or a feature is requested we find BigFoot Networks addressing it almost immediately.
In regards to game performance the card actually worked in improving frame rates in the top three titles that BigFoot Networks heavily promotes as show casing the benefits of the Killer NIC and its MaxFPS technology, those titles being F.E.A.R., Counter Strike: Source, and World of WarCraft. We witnessed improvements from 4% to 10% in these titles when compared to our standard D-Link PCI NIC. This sounds impressive and was a slight surprise to us actually. However, we did not see or feel any real differences in our game play experiences due to increased frame rates from the Killer NIC or by simply overclocking our video card.
Ping rates were a different story. We displayed ping rate results but it is nearly impossible to truly measure or benchmark these numbers. There can be a small reduction in ping rates on the host system due to the offloading and bypassing of the Windows Network Stack but these differences rarely show up with the one exception being World of WarCraft. We firmly believe the majority of our benchmark differences are due to the variability in our network connection and at the server.
In fairness to BigFoot Networks, we did notice our game play appeared to be smoother in F.E.A.R., World of WarCraft, and Counter Strike: Source when the server traffic was at its heaviest point. The likely cause for this is improved ping rates although any differences were not measurable during our test runs. We did not notice this same improvement in Battlefield 2, Quake 4, or Call of Duty 2 so it is obvious there are certain game engines the card works well with and others it does not. In our limited single CPU testing we saw further improved frame rates over our dual-core platform in the three optimized games but no significant differences in our other game titles.
This is the real irony of the Killer NIC as the systems that show the greatest amount of improvement (in a very limited number of titles) belong to owners that would never consider spending $279.99 on a NIC. Those who can afford the card are probably running system specifications in which the game performance improvements would never be noticed. In fact, we could simply overclock our systems by 5% or a little more and end up with the same frame rate improvements. That leaves a very small audience of buyers who would potentially purchase the card for the gee-whiz factor or the professional gamer who has the ability to take advantage of a 1ms or better improvement in ping rates in Counter Strike: Source or could tell the difference between 58 fps or 53 fps in F.E.A.R..
We truly wish BigFoot Networks success as their technology has merit on the desktop. We see data payload requirments increasing in upcoming game titles and their offloading technology could have a larger impact on improving your online game play experience. Our current opinion is, without FNapps, improved performance across a wider variety of titles, and a significantly lower price tag, this card is destined to be nothing more than an interesting footnote in the annals of hardware history.
Our primary purpose in this review - or better yet product evaluation - was to prove whether or not this product works as advertised. We have to admit that it does to a certain degree as shown in our benchmarks. However, benchmarks do not tell the entire story with this card. We will try our best to explain our experiences with this card and provide some additional insight into our results now.
Our experience with the Killer NIC was very frustrating at times. We exprienced everything from driver incompatibilities to botched driver installs. We explained it to technical support best last week by stating that, "It was time to toss the card out the window and get on with life." A scornful statement but one that perfectly described our feelings at the time after the uninstall program basically rendered our drive image useless. We were not the first ones to experience these issues and unfortunately we might not be the last ones either in our opinion.
Another area of frustration was the fact that we could not use FNapps. This is the number two feature on the card and from all indications accounts for a large portion of the card's cost. This feature has been hyped ad nauseam since the inception of the card and we still do not have one working applet to test. In theory, this feature sets the card apart and could become a viable reason to own the card depending upon your needs.
We do not agree with the aggressive marketing techniques utilized by BigFoot Networks. At least it seems overly aggressive to us and we believe the tone set by BigFoot Networks has led directly to some of the backlash on the Internet. While the claims about performance improvements on the website seem a bit excessive based upon our results we can fully understand a company using them to promote the product. What we found to be an issue was the lack of easy access to the card's technical information that we found in the reviewer's guide. This type of information should be easily accessed on the website. It explains the technical reasons as to why offloading the network stack onto a dedicated processor can improve both frame and ping rates no matter how minimal the increases might be in most games.
We also discussed the viral marketing instances that we have seen along with some of the outlandish performance claims on Newegg with BigFoot Networks. Their reply was that neither they nor their marketing group were involved in these activities. They also stated there might have been some enthusiastic owners or people looking for information about the card on the various forums along with hecklers adding outlandish performance claims about the card.
We did see several emails from BigFoot Networks asking Newegg to delete some of the more outlandish review claims about the card. Newegg complied with this request in most instances. While we truly believe most of what BigFoot Networks explained to us we have serious doubts about the forum posts. There were too many junior or new members in forums across the Internet posting about the card at time of launch to have been a coincidental series of events. We call it viral marketing, others call it enthusiastic owners and fans of a product. Whatever it truly is, it makes us want to wear the wading boots and take a hot shower after searching through the forums.
