2.5gbps cards are still too expensive, in the range of 35-50 euro/$, while gigabit ones cost $10 or less. They need to come down a lot more for mass adoption. Also, switches with 2.5 still cost WAY too much... Some new routers have it, but you can count them on fingers... Nowhere near close to mass adoption. Unfortunately.

wavetrex:

2.5gbps cards are still too expensive, in the range of 35-50 euro/$, while gigabit ones cost $10 or less. They need to come down a lot more for mass adoption. Also, switches with 2.5 still cost WAY too much... Some new routers have it, but you can count them on fingers... Nowhere near close to mass adoption. Unfortunately.

I agree. 2.5 isn't even that much of an upgrade yet it's still weirdly expensive. I also don't understand how this Killer series has lasted so long. Hardware reviewers never seem to recommend them, anyone who knows enough about networking will just configure their router's QoS to accomplish the same benefits (without the bloat or added cost), and anyone who doesn't know enough about PC gaming isn't going to understand what latency is and why it's important. The only people I could see buying these are teenage PC enthusiasts who, for whatever reason, can't configure their router.

Switches are expensive as hell. And i dont mind to drivers for older OSes. there is not any API as directX, with would block make drivers for even older systems.

schmidtbag:

I agree. 2.5 isn't even that much of an upgrade yet it's still weirdly expensive. I also don't understand how this Killer series has lasted so long. Hardware reviewers never seem to recommend them, anyone who knows enough about networking will just configure their router's QoS to accomplish the same benefits (without the bloat or added cost), and anyone who doesn't know enough about PC gaming isn't going to understand what latency is and why it's important. The only people I could see buying these are teenage PC enthusiasts who, for whatever reason, can't configure their router.

I was just thinking, bandwidth related to gaming? 😀

at this point i guess no progress will be made until intel or amd makes it standard on their chipsets to include a 5gbps or 10gbps nic now that AMD is at pcie 4, all they need to spare is a single lane to give us an upgrade

schmidtbag:

I agree. 2.5 isn't even that much of an upgrade yet it's still weirdly expensive. I also don't understand how this Killer series has lasted so long. Hardware reviewers never seem to recommend them, anyone who knows enough about networking will just configure their router's QoS to accomplish the same benefits (without the bloat or added cost), and anyone who doesn't know enough about PC gaming isn't going to understand what latency is and why it's important. The only people I could see buying these are teenage PC enthusiasts who, for whatever reason, can't configure their router.

There's really no reason to recommend the "Killer" NICs.....even for gaming. You can get better NICs (both wired and wireless) from Intel for considerably less money.... Unless you absolutely have to have 2.5Gbps...in which case I'd be looking at the Asus XG-C100C.....which is actually a 10G NIC. Gotta love their marketing though.... "frees up to 10% of your CPU cycles and 20% of your memory"..... The integrated Realtek NIC in my Athlon 5350 or Celeron J1800 systems don't even use 10% of the CPU nor 20% of their 8GB of ram..... What kind of systems are they targeting here? Pentium4?

EspHack:

at this point i guess no progress will be made until intel or amd makes it standard on their chipsets to include a 5gbps or 10gbps nic now that AMD is at pcie 4, all they need to spare is a single lane to give us an upgrade

Neither Intel nor AMD specifies a network standard for their chipsets.... Motherboard makers choose the integrated NIC chip themselves.

sykozis:

There's really no reason to recommend the "Killer" NICs.....even for gaming.

i wish the company would go bust throughout this COVID stuff and atheros nics would stop being popularised when most of them are rubbish.

Maybe I am wrong ... but are there any costumers routers with 2.5Gb LAN output ? Cuz I can't find any in stores . ... so why buy a 2.5Gb ethernet card !? What for ? Custom LAN in house ... ?

Astyanax:

i wish the company would go bust throughout this COVID stuff and atheros nics would stop being popularised when most of them are rubbish.

