What is Digg?122 Comments
- gabeN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+36I wonder why I thought from the title that whoever killed bigfoot was Now In Custody. such a strange thought...
- vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -10/+30Like the Optimus mini three.
This thing is retarded. - Philodox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19Condering that something like 99.99999% of network lag comes from sources OUTSIDE of your network you could boost your online gaming experience more by mailing me the cost of the video card. I promise to spend it on alchohol and hookers, but I also promise that this would affect your ping about as much as this NIC.
Are you aware that old 200Mhz pentium can do just fine as routers? That should give you an idea of how much computing power is required to handle network traffic. - conan359, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17...then skin the deer with the heatsink.
- vbsurfer, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21To further explain...
If you knew how the internet works, thinking you will benefit from "online" play from this would really make you retarded. - 66np66ip, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Ever had an ATM machine ask you for your PIN number?
I hate when that happens. - UNL1M1T3D, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15$279.00, no thanks I will pass. I am not that hardcore. Or rich.
- aximbigfan, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20"I'll be just fine with my $50 NIC, thanks."
wow you got ripped off. the computer store gave me my nic for free since i shop there alot...
BTW: it is a linksys 10/100 with WUOL - HaMMerHeD, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16I think it's honestly about time someone thought intelligently about network cards and put more effort into it than just the standard fare that comes in every network processor, and on every motherboard.
Looks very cool too. - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15Here it is again. How many times can this be posted to Digg?
No matter how many places you employ Linux, you can't increase the speed of light. Latency is latency, and it is resistant to throwing processor power at it. - xturmn8r, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20Running linux on a NIC sounds too cool to leave this diggless. hopefully sometime in the near future we can get a community to do a bunch of cool linux hacking. If that were the case, a price drop to about 150 would really make me consider this one.
- aut0maticdan, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20@vbsurfer - this reads like a TCP offload card with the ability to give a lot of control over the TCP stack. I think an advanced user (or one that isn't if the controls are user friendly) could actually benefit from using this device. Even if it is for nothing else than to free up soft IRQs, memory, and CPU. -- sorry I know nothing about windows, but I've used TCP offloading cards under linux for firewalls/gateways doing millions of connections.
I definitely like the open SDK and the fact that it only uses 5% of its power out of the box. That leaves a lot of room for future (read homebrew) coolness. - KWhat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15"If you knew how the internet works, thinking you will benefit from "online" play from this would really make you retarded."
Just proof that gamers will buy ANYTHING regardless of cost or benifit. It will improve my ping by 0.0001 ms! - md10md, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17To all of you. It's a NIC. It's not a faster vid card. It's not a faster processor. It's not faster RAM. It's not a faster hard drive. If this can provide any tangible benefit then I will be incredibly suprised. Don't waste $279 or even $150 on this. Spend $30-40 extra on your next comp purchase and get something worthwhile with real benefits.
- tehgooch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10nmos6502, RTFA:
It does not increase the FPS by lowering the ping. It offloads the entire TCP stack onto the card. That said it probably won't do anything major, but it's use for filesharing and hackability looks yummy. A price drop and I might just consider it. - animalgod, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10If my kid said "Flexible network appliations applications rock" I would indeed slap the ***** out of him.
- deadbaby, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Salesman: Well I can't _give_ you the car, Krusty, but I _can_ let you have this little number for practically nothing: only $38,000.
[bullets hit the car]
Homer: [suspicious] Hey, what are all these holes?
Salesman: [quickly] These are speed holes. They make the car go faster.
Homer: Oh, yeah. Speed holes! - jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Mothballs will improve your engines octane (at least according to Mythbusters)
- gweedo767, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9wimbet: boy will they be sad when they only get 10 dropped off then.
- UltraNurd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'm all about dedicated hardware solutions.
What I'm really waiting for is my board full of FPGAs, and some software, so it can go *poof* MPEG encoder *poof* extra GPU *poof* extra NPU, etc., etc. - aximbigfan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10im callign shanangians... maybe it will inprove you FPS by 1 if that. maybe it woukd be nice for a n extermly high end server but not for a gaming machine. and $200 almost $300 isnt worth it. maybe $50 at most.
