EVGA Killer Xeno Pro: The Impact of Network Offloading
by Derek Wilson on July 3, 2009 4:20 AM EST- Posted in
- Networking
Final Words
The approach and design of the Killer Xeno Pro are more efficient than standard network cards. Bypassing the windows networking stack will reduce load on the operating system and the CPU. Bypassing the CPU and OS when sending and receiving audio using supported voice chat software is a cool thing as well. Built in hardware prioritization (QoS) and bandwidth throttling are also interesting features.
But the bottom line is that none of this makes a significant difference in the gaming experience on modern PCs when paired with current games, nor does it offer an advantage over alternatives.
The biggest advantage the Killer Xeno Pro showed was in it's ability to prioritize games over other applications. At the same time, this only works for the one PC that is doing both downloading and gaming. If there are other computers on the network at all, it would be much more cost effective to purchase a router that can handle QoS and bandwidth control on a per application (or per port) basis. Using a router to handle this means that I can download huge massive files on one PC and my wife can play Team Fortress 2 on another without experiencing problems.
I could even play a game on the computer that I'm downloading with in that case, but it remains our recommendation to simply not download in the background while playing a game. More than just networking is affected by downloading in the background, as the harddrive is constantly being hit and this can be a significant source of loading pauses and hitching in and of itself.
If you don't want to spend any money, most torrent and other downloading applications come with built in (or add on) bandwidth controls that can be employed to achieve the same end as hardware QoS. Hardware QoS and bandwidth control are nice features to have, but they are not worth $120.
The voice chat acceleration could be beneficial when gaming while chatting, but currently most applications are not supported. Teamspeak, Ventrillo, and Skype all need out of the box support at the very least. At best we would want all games with built in voice chat to support this as well, but that isn't likely unless and until the hardware becomes more popular. In addition to application support, voice chat doesn't take up a significant amount of CPU time and the most significant impact on latency is still going to be the network as a whole.
TCP/IP offload is a better way to do things, but the benefit to the gamer just isn't there. Network load just isn't high enough to really take advantage of the hardware in modern games. But it isn't like the potential benefit of an NPU can never be realized: it starts to matter in the server space where technology like this was originally targeted. Offloading the CPU of a heavily loaded database server can definitely leave more CPU time for processing tasks and can increase network responsiveness. This just isn't what the Killer Xeno Pro is targeted towards.
So, when you've already got an on-board network card, is the Killer Xeno Pro worth $120-$130 USD? When that money can be put into either CPU or graphics, the answer just has to be no. At the same price as a Radeon HD 4850, there is just no reason not to look toward upgrading older graphics solutions. If you've already got something on the level of the 4850, then that money should be saved for your next graphics hardware upgrade where it will still have a higher impact on performance and experience.
For professional gamers and those obsessed with twitch shooters, for the gamers running 1280x800 on a 30" panel with most of the settings turned down on the highest end hardware money can buy, for those who are always after whatever option might give them the slightest edge: the Killer Xeno Pro might be for you. But even then, this hardware is the icing on the cake rather than a core ingredient.
What the geek inside me really wants to see is more general access to the hardware. This is, after all, a PC on a PCIe card. If Bigfoot gave us deeper access to the hardware, we might find more (even if equally niche) uses for an extra PowerPC processor in our computers. Additionally, to satisfy our intellectual curiosity, we would like to get our hands on a couple more of these cards in order to do some LAN testing using combinations of standard and Killer network cards to see how overall network performance is changed (if at all) especially with respect to voice chat performance.
Beyond this, there is a caveat. Perhaps, as broadband becomes more pervasive, game developers might want to push networking. At some point in time, games may need the PCs they run on to handle a much larger volume of network traffic in order to function well. Right now, game developers are targeting current bandwidths using current commodity network hardware. Games can't be designed to require higher performance networking gear because consumers either don't have access to high speed internet or they don't have a network card that does TCP/IP offload (among other things).
At some point down the line, something like the Killer Xeno Pro might become a significant requirement. But right now, for the vast majority of gamers out there, our advice is to save your money.
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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.