The original company was bought out years ago. The "killer" network cards were originally marketed by Bigfoot Networking. They were bought out by Qualcomm and then either spun-off or sold to Rivet. Don't remember which... Either way, the same market scheme of using lies and false promises to sell the product has remained consistent. They have always claimed that the "Killer" network cards could reduce in-game latency going from the client all the way back to the server, which isn't possible. A client side NIC has no impact on latency once data leaves the local network. They have also consistently claimed to provide massive latency reductions within the local network. Not really sure how much you can reduce 1-5ms of latency. Their marketing graphs regularly show local network latency in the 200-300ms range....which I've never personally seen. They also claim to provide more bandwidth or throughput than "competing products" but won't name those "competing products" or how they're exceeding the bandwidth or throughput limits of the network.... The only real competing products would come from Intel, Broadcom and Aquantia....none of which any "Killer" network card can outperform. There's nothing wrong with Atheros wifi adapters....for the average user just looking to browse the web and read e-mail. For us, they're less than desirable though. Atheros is the Realtek of wifi adapters....

wavetrex:

2.5gbps cards are still too expensive, in the range of 35-50 euro/$, while gigabit ones cost $10 or less. They need to come down a lot more for mass adoption. Also, switches with 2.5 still cost WAY too much... Some new routers have it, but you can count them on fingers... Nowhere near close to mass adoption. Unfortunately.

35EURO is expensive for more then double the bandwidth? How many Cards do you need? one per PC. In reality, you can get Realtek based cards on ebay for 21USD shipping included https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-10-100-1000M-2-5G-Gigabit-Ethernet-Network-Card-RJ45-Lan-Adapter-For-PC/233444245425

sykozis:

The original company was bought out years ago. The "killer" network cards were originally marketed by Bigfoot Networking. They were bought out by Qualcomm and then either spun-off or sold to Rivet. Don't remember which... Either way, the same market scheme of using lies and false promises to sell the product has remained consistent. They have always claimed that the "Killer" network cards could reduce in-game latency going from the client all the way back to the server, which isn't possible. A client side NIC has no impact on latency once data leaves the local network. They have also consistently claimed to provide massive latency reductions within the local network. Not really sure how much you can reduce 1-5ms of latency. Their marketing graphs regularly show local network latency in the 200-300ms range....which I've never personally seen. They also claim to provide more bandwidth or throughput than "competing products" but won't name those "competing products" or how they're exceeding the bandwidth or throughput limits of the network.... The only real competing products would come from Intel, Broadcom and Aquantia....none of which any "Killer" network card can outperform. There's nothing wrong with Atheros wifi adapters....for the average user just looking to browse the web and read e-mail. For us, they're less than desirable though. Atheros is the Realtek of wifi adapters....

I seen reviews and used this hardware myself, it works as advertised and I love the ease of use. Ill link to an article below, to tell you outright, Killer E2400 wins over Intel I219-V nic in bunch of tests but most important in Round trip latency test both 1 byte and 32 bytes [netperf.exe -l 30 -t TCP_RR -L 192.168.1.25 -H 192.168.1.40 -c — -r size,size], 1 Byte] 53ms for Killer vs 92ms for Intel 32 Bytes] 54.8 Killer vs 188.2 Intel Killer technology is an intelligent software layer focused on traffic classification and prioritization, built on top of a network driver tweaked for low latency. Using hardware to bypass the operating system’s network stack reverted to the realm of high-frequency traders. In other words They offer easy to use prioritization system, for everyone. They good running one thing a time but they mainly good if you do more then one thing at a time, like downloading torrent and gaming or downloading and watching YT and uploading something and your email client syncs, everything gets priority and works, nothing takes the whole "pipe". This is from the article i linked below: Despite being a separate company today, Rivet Networks still maintains strong ties to Qualcomm. In fact, it’s one of Qualcomm Atheros’ authorized design centers. That status gives the Killer folks access to detailed parameters of the Atheros chip that they’re using, so Killer’s driver developers can tune the software’s behavior to suit their main goal: low-latency operation. The development team can also pass ideas back to the Atheros engineers for changes or additions to the underlying Ethernet controller. First, the driver. One major difference between the Killer driver and the equivalent Qualcomm Atheros driver is the threshold each one uses for sending out a packet. Killer tells us its driver has been tweaked to minimize latency, so as soon as it gets any amount of data to send, it puts that data straight onto the wire. In contrast, a driver that doesn’t prioritize latency may hold off on sending to do a couple of things. Such a driver might wait to combine multiple small payloads into a single packet if the destination is the same, or it may queue up multiple sends at a time to minimize the number of interrupts taken. Games usually send out data in 128-byte chunks or less, so Killer’s driver should minimize the amount of time that game data spends in the network stack. In fact, the Killer Networking folks claim the E2400’s latency performance beats the competition by up to 50% during single-application usage. Killer’s Network Manager software is based around detection, classification, and prioritization of network traffic. It automatically assigns priorities to different types of network traffic in the system. Take traffic from torrents, for instance. Those packets are high-bandwidth but latency-insensitive. We don’t want this traffic to monopolize bandwidth to the detriment of latency-sensitive applications, like games and VoIP clients. Killer’s default traffic priorities are assigned as follows, with priorities decreasing as you move to the right: Games → real-time video & voice → browser traffic → everything else These default priorities can be augmented with custom profiles for applications of your choice using the Network Manager interface. Read the full article here: https://techreport.com/review/29144/revisiting-the-killer-nic-eight-years-on/

