The Killer NIC: A Game-Changer for Gamers?

As a Casual Gamer, I was curious to see how the Killer NIC from MSI would perform in various gaming scenarios. Would it live up to its promise of high-speed internet and low latency? Or would it be a waste of money?

To answer this question, I decided to put the Killer NIC through its paces in a series of tests. First, I downloaded a large amount of content while playing games with the software turned off. This allowed me to see how the Killer NIC performed under heavy loads without the added overhead of the software. In this scenario, the Intel NIC proved to be a solid performer, with frame latency never exceeding 40 milliseconds.

However, when I left the software on, I noticed that the performance was less impressive. The frames were still fast, but they weren't significantly faster than the Intel NIC without the software. This led me to wonder if the Killer NIC was actually worth the money. Was it a worthwhile investment for gamers who download large amounts of content while playing?

To find out, I decided to compare the performance of the Killer NIC against the Intel NIC in a series of online gaming tests. The results were surprising - there wasn't much difference between the two. In fact, in many cases, the Killer NIC performed slightly worse than the Intel NIC without the software.

So, what's going on here? Is it that the Killer NIC is simply not capable of delivering the performance promises made by its marketing team? Or is it something more complex at play?

As I dug deeper into my research, I discovered that one of the main reasons for this discrepancy was a problem with the Killer NIC's ability to negotiate bandwidth speeds. In my testing, I found that the Killer NIC would only reach 100 megabits per second, while the Intel NIC could achieve speeds of up to 170 megabytes per second.

This limited bandwidth is likely due to the Killer NIC's onboard implementation, which can be restrictive in terms of its ability to handle high-speed transfers. As a result, I found that the Killer NIC performed poorly in games that required high-speed data transfer, such as Black Ops 2. In contrast, the Intel NIC was able to deliver smooth performance and low latency, even at high frame rates.

So, what does this mean for gamers who want to take advantage of fast internet speeds? If you're a hardcore FPS player or competitive gamer, it's likely worth investing in an external PCI Express NIC like the Killer NIC. However, if you're a casual gamer who downloads large amounts of content while playing, the Intel NIC may be a more affordable and effective option.

In terms of real-world performance, I found that both the Killer NIC and Intel NIC delivered impressive results in my tests. The software on the Killer NIC performed well in games with high frame rates, such as 120 HZ titles. However, when I turned the software off, the results were mixed - with some games performing better with the software on, while others did not.

Overall, it's clear that the Killer NIC is a solid performer, but its performance can be affected by various factors, including the presence of software and limited bandwidth speeds. As for the Intel NIC, it delivered impressive results across the board, making it a strong contender in the market.

As I wrap up my testing, I want to emphasize that both the Killer NIC and Intel NIC are capable devices that deliver high-performance internet speeds. However, gamers who download large amounts of content while playing will likely find that the Intel NIC is a more effective option.

If you're looking for an alternative to the Killer NIC, the Intel NIC is definitely worth considering. Its ability to reach high-speed transfer speeds makes it well-suited for gamers who require fast internet connectivity.

