Intel acquires maker of Killer chips Rivet Networks
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Shaxuul
You know, I NEVER could take the whole "Killer NIC" thing seriously. Their cards back in the day just looked cool to me. But their benchmark results (against onboard ethernet) were always underwhelming, and negligble at best. Honestly, I'm surprised they're still a thing today..
You gotta admit how AWESOME they looked, though:
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51tDMlBJPAL._AC_.jpg
https://images.hothardware.com/static/newsimages/Item9178/Bigfoot-Hero-Ultra-Bigfoot-Networks-600x.jpg
DarkQuark
I don't post often but I am coming out of the woodwork to say Killer NICs sucked. Their software was awful and the performance of their hardware was poor. I say this sitting next to a PC with a PCI-E Intel NIC in it because the onboard Killer NIC stunk.
I am sure Intel is purchasing them just for the name and not for the tech.
leszy
I have been using Killer NIC since last year (with clean drivers, no additional software), because I noticed that it is much more responsive than Intel NIC (I have both on the motherboard). (I don't know what has changed, maybe changes in network structure in my country, but that's the fact.)
Spider4423
I dunno man, my board has both intel(I211) and killer(E2500) NICs and without the control center and the rest of their toys(just the driver) I find the Killer NIC more responsive than the intel one. This is not just in games but also while streaming.
sykozis
Since the "Killer" WiFi NICs are rebranded Intel WiFi NICs, there's really very little "tech" for Intel to be concerned about. There are 3rd party applications available that do the same thing as Killer's software. I'd venture to guess that Intel bought Rivet Networks simply to reduce competition.
I question these claims of a NIC being "more responsive"....
JamesSneed
I agree. My MB has both killer and Intel chips and I use Intel. Maybee Intel wanted patents since Rivet was a spin off from Qualcomm there could be some much needed patents lying around? Maybee they wanted the packet prioritization tech which did have a silicon component that rivet would licence to others? Not sure but it does seem a bit odd unless Intel picked them up cheap.
schmidtbag
I also don't really understand what Intel would get out of this. Intel is actually pretty damn good at writing drivers, so I don't know why they'd want to associate with a brand that is known for poor drivers. As others pointed out, Intel owns the chipsets, so they're not gaining new electrical technology. I'm sure Intel could come up with their own in-house solution to compete with the improved performance.
What I do know is this will only be good news for us. Intel will either:
A. Axe the brand, so we no longer have this expensive mediocre nonsense.
B. Make it cheaper, since they're basically cutting out the middle-man (yes people, Intel does make hardware that's a good/cheap price)
C. Bring the driver standards up to their level
Blueabyss25
what "Intel Nics" doesn’t know how to do is manage the network layers... anyone studying network systems knows that "Ms-Windows" is the OS-Mazes of network flow par excellence... from where I connect... I had +200 ms in online games and since I adopted it "Killer" and now I have 30-40 ms.
But I think the knowledge of Intel and the Killer system could do some good work... ... for us...
I am well aware of the problems of the Killer Control Center, but tell me... what is the hardware/software developer who does things perfectly!?
sykozis
Sounds like you have/had a configuration issue.... I'm running an Intel I219V on my MSI Z170A Gaming Pro and Intel 82574L with my MSI B350 Tomahawk and neither have seen latency anywhere close to 200ms.... I'm generally in the 30-60ms range. Even with my integrated RTL8111H, I don't get close to 200ms, and Realtek is the king of excessively high latency.
madmolio
My standard question when friends or gaming buddies have connection issues is: "Do you have a killer lan onboard?'' and 9 out of 10 that usually is the culprit, updating the driver also fixes it 9 out of 10 times.
To me they feel no worse or better then Intel nics when they're working fine, their drivers just suck sometimes, reminding me of creative's driver mess back in the day.
So me and my friends tend to avoid them when choosing new mobo's and always try to get an Intel nic, even on the AMD boards 🙂
Mineria
I got lower latency values from tweaking Intel NIC's, although the Killer was not bad when setup correct.
Had Killer both as addon card as onboard back in the days.
Mineria
An Intel NIC does perfectly know how to handle network layers, if it didn't it would not work in the first place.
What you need to know is, that Intel set the default driver setting for good power balance and throughput, these setting can be changed to be in the favor of online gaming.
There is not one fits all except for disabling all power saving, since it also depends on what your router support, how much headroom your CPU has and how strong the NIC itself is.
There is a guy on Steam who did a good writeup regarding it: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=727946014