MegaFalloutFan:

Ill link to an article below, to tell you outright, Killer E2400 wins over Intel I219-V nic in bunch of tests but most important in Round trip latency test both 1 byte and 32 bytes [netperf.exe -l 30 -t TCP_RR -L 192.168.1.25 -H 192.168.1.40 -c — -r size,size],

Sure, since the killer is configured to do so and the defaults of the intel isn't. once you set your intel nic up, there is NO DIFFERENCE apart from the killer software being garbage and having to suffer atheros drivers.

MegaFalloutFan:

35EURO is expensive for more then double the bandwidth? How many Cards do you need? one per PC. In reality, you can get Realtek based cards on ebay for 21USD shipping included https://www.ebay.com/itm/PCI-E-10-100-1000M-2-5G-Gigabit-Ethernet-Network-Card-RJ45-Lan-Adapter-For-PC/233444245425

You can get brand new Realtek based cards on Newegg for much less.....if you want a software based NIC. Or you can put in a little effort and find an Intel 82574L based NIC for $15-25, brand new....and have a hardware NIC

MegaFalloutFan:

I seen reviews and used this hardware myself, it works as advertised and I love the ease of use. Ill link to an article below, to tell you outright, Killer E2400 wins over Intel I219-V nic in bunch of tests but most important in Round trip latency test both 1 byte and 32 bytes [netperf.exe -l 30 -t TCP_RR -L 192.168.1.25 -H 192.168.1.40 -c — -r size,size]

Intel's I219-V is an integrated network chipset.... So..that's a purely bullshit comparison. Hardware NIC vs Software NIC..... No self-respecting review site would do that comparison without throwing in a dedicated Intel NIC unless they were being paid to.... Let's compare based on actual features.... Let's see a review where a "Killer" NIC is compared to a product it actually competes against, like something with the Intel 82574L chipset..... There's a reason that the "Killer" NICs are only reviewed against software based NICs like the I211-V, I219-V and Realtek NICs.... Because no honest reviewer can possibly recommend it against an Intel 9301CT, 9401CT or I210.... It's impossible for a "Killer" NIC to do everything they claim.... The NIC has ZERO affect on latency outside of the local network. Period. It also can not exceed bandwidth or throughput limitations. Period. Those are purely false claims made by Bigfoot, Qualcomm and Rivet.

MegaFalloutFan:

