Kougar
07-14-2006, 03:13 AM
The KillerNIC adaptor may be the latest trend in gaming hardware
Bigfoot Networks has announced its Killer Network Interface Card. (http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/) The new Gigabit KillerNIC is catered towards the hardcore gamer that requires every drop of performance possible from a gaming system. Utilizing a 400MHz network processor with 64MB of dedicated PC-2100 DDR memory, the Killer NIC has plenty of power to perform Gigabit transfer rates without hogging up too many CPU cycles.
MaxFPS technology frees up CPU cycles typically taken up by heavy network traffic by offloading the required processing onto the Killer NIC’s 400MHz network processor. UltimatePing technology lowers ping by optimizing data delivery to games faster while PingThrottle technology allows users to increase or decrease ping accordingly. GameFirst Technology prioritizes network packets for games instead of background downloading utilities such as BitTorrent.
While NVIDIA has implemented features similar to MaxFPS and GameFirst in the form of its FirstPacket and TCP/IP offload functions of the nForce 500 series of chipsets, the Killer NIC is the first standalone network card to offer such features. The Killer NIC is also upgradeable with its Flexible Network Architecture which allows anyone to code programs that can take advantage of the network processor. Bigfoot Networks’ Chief Architect claims “FNapps can be anything from simple gaming chat programs or servers, to full online gaming VoIP solutions.” This could prove interesting if a game developer’s code game to take advantage of the Killer NIC’s processing capabilities for VOIP functionality.
The full article is at http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3316 (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3316)
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/2076_large_killernic.png
Bigfoot Networks has announced its Killer Network Interface Card. (http://www.killernic.com/KillerNic/) The new Gigabit KillerNIC is catered towards the hardcore gamer that requires every drop of performance possible from a gaming system. Utilizing a 400MHz network processor with 64MB of dedicated PC-2100 DDR memory, the Killer NIC has plenty of power to perform Gigabit transfer rates without hogging up too many CPU cycles.
MaxFPS technology frees up CPU cycles typically taken up by heavy network traffic by offloading the required processing onto the Killer NIC’s 400MHz network processor. UltimatePing technology lowers ping by optimizing data delivery to games faster while PingThrottle technology allows users to increase or decrease ping accordingly. GameFirst Technology prioritizes network packets for games instead of background downloading utilities such as BitTorrent.
While NVIDIA has implemented features similar to MaxFPS and GameFirst in the form of its FirstPacket and TCP/IP offload functions of the nForce 500 series of chipsets, the Killer NIC is the first standalone network card to offer such features. The Killer NIC is also upgradeable with its Flexible Network Architecture which allows anyone to code programs that can take advantage of the network processor. Bigfoot Networks’ Chief Architect claims “FNapps can be anything from simple gaming chat programs or servers, to full online gaming VoIP solutions.” This could prove interesting if a game developer’s code game to take advantage of the Killer NIC’s processing capabilities for VOIP functionality.
The full article is at http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3316 (http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3316)
http://images.dailytech.com/nimage/2076_large_killernic.png