EVGA Killer Xeno Pro: The Impact of Network Offloading
by Derek Wilson on July 3, 2009 4:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Networking
Experience Testing
Because we couldn't perform as many useful repeatable tests as we wanted, we have done quite a bit of just plain gaming. We played with the hardware and without the hardware. We tested EVE Online and Team Fortress 2. Bigfoot reports that Team Fortress 2 sees some of the highest benefit from their technology, and we included EVE in order to gauge impact on network games / MMOs that were not singled out by Bigfoot. We played around with WoW for a while, but we don't have a high enough character to do anything where latency could really matter (large parties playing end-game content). These tests were done the way we normally game: with nothing running in the background and no downloading going on.
In playing on our Core i7 965 system with an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 and 6GB of RAM, we spent a couple hours with each game. Half of our time was with onboard networking and the other half with the Killer Xeno Pro. Both games were run at their highest quality settings and resolution on our 30" panel.
In EVE we ran some missions and got into a little PvP action. While we made more isk (EVE's in-game currency) playing with the Killer Xeno Pro, this was just the result of the missions we were handed. Neither PvE nor PvP situations felt any different with the onboard NIC versus the Killer Xeno Pro. Action was just as smooth and the UI was just as responsive no matter what was going on. We felt the same sort of loading hiccups when changing areas with both networking solutions as well: the Killer Xeno Pro just didn't deliver any tangible benefit in EVE Online.
Our Team Fortress 2 testing consisted of lots of different games played on both the on-board NIC and the Killer Xeno Pro.
We do need to preface this by acknowledging the fact that none of us are really twitch shooter experts. Sure, we all played and loved Counter Strike and CS:S, Unreal Tournament in all its incarnations, and many other FPS games, but we aren't the kind of people who run moderate resolutions with 16-bit color and most of the options turned as low as possible in order to get every single possible advantage. We are also not professional gamers; but we do love to game.
That being said, we really didn't notice any difference in our gaming experience with or without the Killer Xeno Pro. I tend to like sniping in games, and typically even non-twitch gamers can tell if they're being screwed out of kills by network issues. I didn't experience this sort of frustration with either solution. Game play was smooth and not jerky or problematic even in larger fire fights when there were no other issues at play. When playing both with and without the Killer Xeno Pro, we experienced some issues when on servers with issues.
It is just a fact that the most important factor is going to be finding a game where you and all the other players have a low latency connection to the server. The slight difference of a minimally reduced client side latency is not going to have a higher impact than any sort of other network issues.
In other words (and to sum up), when you have a bad connection, the Killer Xeno Pro is not going to fix it; when you have a good connection, the Killer Xeno Pro is not going to make the experience any better.
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Etern205 - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
How is this misleading? Most people already have onboard nic and it's already gigabit. Why would someone go out and spend extra money when they can spend it on somewhere else?Also some board sports 2 or even 4 (Asus P5Q Premium).
As for your graphic cards, there is a major performance difference between integrated and discrete. This is why tech sites will benchmark cards either all discrete or all onboard cause putting a discrete card against a onboard will be a disavantage.
mindless1 - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
It is misleading because the premise is that a potential buyer is someone who might buy a nic for increased performance, so they need to know how the difference add-on NICs compare. It is the most relevant testing possible and the article is sorely lacking this MOST relevant information.wicko - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
Read the title of the article, you might get a different picture about what's relevant.wicko - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
That is a horribly misleading analogy.The title of the article is "The Impact of Network Offloading". Of course they are going to test it against integrated NICs, otherwise how would they demonstrate effectiveness or the lack thereof over integrated NICs, the most common NIC there is? This is nothing like integrated video, which was made very clear by the results.
kmmatney - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
I would have liked to see testing with a lower power cpu. A lot of people don't want to spend the money on an i7 system.crimson117 - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
You really think those same budget-minded people would consider dropping $120 on a NIC?Qi - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
I agree. In addition to being compared to an integrated NIC, it would have been interesting if the Killer NIC was compared to one of the add-in Intel network adapters. Most, if not all, Intel adapters have CPU offloading too, and therefore, might improve latency/fps as well. I'm especially interested in a one on one comparison between the Killer NIC and the Intel Gigabit CT. The Intel Gigabit CT is primarily intended for desktop use.DerekWilson - Friday, July 3, 2009 - link
there aren't any (to my knowledge) desktop targeted add-in NICs that do network stack offloading. there is no add in card that is comparable to the Killer in terms of what it does.while some desktop add-in network cards do more than on-board cards, they don't do much more. and with no significant difference between the baseline option and the Killer NIC, certainly no other add-in board is going to be worse ... and they aren't capable of being better.
there really was no reason to test anything else ...
And if you need a good add-in board, buy the cheapest gigabit card you can from a reliable network hardware vendor and you pretty much won't go wrong.
rudy - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
Well good then comparing to other add in NICs should show the Killer is better, It still needs to be compared to others half the point of a site like this is to tell us about value. Maybe the killer nic is not much better then a integrated solution but maybe an add on card can beat the killer nic and is worth 30$ to some people.mindless1 - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
You might be overlooking that some do more or less offloading, some do it faster or slower than others, some have more or less efficient drivers, and with aging systems or add-on cards some make the mistake of being PCI rather than PCI-e.There is always a reason to test something else, even if the result is showing there is no difference it is still significant to show that, especially when other NICs cost quite a bit less. In the end the point is a consideration of alternatives for someone who would add a nic, replacing the oboard networking adapter. Such a person could choose this or some other card so the other alternatives are exactly what should be tested.