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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Gary Key - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
I fully agree the article was probably too long. It was a case of trying to cover all the bases and then some. If we had left out the technology sections and reduced the commentary it would have read better as a basic hardware item. We looked at this as not being your basic NIC review.However, I am sure there would have been comments that we did not properly review the card or provide this same information. Thanks for the comments.
Crassus - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
I agree with the comment above. I would have like an even more expanded page detailing the technology and the roots in the corporate sector. What I didn't really care about was the endless description of the pains it took to benchmark the card.Two things about that:
1. If it was easy, everyone could do it. You (and Anandtech) stand above the crowd for going the extra mile and giving us some added (useful) information. This is usually self-evident and doesn't require elaboration.
2. My firm expects me to get the job done, as, I suppose, it is the same with yours. No one gives a hoot as to all the steps I had to go through to get the job done, unless they offer some added value. Thinking about throwing something out of the window (if you're blessed with having one in your office) occurs to everyone at some point and certainly doesn't hold any additional value - in other words: it comes with the job. If it was otherwise, see (1) above. There's really no need to mention it a couple of times - unless you're reviewing your work instead of the product.
Gary Key - Wednesday, November 1, 2006 - link
I appreciate your comments. I am alawys open to other viewpoints and opinions. What paragraphs contained endless descriptions that in your opinion could have been cut? Email me if you can please.
I agree it comes with the job. The message I was trying to convey was one of total frustration with the product after six weeks of almost non-stop testing. There were several choice words I wanted to use but felt like that statement would be universally understood. ;-)
Sunrise089 - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
I really liked reading the article. When G80 comes out, we can cut strait to the benches, because I'm going to want to know whether or not to buy the card. None of us are going to buy this thing, but we're all enthusiests, so reading about it can still be fun. With performance changes so minor however, adding a little commentrary to spice up the review makes it a lot more entertaining for this reader.Frumious1 - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
I'm in agreement with Sunrise - liked the article and the sarcasm. I can only imagine your pain during the review. Can't believe how many people apparently lack the ability to read and need pictures. "Just give us two paragraphs saying whether or not to buy the card!" Bah! That's what the conclusion page is for, where it's pretty clear the card "works as advertised" which means fractional gains in a few games.Zaitsev - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
"Just give us two paragraphs saying whether or not to buy the card!"The only reason I still read Anandtech is because they do exactly the opposite. In articles like this one and the Conroe review, I think the pages discussing the technology are more interesting than the results. I can't talk from experience, but it also seems that it would get boring for the authors if they just punched out cookie cutter articles for every review.
As for the card, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I bought this instead of a Conroe.
michal1980 - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
i can sum in up for you in one line."In most cases the Killer-Nic Does Nothing"
as for windows vista.
it has a total new audio stack that is seperate from the kenernal, so in theory it could run on a core other then the main os kerenal.
Googer - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
FNA is the only thing that makes a killer nic really worthwhile.http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2037279...">http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2037279...
cryptonomicon - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
Assuming the review quantified "ping measurements" correctly, this thing has a long way to go. If it gave even a consistent 10% faster pings all the time it would be very appealing to pro-gaming. But from those ping charts, the results were truely inconclusive. The side effect of increased FPS was even more significant than any ping reduction.Looking forward to revisions or later models from Bigfoot though!
floffe - Tuesday, October 31, 2006 - link
That's because in most cases 98% of the ping is not on the local computer, but from your internet connection point (DSL/cable modem or whatever) to the server. Tis means even cutting 5% off that will be very hard (in general. WoW seems to be an exception).