I seen reviews and used this hardware myself, it works as advertised and I love the ease of use. Ill link to an article below, to tell you outright, Killer E2400 wins over Intel I219-V nic in bunch of tests but most important in Round trip latency test both 1 byte and 32 bytes [netperf.exe -l 30 -t TCP_RR -L 192.168.1.25 -H 192.168.1.40 -c — -r size,size], 1 Byte] 53ms for Killer vs 92ms for Intel 32 Bytes] 54.8 Killer vs 188.2 Intel Killer technology is an intelligent software layer focused on traffic classification and prioritization, built on top of a network driver tweaked for low latency. Using hardware to bypass the operating system’s network stack reverted to the realm of high-frequency traders. In other words They offer easy to use prioritization system, for everyone. They good running one thing a time but they mainly good if you do more then one thing at a time, like downloading torrent and gaming or downloading and watching YT and uploading something and your email client syncs, everything gets priority and works, nothing takes the whole "pipe". This is from the article i linked below: Despite being a separate company today, Rivet Networks still maintains strong ties to Qualcomm. In fact, it’s one of Qualcomm Atheros’ authorized design centers. That status gives the Killer folks access to detailed parameters of the Atheros chip that they’re using, so Killer’s driver developers can tune the software’s behavior to suit their main goal: low-latency operation. The development team can also pass ideas back to the Atheros engineers for changes or additions to the underlying Ethernet controller. First, the driver. One major difference between the Killer driver and the equivalent Qualcomm Atheros driver is the threshold each one uses for sending out a packet. Killer tells us its driver has been tweaked to minimize latency, so as soon as it gets any amount of data to send, it puts that data straight onto the wire. In contrast, a driver that doesn’t prioritize latency may hold off on sending to do a couple of things. Such a driver might wait to combine multiple small payloads into a single packet if the destination is the same, or it may queue up multiple sends at a time to minimize the number of interrupts taken. Games usually send out data in 128-byte chunks or less, so Killer’s driver should minimize the amount of time that game data spends in the network stack. In fact, the Killer Networking folks claim the E2400’s latency performance beats the competition by up to 50% during single-application usage. Killer’s Network Manager software is based around detection, classification, and prioritization of network traffic. It automatically assigns priorities to different types of network traffic in the system. Take traffic from torrents, for instance. Those packets are high-bandwidth but latency-insensitive. We don’t want this traffic to monopolize bandwidth to the detriment of latency-sensitive applications, like games and VoIP clients. Killer’s default traffic priorities are assigned as follows, with priorities decreasing as you move to the right: Games → real-time video & voice → browser traffic → everything else These default priorities can be augmented with custom profiles for applications of your choice using the Network Manager interface. Read the full article here: https://techreport.com/review/29144/revisiting-the-killer-nic-eight-years-on/

Wild...you're actually posting nearly word for word the ad copy from Killer from nearly A HALF DECADE AGO...2015. I actually have the Killer NIC on my board, X99 FTW K with the 2400. It is crap compared to the onboard i218v I use.

My Asus 11x router has 2.5. I bought a usbc to 2.5 adapter for 40$

HeavyHemi:

Wild...you're actually posting nearly word for word the ad copy from Killer from nearly A HALF DECADE AGO...2015. I actually have the Killer NIC on my board, X99 FTW K with the 2400. It is crap compared to the onboard i218v I use.

Its from the Article I linked to on techreport.

sykozis:

You can get brand new Realtek based cards on Newegg for much less.....if you want a software based NIC. Or you can put in a little effort and find an Intel 82574L based NIC for $15-25, brand new....and have a hardware NIC

You never checked that link, the link that I posted is for 2.5G NIC, 21USD for 2.5G! Its the same Realtek 2.5G that used on all motherboards that have 2.5G, right now its the only one available in mass production, Intels 2.5G is not available on consumer motherboards yet, but soon it will be available on all new motherboards.

Intel's I219-V is an integrated network chipset.... So..that's a purely bullshit comparison. Hardware NIC vs Software NIC..... No self-respecting review site would do that comparison without throwing in a dedicated Intel NIC unless they were being paid to....

You confused something, there are no more Killer NIC add-on cards, these nics are available on "Gamer" oriented motherboards just like Intel, hence it doesn't matter if its software or hardware. My Gigabyte z370 Gamer 7, that im using right now, has the same setup from the article: Killer E2500 and Intel i219-V, so I need to decide which one to use, and thats how everybody else going to be.

Let's compare based on actual features.... Let's see a review where a "Killer" NIC is compared to a product it actually competes against, like something with the Intel 82574L chipset..... There's a reason that the "Killer" NICs are only reviewed against software based NICs like the I211-V, I219-V and Realtek NICs.... Because no honest reviewer can possibly recommend it against an Intel 9301CT, 9401CT or I210.... It's impossible for a "Killer" NIC to do everything they claim.... The NIC has ZERO affect on latency outside of the local network. Period. It also can not exceed bandwidth or throughput limitations. Period. Those are purely false claims made by Bigfoot, Qualcomm and Rivet.

As mentioned before, both of the NICs are of the on-Board type and so they compared to each other fair and square, im sure you assumed that Killer nic is add-on card that was compared to on board Intel.