- SwabTheDeck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I think what he meant is "if it cost $150". Try to read between the lines.
- cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'm going to put this Killer NIC card right next to my AGEIA PhysX Card ;)
- ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10All the L33T HAX0R3 just creamed their collective jeans.
As for the rest of us, that thing is a complete scam.
Let's all point and laugh at the suckers. - phase, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7if you have a crappy connection to a server your problem lies somewhere between your high speed modem and the server. The only significant difference a "Killer NIC" would make is in your wallet.
- creeptick, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10sub 10ms ping times. It's your connection to the internet that's slowing you down cuz your packets have to go over all the routers between you and the game server. (It's the tubes, st00pid). Spend the money on a better connection and you might actually see an improvement. But if you insist on buying this overpriced monstrosity, let me tell you about these stickers that DOUBLE! your computer speed. You just stick them right next to the processor and they eat the harmful heat rays making your computer TWICE as FAST! OK? $300 / piece, first come first serve. I have only a limited supply.
This post is a double from a couple months ago anyway. Stop posting press releases please. - andrewdevlin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Full Disclosure: HardOCP was showing ads for this weeks ago.
- creeptick, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7TheGhengisKhan: are you a shill for the company? Seriously, the top 4 respondents here sound like they're being paid to promote this thing. Like md10md said: it's just a network card. Fire up a local lan and do some testing and you'll see even the most generic NIC will give you
- strictlybogart, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7heck, I heard home depot is having a sale on tubing supplies. I say spend $300 on buying more tubes and this will definetely get you a higher improvement in throughput. We all know the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes and must be dealt with accordingly, not through some fancy pants networking card.
- ronin2040, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I could be wrong, but I would guess that "pings" ingame arent actual ICMP packets, since most firewalls worth their salt are gonna reject inbound echo-requests. I have a feeling that "ping" is used in a more general sense, harkening back to the root of its name.
Also, are people missing the fact that this thing has a ***** linux console? As has been pointed out...can you say "network antivirus"? "Built-in HARDWARE firewall"? Lets keep in mind that 400mhz is more powerful than some low-end Cisco PIX firewalls--I think 400mhz is what some of the mid-range PIXes use. Its CERTAINLY more powerful than the Linksys WRT54GS routers. Considering that it uses only 5% of its resources out of the box, you have a LOT of room to play with with various applications.
You're really only a sucker if you buy this without knowing why you're buying it. Its not gonna make up for a crappy internet connection, but from the article, it will reduce CPU load during heavy gaming/P2P sessions. Plus, built in traffic shaping would kick massive ass.
Anyone (who's read TFA, and knows what "gigabit" means) wanna explain why they think this GIGABIT NIC is garbage? - ronabop, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Hm... offloading the maximum amount of network traffic management to a dedicated processor...
No DoS attacks being churned by the system network stack...
Traffic prioritized on demand, so XYZ traffic gets more system time than, oh, anything else...
Dedicated CPU for filtering/firewalling, so the system CPU isn't doing packet reassembly and inspection...
Why are they marketing this thing to gamers? This seems like it would be a great device for hardcore perimiter firewalls. Sure, it may make network gaming a tad bit faster, but the real "Killer" potential in this device would be in markets where network security is paramount. - wimbet, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13I guess you didn't read the article...there are real benefits...and its not just a nic. It is pretty much a micro computer(400MHz + 64MB ram) running Linux that takes over all networking tasks from your desktop.
"we saw pings drop 10ms to 20ms on a broadband connection"
"We also saw frame rates positively impacted anywhere between 3 to 10%."
I played UT competitively for almost 4 years and I can tell you there are tons of hardcore gamers who would shell out the cash to shave another 20ms off their ping times. - daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5If the product works so well why don't they ship out copies to 'independent' review sites?
- crpietschmann, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The article mentions the card being able to possibly run BitTorrent. Well, if you take that old 200Mhz Pentium and make it into a router, you could also run BitTorrent on it and that wouldn't affect your gaming pc either.
I would only consider this card if it were less than $50 and there were some awesome/legitimate uses for it; otherwise I'll pass... - jo42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Man, just shows that a sucker is born every second. This thing is such a total rip off. Then again, people that will buy these things probably think cold neon tubes and case windows make their elite gaming rig faster...
