2006 has been a year of dedicated processors; Creative's X-Fi audio processor came to market, Ageia launched their PhysX physics processor and now, the most ridiculous something processor of all, it's the Killer NIC network processor.

I bet many of you are thinking that the network adaptor is the strongest link in your route to the internet. Well, pick up that crack pipe and take a look at this big stinking pile of horse...truth.

After reading Bigfoot Networks' propoganda, many of you will suddenly feel like your existing ethernet adaptor, which has never before been any sort of issue at all, is limp and inadequate. You will feel like it is bogging your CPU down and losing you frags in counter strike. Don't worry, this is normal. It's because even the smartest of us have a part of the brain (the moron cortex as it is refered to in the scientific community) that responds to a concept, no matter how stupid it is.

Is there anyone out there foolished enough to spend 150 quid (US$280) on this thing? Sadly, probably so.

omgomg Let buy two!!!11111!!11!

It'll go twice as fast then!!!

That looks pretty convincing.... :P

__________________
I Beat Anorexia.

If I have helped you, please consider donating a little cash to Cancer Research UK

Unbelievable what some people will pay for.

HardOCP have posted what is little more than a plug for the Killer NIC

They do a pretty good job of outlining the positive features of the card, although they do skirt around the whole price of the thing, which is the deal breaker really.

I believe the writer got a little over excited and wandered off into the realm of dreams towards the end: while it's perfectly conceivable that a packet filter firewall could be implemented inside the Killer NIC, freeing the OS from this meagre task, file sharing programs are unrealistic. Unless you want your network card directly accessing your Hard
Drives (and trust me, you do not), then the files you intend to share would have to be managed by the driver anyway, which somewhat defeats the purpose of offloading.

There's no doubting that it does in fact have a feature or two, but it's a question of how far those features will stretch, and if they really stretch as far as the price tag. I don’t think so. Not by a long shot.

HardOCP reports

AnandTech have written an absolutely great review of the Killer NIC. Unlike my tell-it-like-it-is style of slotting things into clear good and bad categories, AnandTech often write very neutral but probing reviews on new products. Without a hint of sarcasm, AnandTech have laid things out exactly as they are.

Unfortunate for Bigfoot Networks, the Killer NIC is exposed as rather average. A good performer, but frequently not even as good as the integrated LAN in the NVIDIA nForce 590SLI chipset. When you come to the graphs, I recommend you find one of those Killer NIC flash adverts (shamefully, you should be able to find one by scrolling down a bit on HardOCP's website).


AnandTech tells it like it is.

What?! People can't lie in advertisements can they?! Well, Bigfoot don't like, they're just very selective. AnandTech's review turns up on Bigfoot's website as this:

As you can tell after reading the review (and any others treated as positive testimonials on Bigfoot's site; some of which are considerably more scathing), these statements have been selectively lifted out of context. You wouldn't think that AnandTech's bottom line was

And just so you understand where those nearly ridiculous numbers in the marketing material for Killer NIC came from, they were harvested by this dubious review:

Boot Daily gushes