Bigfoot Killer NIC Preview
The gang at IGN have been chatting with the folks at Bigfoot Networks regarding the company's new $279 Killer gaming NIC. In essence, this new NIC offloads all the networking tasks from the CPU and OS and handles it onboard with its own 400MHz NPU (Network Processing Unit) and 64MB of RAM. As one might suspect from the hefty price tag, there are a multitude of features and functionality which are tailored around online gaming. Unfortunately, all performance benchmarks and claims thus far are coming straight from Bigfoot Networks. Should the results we witness when we test the hardware be even close to what these preliminary benchmarks indicate, we will have an exceptional new weapon in our arsenal of gaming hardware.
After installing the Killer NIC we got back on the same F.E.A.R. server and played on the same map. The improvement with the Killer NIC was noticeable and impressive. Pings to server dramatically improved, generally ranging from 17-50ms, averaging 45ms over another two 15 minute sessions. FPS also got a nice bump, jumping our average from 74 to 86 fps.
