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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Exar3342 - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
It is interesting how they don't note any of this information on the box, in the marketing information, or on the EVGA website for the card. This sounds like one of those "bad suprises" you get AFTER you waste your money on this and find out it doesn't do anything. The theme of the review isn't that the product doesn't do what it says it does (it does that well) but that it doesn't make an appreciable difference in the real world. It appears clear this product has paper benefits only, and no real gains anywhere.hooflung - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
This is not a problem. The linux networking stack is more efficient than the XP stack. Even though the NPU isn't doing it in hardware its still not being done on XP.This is why the whole 'offloading' wording is confusing. The card is bypassing the OS stack, thus 'offloading' it to the card. The card then 'offloads' the UDP and 'some' but not 'all' TCP to hardware routines.
While EVE might use a bit of UDP for non critical things such as polling the market but it doesn't help speed up combat which needs the TCP/IP to poll where your ship is in space, what gun you fired, where your enemy is etc etc etc. If you do not have a constant TCP/IP connection, not UDP becuase UDP doesn't require you to have an active connection, you will be booted off the EVE server.
Its as simple as that. Derek should know that as he said he played EVE for 4 years.
The Card does help somewhat on older PC's since it will bypass the Windows stack but not on newer ones. It also DOES help ping on DSL because of how you can manage the network bandwidth and how it gives UDP priority in game mode.
Moreover, you need to be on a DMZ any time you use this card or the router with screw you over and take any performance you would gain and toss it out the door.
I've been a bigfoot customer and have the M1 in my Phenom II 940.
Rigan - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
Just for the record, the USB slot can be seen from the inside Linux install. So yes, it does have a use. And, yes, the thing does allow for the running of Linux apps on the inside Linux box. Works just fine.But, I'd be hard pressed to recommend this thing to anybody. In the world of modern multi-core cpu's the basic premise is rather silly.
DerekWilson - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
I might like to try that ... it could be fun to just play with. I mean from an ubernerd standpoint anyway.Is that available via their SDK, or is there some other hacking that needs to be done?
Per Hansson - Monday, July 6, 2009 - link
Why not just buy a decent router that supports OpenWRT and has a USB port instead?Then you have a great little device that supports QoS and whith which you can also download torrents etc while your computer is offline
The only use for the Killer NIC is if the system is really pushing 1gbps of traffic, think file server of very demanding webserver.
But that of course requires that the thing actually does offload the entire TCP/IP stack, and not just UDP (which I'm not 100% convinced it even does yet)
A cheaper NIC by any of the major players supporting ToE would probably be a better choice for the file or webserver of course (Due to more testing being done by their driver development departments)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Offload_Engine">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_Offload_Engine
Saying that there may be any benefit at all to doing TCP offload for MMO's and other games which work just fine on dialup still to this day (i.e. less than 5KB in bandwidth requirements) is just plain fraud IMO
But then again all reviews on the top sites including this one has come to the same consulsion so ;-)
titan7 - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
Read about why Linux considers these a very bad idea and explicitly won't support them:http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:TOE">http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:TOE
A friend bought the previous version. Their lousy drivers would bring down his entire system when doing torrents or even some games (e.g. Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor). No noticeable benefit, but it makes his system unstable.
Stay away from bigfoot (and nvidia) NICs!
DerekWilson - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
really, if bigfoot opened up their hardware the objections would fade away...honestly, bigfoot is probably using the linux network stack itself on the killer...
if linux devs could program straight to the hardware, it might really be something they would have more interest in.
davecason - Saturday, July 4, 2009 - link
I suspect that you will find that this sort of card would help a really old system that had PCI more than a new one. Think of it this way: if the task of the integrated network interface card is a burden for the CPU, this thing might actually help. Instead of an i7 chipset and compatible processor, think nForce 4 with an old 1.8GHz Athlon.We use Endace DAG cards at work and they work on basically the same principle: offload the Network work to the card.
http://www.endace.com/dag-network-monitoring-cards...">http://www.endace.com/dag-network-monitoring-cards...
Essentially the card is a computer withing your computer, dedicated to the task. The vendor recently let us know that we could get the same work done with standard gigabit ethernet cards in a more modern server... which supports my theory: not for high-end systems.
aadder - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
Hmmm those cards seem rather nice. Any idea where I might be able to buy the Endace DAG card?has407 - Sunday, July 5, 2009 - link
The Endace DAG cards are intended for special-purpose applications. Unless you need high speed capture and analysis, you can do better with lower-cost Intel, Broadcomm, Alactitech, etc. NICs.