WoW - That Is An Expensive NIC
- 3
- Add a Comment
As I type this, my brother is likely at home playing with his latest install of the new World of Warcraft “Wrath of the Lich King” on his computer. While I have never really been able to get back into gaming myself, others have found that World of Warcraft or “WoW” is the next best thing to getting in touch with your inner adventurer.
Despite that appeal, some users seem to go so far overboard with the investment they make in this hardware that it goes from reasonable to insane. For example, take this NIC. Clearly, a quality device that undoubtedly provides every ounce of value promised. However the fact remains — do you really need this much networking card to enjoy your favorite PC game? Apparently in the case of the “Killer Gaming Network Card,” the results for gamers speak for themselves.
So here is where it gets a little strange — these cards range from US $150 to $250. No, that is not a typo, this is more than most of you will ever spend on wired networking for your PC and not end up with a new router. Any doubt aside, I would agree that a strong network card along with other quality components will make or break most popular video game experiences, but spending that much on a NIC is just insane! Am I wrong? Can you justify the $250 large for gaming with a new NIC? Hit the comments; set me straight.
3 Comments
Aryeh Goretsky
November 15th, 2008
at 2:01am
Hello,
I have spent that much (and more) on NICs for servers, so I do not think that is an outrageous prices to spend for a NIC, however, I would question the performance improvement one has by dropping such a card into a gaming PC. Every review I have read of Killer Networking’s hardware seems ambivalent about the performance gains—some small improvements may have been noted, but the speed of the Internet connection seems to play a more important role.
All the recent motherboards I have purchased use on-board NICs from Intel in them with various options for offloading checksumming, moderating interrupt usage, large send offloading, enabling receive side scaling and modifying the transmission buffer size to improve the speed of the network connection and reduce host CPU utilization. I would imagine one could spend a small amount of time researching their effects and perhaps end up with an incremental improvement in gaming speed.
It seems to me, though, that most of the benefits of advanced network interface cards and settings tweaking vanish at the residential gateway or the Internet access device to which the NIC is attached. Investing a faster Internet connection would probably be a better investment for the gamer.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
Carl Cronk
November 15th, 2008
at 4:03pm
Just goes to prove:
“A [Gamer / Golfer / Skier / Techie / Fan / devotee] and their money are soon parted!
Golfers routinely spend hundreds on a new driver or putter with “magic” power - - - when the only “magic” is in the eye / mind / and muscle of the guy holding a stick.
All people - whether they realize it or not - spend their time and their money on what they consider to be important.
Live Long, and Prosper,
Carl
Bob W
November 17th, 2008
at 7:47pm
Actually, getting the K1 on sale @ for about $125.00 was a good deal. I have seen it increase performance in games drastically, especially on mid to low end game systems (with @ least 1GB of RAM)
The K1 Nic really did make PvP playable and non-frustrating to me. It also made heavy zones like “Ironlag” (ok… Ironforge) usable even during heavy server load.
There are some cool ways that type of NIC can help your gaming.
- It has an IPchains firewall built in, allowing you to plug directly to the internet, bypassing (really in parallel with) your hardware firewall.
- You don’t have to use a software firewall with it (another drag-down)
- It does an exceptional job of replacing (not adding in to) the Windows IP stack and provides some performance gains that way.
Well, those are just some of “my opinions” take em or leave em, it has done my system a lot of good.