Date:
Friday , December 08, 2006
Author:
Kyle Bennett
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Gaming with the Killer NIC

You have seen the benchmarks and read the ping data. Now find out what the Killer NIC can do for you in real world gaming situations. No canned benchmarks, just feedback from gamers that have used the card.

continued...

Observing and Verifying the Killer

Our initial “testing” was actually observation of the Killer NIC in action at Bigfoot's Austin, TX offices. We were able to go into the offices and sit in on testing and see exactly what sort of data was being taken by the Bigfoot staff to substantiate their claims of speed and ping. We basically asked Bigfoot to put their money where their mouth was and they accepted the challenge.

One of the things that won us over almost immediately was that Bigfoot was not relying on “canned” benchmark testing but rather real world gaming experiences to back up their promises. As you likely know HardOCP has little tolerance for canned benchmarks being used to tell our readers how exactly a product is going to impact their gaming or hardware experience and thankfully Bigfoot shares some of this view.

We witnessed two Bigfoot engineers sitting side-by-side using identical computers, one equipped with a Killer NIC, the other using its onboard gigabit Ethernet port. We watched the engineers as they played through a Counter Strike deathmatch round. All the while they were checking pings and framerates and a set interval and calling them to a third engineer that was recording data. While this is not the most scientific way to gather data, it certainly did a good job to reflect what would happen in real world gaming situations. As the testing moved forward we began see patterns emerging from the data as it was recorded. There was no doubt that the Killer-equipped station was consistently pulling in lower ping rates and higher framerates, both of which are exactly what any online gamer wants.

After understanding how the Bigfoot team was collecting data, we all sat down together and looked at pools of data for different games. Looking at wide swath of games, the Killer NIC did seem to have some rather impressive impacts. The Killer NIC consistently returned higher in-game framerates and lower ping times.

Getting the Killer NIC back into our own offices here recently proved to be a pleasurable experience. After the Killer's release a couple of months ago, there were some initial problems with proper installations and system errors. Today, from our experiences, those bugs seem to be well ironed out. It is worth mentioning that Bigfoot maintains an active support forum to help out those guys that need it.

Testing the Killer NIC with Real World Gaming

We were able to sit down with the Killer NIC and verify the data that Bigfoot had presented to us earlier. So now that we have figured out that Bigfoot is not full of crap when it comes to claims, just what do you make of all of this when you are gaming...because obviously your gaming experience is what Bigfoot is truly claiming to impact. Who gives a damn if your ping rates are 20ms lower on your netgraph, but you don't see or feel any difference in your game, right?

Bigfoot allowed us to barge into their offices on a beautiful Saturday morning with real gamers in tow. We reached out to gamers in the Austin, TX area to help us test the Killer and came up with three self-proclaimed hardcore gamers that were interested in testing Bigfoot's Killer NIC claims, plus our own Counter Strike ringer. Brian, our 34 year old CS player, had run our CS servers for years and played for even longer so we figured him to be a good real world candidate. Keith was our 37 year old software tester from Dell that wanted to focus on Quake 4 deathmatch, and we used him for World of Warcraft testing as well. Joshua was our 25 year old FEAR deathmatch professional...and man could this guy play. And finally we had Thomas, our 30 year old World of Warcraft player wielding his level 60 character.

Taking all of our testers one at a time, we allowed them about 45 minutes of gameplay in their chosen title. Our testers were given time to setup their own keyboards, mice, and needed add-on software so that they had a system close to what they were used to using at home. From there, the gameplay was divide in half. One half of the online play used the Killer, the other half used the motherboard's onboard NIC. At no time were the testers aware of whether or not they were using the Killer NIC. After their hour was up, we pulled them into the conference room and interviewed them about their gameplay experience and whether or not one gaming session was better than the other. We did end up with some glitches along the way that invalidated some testing, but by lunchtime we had our system down and everyone was able to get a second set of gameplay in that gave us some very solid results. In fact, having a few hours that morning for testing that did not get us any results did in fact allow our gamers to get more comfortable with the machine they were playing on and the folks around them. We did do our best to leave our gamers undisturbed during their gaming sessions.

Killer NIC Gameplay Impact

Counter Strike

I will start with Counter Strike as it is where we thought we would see the biggest impact due to the large ping reductions that had been recorded. Brian started out playing on a very low ping server that was pulling pings in the mid-teens. He was seeing that he constantly had constantly higher framerates during his Killer-equipped session. He was not able to identify better overall pings, and he reported that he did not feel that the Killer helped in out his gameplay. In fact, he reported the opposite. Brian felt as though his non-Killer session had better target registration. So for this low-ping Counter Strike session we noted that the Killer had no impact and possibly a negative impact be it ever so slight.