(Editor's Update - We spoke at length with BigFoot Networks personnel and those of their advertising agency about the forum posts we noticed at product launch. We believe they are now very sincere about not promoting the Killer NIC through viral marketing and they reassured us this is not their intent or practice. In fact, we have seen these types of posts start to disappear and now instead see BigFoot Networks technical personnel on several forums assisting users. We commend BigFoot Networks for this type of customer service. We also understand the price of the card has dropped to $249.99 and can be found with rebates at this time. Their first FNapp has been released and we look forward to testing the card again in the near future.)
Our comments above have probably led you to believe we truly dislike the product or the company. Actually, this is far from the case. As an example, during testing we came across several driver and application compatibility issues. In every case, the personnel at BigFoot Networks worked to solve our issues and those of users on their forums. Each driver release solved the issues we or others noticed. We would receive driver releases over the weekend and late at night. The technical support provided to us was superb the majority of the time.
We fully realize this is a startup company and a new product introduction so there will be growing pains but so far in our experiences the technical support functions have been top notch. The personnel in the company have been very open and always willing to communicate with us. We also believe they have very good hardware engineering expertise based upon their product design and implementation. The drivers are starting to mature rapidly and to be honest the product should be launching at this time based upon the performance of the card and its newfound stability. We just wish the owner's manual was up to par. The multitude of options in the control panel that are available for configuration are briefly described from a technical viewpoint but the descriptions do not explain how or why changing these options would improve system performance.
When we discuss performance, it is not only about how well the card performs in games but how well it performed as a standard NIC. Up until the 1.8.3.0 and 1.8.5.0 driver releases we noticed several issues with extended system startups, sluggish Windows Explorer performance, long load times for Explorer, Firefox, or Opera pages, and download speeds suffering when compared to our onboard NICs. These issues along with the capability to use Skype while in game mode have been addressed in the latest 1.8.6.0 driver release. While Skype operation is not perfect yet it now works properly in game mode. You are required to start Skype in APP mode and then switch to game mode. We fully expect this step to be removed shortly. Our point is that when an issue arises or a feature is requested we find BigFoot Networks addressing it almost immediately.
In regards to game performance the card actually worked in improving frame rates in the top three titles that BigFoot Networks heavily promotes as show casing the benefits of the Killer NIC and its MaxFPS technology, those titles being F.E.A.R., Counter Strike: Source, and World of WarCraft. We witnessed improvements from 4% to 10% in these titles when compared to our standard D-Link PCI NIC. This sounds impressive and was a slight surprise to us actually. However, we did not see or feel any real differences in our game play experiences due to increased frame rates from the Killer NIC or by simply overclocking our video card.
Ping rates were a different story. We displayed ping rate results but it is nearly impossible to truly measure or benchmark these numbers. There can be a small reduction in ping rates on the host system due to the offloading and bypassing of the Windows Network Stack but these differences rarely show up with the one exception being World of WarCraft. We firmly believe the majority of our benchmark differences are due to the variability in our network connection and at the server.
In fairness to BigFoot Networks, we did notice our game play appeared to be smoother in F.E.A.R., World of WarCraft, and Counter Strike: Source when the server traffic was at its heaviest point. The likely cause for this is improved ping rates although any differences were not measurable during our test runs. We did not notice this same improvement in Battlefield 2, Quake 4, or Call of Duty 2 so it is obvious there are certain game engines the card works well with and others it does not. In our limited single CPU testing we saw further improved frame rates over our dual-core platform in the three optimized games but no significant differences in our other game titles.
This is the real irony of the Killer NIC as the systems that show the greatest amount of improvement (in a very limited number of titles) belong to owners that would never consider spending $279.99 on a NIC. Those who can afford the card are probably running system specifications in which the game performance improvements would never be noticed. In fact, we could simply overclock our systems by 5% or a little more and end up with the same frame rate improvements. That leaves a very small audience of buyers who would potentially purchase the card for the gee-whiz factor or the professional gamer who has the ability to take advantage of a 1ms or better improvement in ping rates in Counter Strike: Source or could tell the difference between 58 fps or 53 fps in F.E.A.R..
We truly wish BigFoot Networks success as their technology has merit on the desktop. We see data payload requirments increasing in upcoming game titles and their offloading technology could have a larger impact on improving your online game play experience. Our current opinion is, without FNapps, improved performance across a wider variety of titles, and a significantly lower price tag, this card is destined to be nothing more than an interesting footnote in the annals of hardware history.
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LoneWolf15 - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Almost forgot my one other point: As others have said, Vista's TCP stack is completely different. If the Killer NIC is designed largely around the way previous versions of Windows work, even with Vista drivers it could turn out to be a high-priced piece of hardware that functions no better than a regular PCI nic.TonyB - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Instead of paying $300 to improve your World of Warcraft PIng Times you can simply do a little research. find out which WoW server is located in your geographic zone. If you live in California, look for a West coast server, if you're in New York, look for a East coast server , if you're in Chicago look for a Central server. Pay the $25 character transfer fee and move your account to the new server, viola!! decreased ping times.ps: this only works if you aren't playing in a server thats in your geographic zone already.
