Killer Nic...Are they worth it? YES.

[Shane]

Ive been wanting to try a Killer Nic out for some time,After hearing/Reading mixed reviews and opinions on exactly if they made a diffrence or not.

And from what ive experienced so for with the Killer Nic K1 (Which is quite old now and discontinued)....they do make a diffrence over onboard.

In all the rounds of BC2 ive played recently on diffrent servers since getting the K1 my ping has been in the lowest of all the players in the game,Not to mention my internet responsiveness seems to have improved.

 

[aara0123]

Interesting post, is your pc better performancewise too? The card (from what I've heard) is supposed to improve performance as well by taking some work off the cpu.

 

[Shane]

Well i never measured exactly how many FPS i was getting in BC2 online before putting in the K1,But it would be really hard to tell the diffrence in frame rates in multiplayer anyway because it depends on whats going on at the time in the match,Its never the same.

 

[kobaj]

Honestly, I don't see how one of the Killer nics could help an average users session. Yes they do offer blistering fast speeds for home networks or LAN. But as soon as the data hits your modem and goes off into the internet tubes, its going to slow down to normal ping regardless.

But the fact you state your ping is now lower really does peak my interest. Perhaps you could join a specific server with your old nic; measure ping. And then connect to the same server with your Killer nic; measure ping. And finally compare. If it really is lower by a significant amount, I may just invest in a Killer nic myself!

 

[AE7]

A Killer NIC is intended for a LAN party environment, where you also should have a GigE switch. That's not to say that it won't help with online gaming, it does remove the load produced by the onboard ethernet controller from the CPU.