We also had Brian play another hour on a higher ping server, one that was delivering 90s with our onboard NIC. While playing with the Killer NIC Brian reported his ping being 15 to 20ms lower consistently. Along with this he reported better shot registration as well as a smoother overall feel to the game. He did note however that his experience was not glaringly different with either session and it was likely not enough to truly notice had he not been focused on it.

Quake 4 Deathmatch

This more recent fast moving game was used by Keith, our software tester from Dell. He reported ping times during his Killer NIC session to be about 10ms faster on the server that was returning 50 to 70ms pings with the onboard NIC. When quizzed about a discernible difference in Q4 session quality, Keith did not express anything to us that really set one session off against the other. The Killer NIC and Quake 4 seemed to be a wash at best.

FEAR Deathmatch

FEAR is another fast paced shooter game where we were thinking the talents of the Killer NIC would be exposed and this time we have more definitive results from Joshua, our native Austin FEAR DM expert. I spent a good deal of time watching this guy play and to categorize him as an expert is not an exaggeration. I watched him repeatedly go into DM games and use nothing but dual pistols and own the map. Joshua saw distinct differences between his Killer and non-Killer sessions.

He was easily able to identify his gaming session using the Killer NIC with confidence. One of the more notable things he conveyed to me was that his “machine was ahead of what was on the server.” He explained this was allowing him to take shots and get cover before others had time to react to his presence. Joshua said the the onboard NIC felt the same as his machine at home, but the Killer NIC gave him a better experience in that it, “felt smoother with less lag kills.” He went on to note that the overall reaction felt better and the Killer NIC supplied a smoothness of play he did not get with the onboard NIC.

One rather humorous note he made was that the Killer NIC did away with the “spray and pray” element of the game. He summed it all with saying this about the Killer NIC differences. “It does make me want to get one, but I don't have that much money.”

World of Warcraft

I surely wanted to add this game to the play testing seeing that Bigfoot was quoting ping savings and framerate benefits from using the Killer NIC with WoW. I however figured that the overall gameplay experience differences would not be noticeable. I was proven wrong.

Thomas, our level 60 character player and IT support specialist, gave us more than a few sessions of WoW gameplay. Seeing that WoW was also a current favorite around the Bigfoot offices Thomas' rounds got lots of attention from over his shoulders.

Thomas was able to identify which session of his was powered with the Killer NIC rather easily. Like our FEAR player, Thomas noted that the overall gameplay was smoother when comparing between sessions. One place specific that Thomas visited was Iron Forge. He noted that it was “lag city” most of the time as it was with his non-Killer session in testing. He explained that his experience with the Killer NIC in Iron Forge was very smooth and “lag free.”

Thomas did note that he saw his pings drop below the 100 mark when his non-Killer round was hopping around from the 100s to the 140ms range. He noted also that he felt like the Killer was keeping the server from “spiking and lagging.”

Being that Thomas was playing a Rogue he ends up in situations where he has to move quickly while sneaking up, then move fast to escape any retaliatory blows. In his non-Killer round of play he was having to deal with some “out of range” errors like “not facing opponent,” when he was clearly shown facing them on his display. This is another lag trait in WoW that is identifiable. Thomas reported that the Killer NIC round of play was not plagued with any out of range errors of any kind.

Overall Thomas stated that the Killer NIC helped his play “feel more fluid and allowed for easier and more confident movement.” He also added that he did see the Killer NIC being worth paying for. But even after his WoW success with the Killer NIC he noted that the real value in the Killer NIC would be the embedded Linux machine.

On a personal note I watched Thomas play a good bit of World of Warcraft. Even from an over the shoulder vantage point I could tell a difference in non-Killer and Killer gameplay. There were instances when he would be on his mount with other mounts riding beside him and I would see these other mounts flashing in and out of the scene or moving in very sporadic ways. The animations of these mounts was just lagging out causing the scene to lose all depth of immersion. When in the same situation with the Killer enabled the animations were much more smooth and realistic and looked the way they were meant to be seen. There were many other places the character animations were smoother and more natural looking with the Killer, and do keep in mind this is simply from a non-player perspective. The Killer NIC difference was just easy to see.