VooDooAddict - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Because to you... Free = $25 transfer fee and no longer playing with the same group of friends?? Not an option for most people.I aplaud BigFoot for targeting this need with thier product. Riding the coat tails of something like WoW is a tried and true buisness practice. However, it's a failed execution and from the looks of it due mainly to the price. Everyone else agree that if priced for $49 or less they could start enjoying part of that big pile of money called WoW?
$49 for a card that could help keep things running smoothly in large raids with teamspeak running full tilt? They could drop the giant K and the embedded linux to help reduce costs as 95% of the WoW target wouldn't care about those features.
Spacecomber - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
I'll try not to repeat what has already been said about this NIC and Anandtech's review of it; I did have a few random thoughts after skimming through the article.I felt like I had to give BigFoot credit for apprarently seeking out this review from Anandtech. Although they had a lot to gain from a good review, because of the extent of Anandtech's readership and reputation, they must have known that their card would have to deliver on what was advertised in order to get any sort of positive grade (and in the end it did fail to deliver on all but a insignificant fraction of what it promised).
On the other hand, this gets us to the meat of the article. Besides the issue of price, the main problem with this card is that it just isn't ready for prime-time, yet. This means that anyone who does spend $280 on this card is essentially signing up as a beta tester for a product this is still in development. Although gamers probably are familiar with this role (being the first to own some new hardware or new game means being the first to encounter unresolved and frustrating bugs), it still seems a bit perverse to have to pay so much money for this dubious honor.
Given that this seems to be current state of affairs with "cutting edge" games and hardware, I couldn't help imaginging how it would make more sense to put the (presumably) free products into the hands of users who know that they are expected to beta test and work with tech/support staff to make a potentially good product better, rather than the apparent current practice of putting new products into the hands of people who are only required to evangelize for the company.
I guess somewhere along the way the marketing people won out, and comapnies now find their money better spent on marketing rather than product development. Personally, I can't believe that viral marketing is going to be more helpful at making this product a success than would money spent on further testing and development.
Essentially, this is what BigFoot got by their providing a card to Anandtech for testing (constructive feedback and a willing partner to test out potential fixes - in the form of new drivers). But, I suppose BigFoot has bills to pay, now, before they can even worry about getting this card fully up to specification, and this means that someone has to pay.
WileCoyote - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Review was too wordy! Just large paragraphs of text without any type of organization. Dullest Anandtech article ever.goinginstyle - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
Dullest response ever and it did not take a PhD to write my response. The article flowed from an introduction, with understandable technology descriptions that were not in other reviews, to results with a subjective/objective based ending. It had a couple of wordy sections but it was a lot better than most of the one line sentence descriptions you see in articles today. So please go buy a card, test it, and then provide us your perfect review. If you are unwilling to do this then at least tell us how it should be organized so anthropologists from around the world can understand it. I am sure Eric R. Wolf is turning over in his grave today because an anthropologist did not like the organization of an article.
WileCoyote - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
Chill out! Don't get so stressed out over 3 sentences and someone else's opinion. Big deal, I think it's a poorly written article when compared to previous ones at Anandtech. And I'm not questioning the author's education or net worth. I have left dozens of positive comments for previous Anandtech articles/authors so I'm not trolling either.goinginstyle - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
The fact is you have not offered an opinion on how to improve the article. You bash it but have not replied as to how you would have written it. If you think it is poorly written and have no issue critizing the author then at least leave a few comments on how you would have changed it. He at least asked for your opinion and others on how to improve the article. If you cannot respond in a professional manner to that request then you are trolling. Tell us how you would have organized the article? Better yet, test the card, and post your own review. You could simply take the time and email Gary with your revisions. He has already edited the article and the sections I thought were a little wordy are gone. Of course I emailed him and relayed my thoughts about the subject instead of dropping a one line dump in the forums.
WileCoyote - Friday, November 3, 2006 - link
Based on your replies I have learned the following:1. If you think an article is poorly written, buy the item and review it yourself.
2. If you do not write in a "professional manner" do not write anything at all. Ha!
3. If you say an article is "too wordy" people will not understand that the solution is to write less words.
4. Talking with people here is a big waste of time. They think they are always right and smarter than you.
The article was boring to me and I dropped a note to say that. I'm sorry for any hurt feelings as a result. If you know me better than I do and want to argue that the article was not boring to me, then feel free. Everything else you have said has nothing to do with what I originally said. I don't know, maybe you had a bad day at work and need to take it out here? Or maybe you want to aim at the easiest target in a thread... say, mine? Go find something challenging and worth spending time on. Unless this is the only way you feel smart? By the way, this post was too wordy. Boring even...yawn.
goinginstyle - Wednesday, November 29, 2006 - link
You must work in a really small cube. Yawn......