In conclusion, I want to thank my viewers for watching and encourage them to try out both the Killer NIC and Intel NIC in their own gaming setups. With proper use and setup, either device can deliver impressive performance and low latency - making it easier to enjoy online games with a smooth and responsive experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey YouTube Welcome Back to techs it is Branny coming back to you guys today with episode two of quest for Perfection and last week you guys were loving the series I was getting a lot of positive responses from you guys uh thank you a lot I'm loving it too I'm doing all this research I'm finding out which is better for what and it's really fun so I'm doing frame lency testing with this stuff and this week we're coming back with the PCI Express uh Nic from Intel the CT 9301 and we're going to be pitting that against MSI motherboards uh killer Nic so this is the onboard land controller from MSI now it's a new generation from MSI they're putting out these killer Nic so I want to find out how good they actually are and also want to find out how good the Intel is so I put these to and I've also also one more thing is I'm going to test it with and without the software cuz I want to find out if it makes a difference also a few people wanted to find out if it makes a difference too now I'm going to be testing this across three different games uh the first two games which are Black Ops 2 and heroes and new earth these two will be done at 120 Herz and the third game will be never winter which would be done at 60 HZ because for some OD reason it doesn't support 120 HZ well it does but it's buggy so these three games all low GPU settings and shadows off this puts uh least amount of strain on the CPU and GPU because I want to find out if there is a difference between the nfc's I want to find out where it is and this will definitely help show it so the let's get on with the results anyway so I'll show you guys the results now and hope you enjoy so the first part is the speed test and last last week when I did the speed test I was like I was really impressed with the router versus no router I got a 0o millisecond ping I was just like yeah it doesn't get much better than this baby 89.4 megabits per second uh 70 megabits upload but then I did the speed test with the Intel n i and my god 171 megabits per second this was just insane when I saw this pop up on my screen I was like oh my God God damn this thing delivers so this Intel uh Nic delivers on its promise of its speeds it is a fast Nic so Kudos there to Intel now another thing to note is if you guys are thinking no but that's just a speed test you won't get that in real world conditions uh have a look at this uh downloading counter- Strike Global Offensive the next day look at those megabytes per second that's megabytes not megabits 22.4 megabytes per second so if you were to put that into um megabits per second probably be like 180 so these speeds are legit and the Intel does deliver so that's a win for Intel there but let's move on to the Excel results okay so let's look at the results that we got in Excel now this is if you guys are horrified at these graphs don't be this is frame latency testing where I'm pretty much uh using a program called fraps and I'm doing in this time in this time around I'm doing 80c runs and basically what I'm doing is recording every single frame and then I'm getting an average for those frames and then I'm pitting that average against every individual frame and any frames that uh deviate from the mean will stand out in the graphs and basically what that means is that it could be if it's if the difference is too much and it stands out say above 20 milliseconds it's uh considered a slight micro stutter anything above 50 milliseconds is generally considered a noticeable micro stutter yeah let's get on to the results here we had the killer this is Black Ops 2 at 120 HZ and the killer with no software on performed really well I mean there was no noticeable um micro stuttering here so kudos to the killer with no software it did really well the worst frame was uh 12 milliseconds I believe which is an impressive result moving on to the killer with software I must admit that I did notice these two little uh deviations here they were noticeable when I was playing Black Ops 2 ever so slightly so but nonetheless it was a pretty decent result all around with this software on I thought the no software off produced a better result than having the software on uh if it's anything to go by and the worst frame was 13 Mill seconds and that happened two times so interesting to note there so these these two graphs almost look identical but they're not so anyway let's move on to the Intel now so the Intel performed really well in my opinion It produced a solid result I did not notice any of this uh micro stuttering here and even though even though it did produce a 13 millisecond frame the other frames were relatively scarce there wasn't many of them deviating from the mean so I actually did not notice that uh when when I was doing the tests the other results here yeah as you can see here there these the frames that uh deviate from the mean in with the no software on and the Intel they're scarce so basically we're going to give this win to both no software and the Intel I'm going to say probably the software on uh probably lost this just ever so slightly and again please keep in mind that this is online games there is just variance it's I can't you know ascertain my results and say conclusive evidence when it's online games because there's just variants involved so yeah that's something to keep in mind but what I will look for is inconsistencies so let's move on now to Heroes a newth 120 HZ this time the killer with no software uh did pretty impressive I thought that this there was some times where it did have these little micro stutters this time here I did notice this one in test number three I did remember noticing that one the other test though I didn't really notice the the other um uh spikes that went up to 8 and I mean again this is just an absolutely amazing result none of the frames here are going the whole time I'm playing this even on the frame lengthy Spectrum with no software on it didn't go below 60 frames per second like with the worst frame latencies uh the killer with software on the worst frame here this did go up to 42 milliseconds so this I did notice this one as well I did when I was playing the game I did notice this it was a slight