Despite Being Useless, Manufacturing Base Expands

Sometimes things that should die a miserable death, soldier on to have a life of their own. So it is with a product that has been thoroughly debunked as being only semi-useful, and then, only in the slimmest of cases.

The Bigfoot Killer NIC sounds like it should work, and make a huge difference in game performance for many computers, but in fact, does very little and in a per dollar comparison of money effectively spent, is through the bottom of the charts.

Yet, for some unknown reason, it is expanding its manufacturing base. Now VisionTek, another graphics card manufacturer, joins eVGA as another vendor of the Bigfoot NIC.

Bight Side of News gives the finer details -

Just like nVidia decided the time has come to expand into fields beyond graphics, an AMD/ATI partner is doing the same. After securing further funding, VisionTek Products LLC ran in silent mode as the company was preparing its new “beyond graphics” approach, signing contracts with companies that will support the push beyond North America.

Unlike majority of graphics AIB [Add-In-Board manufacturer], VisionTek decided to go aggressive and expand beyond the core market. Given that the recession shook up world of AIBs to the core, Mr. Michael Innes, COO and EVP stated to us that the company is only ramping up, with many news coming in the next couple of months. The first contract is now signed and made public, as VisionTek and Bigfoot Networks decided to team up and offer Killer NIC technology. VisionTek will manufacture and sell Killer Xeno Pro network card, oriented towards gamers.

Truth to be told, we found the original Killer NIC to be one of invaluable tools on a multi-purpose rig, gaming online, downloading gaming clients, having multiple conversations on popular chat clients – all that would slow even the fastest machine, as the number of open connections would tax the CPU, courtesy of not just software NICs that dominate the scene, but the fact that Windows network stack can easily give up the ghost if you overdo it.

This is the first positive review I’ve ever seen for any iteration of this card, and so means that about 15% of the online reviews are positive.

VisionTek’s Killer Xeno Pro Gaming Network Card [short name for a product] aims to cure that. Now using a PCI Express x1 interface, this Bigfoot Networks-designed GbE card comes with a significantly improved software package than the first generation and now partners such as VisionTek can go and pitch the product to the mainstream gaming market.

We expect to see this product in our Lab soon, pitching it against conventional network NICs, but against the first generation product as well. All in all, a pretty good new beginning for VisionTek, but somehow we feel that this announcement is just a first in a series of announcements that should put the company back on the map and hopefully [for them] expand from North America to Europe. We will reserve our opinion until we see the new generation of products from the company.

While actually doing something for the heavily loaded PC, every review other than the one above has stated that any PC that would be so heavily loaded could use the approximate cost of $200 to add more main memory, a faster CPU, or a better graphics card. I believe one review I saw said that for $200 a motherboard swap was not totally out of the question.

That was a couple of years ago. With the proliferation of multicore CPUs, the ability to dedicate a core to a specific task means that the uselessness of this device should be highlighted all the more. Beyond that, the unit only works (has drivers) for Windows, so no benefit is had in any other operating system.

But, if you have no other place to spend $200, VisionTek and Bigfoot would love to have your money – and after all, it does look kind of cool.

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A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. Thomas Jefferson

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