Is a Killer network card needed with me?

cpt.obvious

cpt.obvious

New Member
I just built my system and well we don't have the fastest internet. We have cable and when I play games online I often get lag and sometimes connection errors. So is those Killer Networks needed for me?

I should add that we use the Linksys Wireless N.
 
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The reviews ive seen of them have been really really subpar at best for the price you pay. I would advise that you rule out every other possible variable before blowing your money on one.
 
If possible, try using wired internet and see if that helps.

Also, the best and most obvious way to get a better connection is to upgrade your internet service...maybe try a different provider. But i guess in a lot of cases this may not be an option.
 
Hmm, Well, currently I think we have like the medium speed with our ISP. Also, I do have it wired.
I see they dropped the price on the Killer M1 card. Wasn't it around 250 or so? now its 150 the same as the K1
 
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No network card will make your internet run better then it is. That being said a cheap ass network card may degrade performance a little. If your using a router there is a varity of things you can do to speed up gaming like opening ports and DMZ. Also do not connet wireless if your on a gaming PC, always use a wired connection. Wireless connections always slow down your browsing and increase lag, it's just they way wireless is.
 
Well theres your problem! You have a wire plugged into your computer and you are trying to use it wirelessly! I'm surprised you have any connection at all! lol, I'm just kidding. One of the biggest factors you have to look at is how many people are sharing your connection, including people that may be stealing your connection wirelessly. You have to look at what these people are doing with the connection as well. If you have other people on the connection playing games, or downloading stuff, or streaming, then it really going to cut into your gaming bandwith and thats where you will see some heavy lags.
 
The reviews that I've seen for the Killer/K1 cards have been very sub-par. They boast that they their own 'CPU' on the card to take a load off of the computers CPU. Most of the modern computers today don't get bogged down by network load. Using a regular old NIC card should be fine. Even the cheap NICs on motherboards generally work fine.

You should check and make sure it's a problem on your end. Check your ISP. Maybe if you're going through a router try and connect directly. Maybe it's a tear in the Ethernet cord. I don't know. Just check and make sure before you shell out $250 on a network card that's not going to make a difference at all.
 
lol, We live out in the middle of now where where our nearest neighbors are my sister and she says she sees probably only one bar of connection if that mostly not even detects it. For the time being I do have my laptop connected wirelessly which right now I am downloading a game legally. Also my dad is connected but he keeps his computer on sleep mode when not at home. But what I meant was I usually play late at night I make sure my laptop is off. SO do you think my dad's computer is sucking some bandwidth when it is sleeping? lol
 
I suck banwdith when I sleep so maybe... Do you know your actual network speed? Also are there only 3 comps on your network?
 
I do not know my actual speed. Says 100mb but lol nah. ANd yes, we have only three connected, my laptop (wireless) my dad's (wired) and my baby (wired)

What's this program I heard about that you can choose your speed? Meh, I don't know much. I failed I-Net. lol
 
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It might be your router giving you crappy internet. I have a D-Link wireless network card and it works wonders on my wireless G network. Personally I prefer D-Link, or Netgear for networking because they are reliable (to me anyways), but ever since Cisco bought out Linkysys I'm going to give them a shot with the N router I'm going to buy.
 
all these killer nic cards do is reduce ping a little and take some stress off the cpu which is hardly anything.

and like said they dont make your connection faster than what you pay for so for example if you pay for a 10mb connection you will still only get around that speed.

totaly not worth the price tag...save your cash and buy some games ;)
 
Integrated motherboard NIC's are gigabits these days. Killers? I heard of them ages ago. I've never had any problem with $10 NIC's nor integrated NIC's.
 
epidemik said:
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
You can test it there to see what youre running at.
Click to expand...

Thank you! My download speed from the nearest server (Chicago) was 290k and upload speed was 103k. After unplugging my fathers computer. I'm still downloading a game so I'm sure that interfered with it.

Holy, I just paused the download and my download speed was 504k and my up speed was 171k. lol when I play online I'll just unplug everything and make sure my lappy is off.
 
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The NIC built into your motherboard is just fine...there really is no need to buy a separate card, you may see a small increase but nothing major. It would be a complete waste of money. That's a great motherboard with great hardware.

Make sure you have a decent cable that connects your router with your computer. When I got home from a 15 month long trip...my wife had a little junk telephone cable plugged in for internet. I swapped it out for a CAT 6A and it doubled my speed...my cable was choking my bandwidth.

Your internet connection is pretty slow...I just ran the test in the above post from Germany to Seattle and pulled over 10,000k. If you are only pulling 504k to a server not too far away...might be time for an internet upgrade.
 
CPT. ~ i suggest that you do two speed tests. the first should be to test what speed is comming into your house. do this by plugging your lappy straight into your modum (unplug your router), then run the speedtest again and see what you get. side note: make sure there is nothing running on your computer when you do this, run it right after a fresh restart. this will pritty much give you the Nominal speed.

then do the speed test again with your regular setup (behind the router, wireless/wired) this will tell you about how much the router/wireless is slowing you down.

This is a good start. let us know the speeds after your done.
 
The problem is most likely with your wireless connection or modem itself, which a Killer NIC will not fix (except for the fact that it used a wired connection). The only thing it does is prioritize the gaming packets by changing the QoS.
 
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