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Why did they give it that name and styling? Are they expecting 14 year old gamers to buy this? Please tell me that no 18 - 24 year old gamers would think the name and the design are "cool". They would have probably been best served by giving the NIC a sleek, professional sounding name and a likewise design.
Maybe that hardcore survivalist guy wearing combat boots and a camoflauge jacket will think this great and buy it so he can play some hardcore deer hunter with his "killer" nic. - md10md, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Again, what I am trying to say is that for the price ($279) there are much better options than an NIC. I'd rather have 20 more FPS from a processor or video card then a 10-20ms less ping (which was not shown to be evident over a long time, they just stated it).
- CLucas916, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7boohoo....he got more diggs than me :'(
- daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7You mean like the various X_offload engines that have been available for years?
- LukeD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4To be perfectly honest, I think this product is on the very cusp of fraud. In a modern PC, the amount of runtime being devoted to driving the TCP stack is fairly small, so ok from a purely technical point of view, there has to be an increase in your framerate, but its likely to be so minimal as to make no noticable difference. Doing traffic-shaping onboard the NIC to prioritise gaming traffic isn't anything a decent router couldn't do (although note it's only prioritising that PC's traffic, so in a network environment, not doing this at router level is going to decrease the benefit). I think the absolute bottom line here though is that if you think that gaining nano-seconds, or at absolute best milli-seconds, of advantage in a game is that crucial, you deserve to be paying $300 for every piece of equipment you buy.
As far as ***** pseudo-technology scams go, I wish I'd thought of this one. - irieKEN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Bigfoot's NIC doesn't have any advantage over, say, Nforce4's offload capable NIC. Most of the lag that gamers experience comes from network bandwidth congestion rather than the CPU load level.
The most effective latency reduction method is "traffic shaping" or "packet prioritization" at the point where the gamer's network meets the Internet.
Rather than spending $300 on an extra network card that does nothing, buy a few $30 gigabit cards that support offloading, and replace your router with a $50 garage-sale Pentium III box running pfSense or m0n0wall. - yuutomo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I read about this last year and I'll sya it again, it's just another scam like the Phantom,memory doublers, and the rest of the ilk. That card can not change how the Hub, smitch and servers handle your traffic, so if you want to blow $300, I'll send you a nic and take your $300 and tell you it will.
a sucker is born every millisecond. - datastorageguy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Completely unecessary and probably won't do a dam thing to improve gaming or any other app that depends on network speeds.
Reminds me of that stuff you can buy to put in your car's gas tank to improve horsepower....all a bunch of bs. - binarypower, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3http://hera.hardocp.com/*Enthusiast*TARGET*
Get rid of those annoying ads via adblock using this filter. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'm surprised people keep mentioning that $150 is a price-point they could go for for a NIC. Mission critical server NICs, maybe. Home/Gaming use, go with a $20 gigabit NIC or just stick with the onboard versions. Seriously--this is snake oil merchandise.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+11I'll be just fine with my $50 NIC, thanks.
- epluribusunix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think there are too many people talking about too many things they don't understand. For starters, what game uses TCP? Last time I checked, most of them transport UDP, which usually isn't processed by a TOE.
Second, by "prioritization" of packets, they are referring to which packets get passed through the network stack to the application. Maybe that's why they have 64MB of RAM on board -- for buffering.
Third, the only FPS increases they claim come from the fact that your CPU isn't calculating IP data.
Maybe someone needs to actually USE and BENCHMARK this card before people start blasting it (maybe just reading the articles would help). I, too, was outraged at the concept and price, but there may be a valid market for this yet -- depending on FNA apps and the security of the built-in server. - TheGhengisKhan, on 10/12/2007, -12/+15at $150 I would definately buy it, but then again, I'm not only a hard-core gamer (CSS, WoW, BF2, etc, etc...), but I'm also a Linux nut and enjoy playing with new hardware. I would love to get my hands on one of these.
- thenikola, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Am I the only person that finds it strange that they don't provide Linux drivers but allow you to run Linux on the card its self?
- btgoss, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4You guys are all wrong....
It costs more...so IT MUST BE BETTER... -
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