Astyanax:

Sure, since the killer is configured to do so and the defaults of the intel isn't. once you set your intel nic up, there is NO DIFFERENCE apart from the killer software being garbage and having to suffer atheros drivers.

Thats the whole point, that Killer is ready to use, no need to setup anything, everyone can enjoy the benefits. As far as their software goes, when was the last time you used it? Its perfectly fine and lightweight, I had zero issues with it or the drivers. I bet you and the otehr guys still view Killer nics like they were early on years ago. Personally I never encountered any issues, its not like I buy motherboards based on Killer NICs, its just happens that I always buy high end motherboards and they always have dual NIC, Intel and Killer so I been using their hardware, software and drivers on every build. As far as no difference between Intel and Killer if you configure it properly, thats on you to prove it. Default settings benchmarks says otherwise, at least make a list of what has to be changed to make Intel behave like Killer, and it has to be the on board Intel, not an add-on card, since thats what killer nic is.

MegaFalloutFan:

You never checked that link, the link that I posted is for 2.5G NIC, 21USD for 2.5G! Its the same Realtek 2.5G that used on all motherboards that have 2.5G, right now its the only one available in mass production, Intels 2.5G is not available on consumer motherboards yet, but soon it will be available on all new motherboards.

Makes little sense to use a 2.5Gbps network card, on a 1Gbps network....

MegaFalloutFan:

You never checked that link, the link that I posted is for 2.5G NIC, 21USD for 2.5G! Its the same Realtek 2.5G that used on all motherboards that have 2.5G, right now its the only one available in mass production, Intels 2.5G is not available on consumer motherboards yet, but soon it will be available on all new motherboards. You confused something, there are no more Killer NIC add-on cards, these nics are available on "Gamer" oriented motherboards just like Intel, hence it doesn't matter if its software or hardware. My Gigabyte z370 Gamer 7, that im using right now, has the same setup from the article: Killer E2500 and Intel i219-V, so I need to decide which one to use, and thats how everybody else going to be. As mentioned before, both of the NICs are of the on-Board type and so they compared to each other fair and square, im sure you assumed that Killer nic is add-on card that was compared to on board Intel. Thats the whole point, that Killer is ready to use, no need to setup anything, everyone can enjoy the benefits. As far as their software goes, when was the last time you used it? Its perfectly fine and lightweight, I had zero issues with it or the drivers. I bet you and the otehr guys still view Killer nics like they were early on years ago. Personally I never encountered any issues, its not like I buy motherboards based on Killer NICs, its just happens that I always buy high end motherboards and they always have dual NIC, Intel and Killer so I been using their hardware, software and drivers on every build. As far as no difference between Intel and Killer if you configure it properly, thats on you to prove it. Default settings benchmarks says otherwise, at least make a list of what has to be changed to make Intel behave like Killer, and it has to be the on board Intel, not an add-on card, since thats what killer nic is.

Wrong. You're some nub who looks they have no technical knowledge and simply copied a HALF DECADE OLD article. Even worse, you pretend I didn't point I have the EXACT NIC you're bloviating about and it is garbage compared to my onboard intel i218v. It is just another layer of bloatware and crap to crash that wastes CPU cycles.

sykozis:

Makes little sense to use a 2.5Gbps network card, on a 1Gbps network....

Reminds me of my ex wife. She thought as long as there were checks in the check book, we had money.

HeavyHemi:

Wrong. You're some nub who looks they have no technical knowledge and simply copied a HALF DECADE OLD article. Even worse, you pretend I didn't point I have the EXACT NIC you're bloviating about and it is garbage compared to my onboard intel i218v. It is just another layer of bloatware and crap to crash that wastes CPU cycles.

Can we just not go straight to the insults here and just continue the conversation nicely?

HeavyHemi:

Reminds me of my ex wife. She thought as long as there were checks in the check book, we had money.

Reminds me of my ex @HeavyHemi, he was too smart for this World.

MegaFalloutFan:

hence it doesn't matter if its software or hardware.

Yes it does.

MegaFalloutFan:

I bet you and the otehr guys still view Killer nics like they were early on years ago.

I view them from the fact their software still causes bsods when downloading from windows store, steam, torrents.