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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
87 Comments
View All Comments
WileCoyote - Friday, November 3, 2006 - link
I said it's too wordy. That means take out words. Are you people for real?Frumious1 - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
That post was too short. Three sentences with no real support to back it up. Lamest comment ever.Look, sorry you have poor reading skillz, but a lot of us are quite educated and like to know the WHY and HOW besides just the WHAT. My first thought was "how in the hell is this product supposed to do ANYTHING for frame rates!?" Gary answered that by looking into the details more than superficially. Oh, sure, it doesn't really deliver -- a 5% increase on a moderately high-end system is pretty silly for a $270 product -- but that it can affect frame rates at all is surprising to me. I now have hope for Windows Vista, at least on the networking stack side of things.
What's really odd is that the review is pretty clearly advising people to NOT go out and buy this "killer" product, because it just isn't that great. If I saw a review on AnandTech that bashed a product without any backing material, I'd feel I was reading something at HardOCP. Well, okay, they back up their complaints sometimes, but their testing methodology is worse than suspect. Remember the Core 2 "launch" reviews where they used a midrange GPU config to conclude that it did nothing for gaming performance?
Anyway, there seem to be quite a few new names on here for this article. Wonder how many are employed by BigFoot? It's like there are a bunch of people bashing Gary for even reviewing the product at all, another group that's bashing him for not liking the card, a third group bashing him for not being able to do a 1 page writeup, and then a few people that think: "nice review; didn't surprise me much with the results, but at least we can now know that Killer can help in certain situations, even if it's overpriced as hell."
I'm sure Gary was tested a lot more than is shown in this article. I've conversed with him in the past, and I'd wager he was pulling his hair out over this article. How many times did you write it Gary? Ten? More? I think you ought to post here and set the record straight, because my bet is that in terms of improving gaming performance the Killer NIC is as good as a NIC is going to get... which means the other NICs from Intel, 3COM, etc. are basically all as good as onboard solutions if that. There's really not much you can do to truly improve performance of a NIC for online gaming when you're looking at maybe 5ms worst case being delay added by the hardware and OS.
As I said above in an earlier comment, it would be nice to have more developers like Jon Carmac around, because he apparently knows how to already perform well without lots of extra hardware. Can't say his games are the greatest, but the Doom 3 engine and networking aspects (client/server architecture) are clearly ahead of most other FPS solutions.
WileCoyote - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
I was trying to keep my comment short, simple, and to the point. I don't need to write a page defending my opinion on something as trivial as a product review. The numbers speak for themselves in this review. And it wasn't so much the quantity but rather the quality - there is little to no structure in the review. That's fact, not opinion. There is a better way to write a review - I've read hundreds of them on Anandtech.I guess my Bachelor's Degree in Anthropology from a well-respected U.S. university doesn't count for much and neither does the successful business I created/own which pays a six-figure salary.
Gary Key - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
Apparently my MBA and the fact I am already retired (at 44 and doing this because I really enjoy it) does not count for very much either. LOL.....
Seriously, I am always looking to improve. How would you change the structure of the article?
Aikouka - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Being that I run an FTP server that tends to see a decent amount of internal traffic, it actually sounds like a TNIC (or simply making a dedicated server) could actually be beneficial to me. Although, I sure have no desire to pay $300 for that card when I could easily spend the money on a second video card for SLi purposes or such. Also, I know switching from single to dual-core really helped to off-set the issue of FTP uploading on the local intranet. It really won't matter as when I build a new PC next month, I'm simple setting my old PC as a dedicated server to offload those annoying tasks.Also, Mlau, there are some games where "real estate" matters. World of Warcraft is a great example of this and I'm glad that I play the game in 1650x1080, because in certain situations, there's so much junk on your screen (I may call it junk but it actually helps :P), that you need all the extra room you can get. You may be happy in 1024x768, but that gives you no right to vehemently demean people for wanting to play in higher resolutions, which doing so also provides a better quality picture without wasting resources on Anti-Aliasing. Almost all the time, enjoying a game the way the developers designed/envisioned it can be an enriching experience for the gamer.
Gary, your comment about WoW being limited to 64 FPS... I think you may've left Vertical Sync on :D. I can easily get 90FPS on my dated Athlon 64 X2 4400+ with a GeForce 6800GT OC playing in 1650x1080 with max graphics settings. Albeit, I don't get a constant 90FPS, but it can be easily attainable in non-expansive places. So yeah, if your refresh rate on your LCD/CRT was set to 60Hz, you probably would see your game hover around 60-64FPS or somwhere between that and 30FPS. I know I turned VSync off on mine as I couldn't constantly achieve 60FPS, so the game lowered my FPS to about 30 with VSync turned on. Simply turning it off raised me to an easy 45 minimum with no tearing evident. I know that in the Hillsbrad/Alterac area, I would probably get around 45-60 depending on how far into the distance I could see.
Gary Key - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html;jses...">Blizzard ResponseHi,
We tried your suggestions during testing and nothing helped. We used both LCD and CRT monitors with vsync off. This was with several different video cards and Core 2 Duo/AM2 X2 processors. The frame rates were always capped to 64 until we switched to a single core processor on either system. We contacted Blizzard directly and they confirmed the dual core bug. The link above has their response on line item 6. Are you using FRAPS to capture the frame rates? If so which version please?
Thanks!!!
goinginstyle - Thursday, November 2, 2006 - link
I downloaded FRAPS 2.81 and sure enough my 4800+ X2 is capped at 64FPS.otherwise - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
You can get an 10/100 ethernet card with a TOE dirt cheap for much less then $300 if you really want one. With most people who actuially need a TOE also demanding 10/100/1000 support, there is a glut of 10/100 TOE NICs.dijuremo - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
You will probably get more out of $300 if you get a hardware raid controller for your system (Areca comes to mind) which will not only provide a speed upin storage, but also redundancy for your system. I know it does nothing for your network performance, but is money better spent which is my point.I considered getting a Killer NIC for my new system, but did not do it because of price, no PCI-Express support (Mobo only has 2 PCI slots used for sound card and HDTV tuner and has 4 PCI Express slots, one used currently for Nvidia 7950GX2), plus performance gains were not that good (I read another review of this card about a month ago elsewhere).
As for the person saying sli/xfire is useless, you are totally wrong. At 1920x1080 (using the LVM-37w3 LCD monitor - 1080p native) you need sli or xfire to have decent speeds to play games with AA and AF. If you don't play games or play at 1280x1024 or less it does not matter, but above that you really need sli or xfire.
I also agree the article was a bit too long and actually more effective that a Lunesta overdose. Not sure if the writer is trying to avoid what just happened to HEXUS where they reviewed an Alienware PC and got e-mail back from the company saying they would not get any more harware because of the bad review...
heated snail - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
I don't mean to be a jerk, and I appreciate any sincere and fact-finding test/review article. However:I'm amazed, was this really a review of a basic hardware item? Because instead it reads like a mini-novel about all the difficulty the testers/reviewers had in doing their job. Is it too much to ask for a more verbally efficient writing style? About two paragraphs briefly acknowledging that this product has been hyped in the media, and acknowledging that testing was a little more difficult than usual... then get straight to the tests on page two and conclusions on page three. I can't believe how long it took to read through this whole thing with its very repetitive descriptions and self-references.