micro stutter and I noticed it and I was like hm okay I'm going to look at the test results and yeah this did pop up so that was probably a loss for the software versus the no software in Heroes and new earth as well so the rest of the experience though was pretty smooth and the Intel ni it performs solid it was just a solid performer as you see here there's no uh real uh you know big stutters sticking out so it was it did really well as well so I'd say the victory here again goes to killer with no software and the Intel Nic uh let's move on to the last test this is never winter and now I could only do this test at 60 frames per second when I tried to put on 120 HZ even though it supposedly supported the feature it just didn't work it went back to 60 frames per second so it's something that never went to have to fix or a video with their drivers either one but nonetheless I thought it'd be good for you know the 60 HZ Gamers out there to have a look at how this game performs with the Killer and the Nic and the Intel Nic so the no software from killer did produce this time around did produce the worst frame at 42 milliseconds so that was the worst out of the whole group I think I think also the software on bridge is to 42 as well so uh it was a tie there but now interestingly enough the software on this is where things get really interesting with never winter as you guys know uh the killer Nic software is supposed to prioritize the gaming packets and now interestingly enough with never winter is when you're playing the game it downloads patch files and it patches the game while you're playing and and so I noticed when the software was on with the killer the patch files were downloading very slowly and this is why it produced this smooth result I believe uh because it was just downloading those patch files slowly it was actually working so I will give kudos to uh killer and say that their software legitimately works so if you're the Casual Gamer who just downloads a lot of stuff and plays games and you want to you know still have a good ping then leave this software on uh and definitely in never winter nights it proved that it works sorry never winter it's not never winter nights but yeah the Intel Nic and last we move on to the Intel Nic It produced an amazing result it was again a solid performer none of the frames were going over 40 milliseconds which was impressive and the rest of the frames were pretty tight so it did produce a good result I will say in this case I thought the software on possibly won this uh test with Neverwinter due to its uh due to the soft were actually working so any let's move on to the conclusion now okay so in usion uh basically yeah if you're a gamer and you've got the killer n i you do not have to go out and buy an Intel n i uh it really isn't worth the money there wasn't much of a difference I I mean this is online games it was there wasn't you know none of the killer ni I uh with the software off against the Intel ni there was no there was no standout differences I couldn't really pinpoint and say which one was better I will say that the software on in the 120 HZ games I thought it did did a little bit worse than the software off so if you guys are wondering uh turn the software off if you're not downloading anything while you're playing games turn the software off uh that's the that's my recommendation with the killer uh if if you are the type of person who downloads stuff while you are playing games then this software does legitimately work so I will say that so it's up to you guys the choice is yours the software is there I will say though lastly in regards to the Nic it does have the legit 1 gbit throughput speed it was amazing experience when I got that 170 megabytes per second download did you see the me downloading Counterstrike go that 22.6 megabytes per second freaking hell so the Intel Nic definitely delivers in terms of its bandwidth and throughput speeds I think the killer NC does as well but it has a problem where it only negotiates at 100 megabits per second on my computer I've tried to get it to a gigabit but it doesn't do it um but the Intel n definitely delivers on its speeds uh the millisecond response times were zero on both and I will say though lastly with the Nic for what it's worth I will say when I was playing Black Ops 2 it felt like when I was on the Intel n it felt like every single bullet I was firing was registering uh when I had you know when I play with the especially with the z77 extreme 4 the broadcom it felt like sometimes the bullets were missing um and with the killer n i it felt like once in a while a bullet would miss I'll be like I'm shooting this guy what what' that bullet Miss that's the kind of with the with the Intel ni I did not get that experience once so for what it's worth I will say if you're a hardcore FPS guy and really competitive then go out and buy an Nic uh that's if you're a PC like top-of-the-line player it might make it it might make that difference in competition but you guys are probably if you are a competitive FPS player you probably already have an external PCI Express Nic so anyway all in all the killer Nic from MSI is amazing onboard uh land controller I will give it a thumbs up I will give the Intel NC a thumbs up as well they both work and they both work extremely well so right guys I hope you enjoyed this please give it a thumbs up if you did and if you haven't already subscribe to Tech your city and next week I will be back with the sound card I'm going to be comparing a PCI Express sound card from isus and I'm going to be pitting that against the onboard realtech ALC 1150 so stay tuned for that I'm going to be doing a number of tests I'm going to be doing FPS tests frame latency tests I'm going to also be doing my own ears I'm going to put these things on my ears tell you guys with my at Pro let's pull these up here going to be putting these on these are awesome headphones me telling you guys which in my opinion sounds better across a variety of music genres and a variety of games I'll tell you which wise is the overall winner and also that's about it if you guys want to see the review of the Intel NC I'll put it in the description below anyway guys that's about it peace out for now oh if you have any comments or questions please put it please put a comment in the comment section below anyway peace out for now byehey YouTube Welcome Back to techs it is Branny coming back to you guys today with episode two of quest for Perfection and last week you guys were loving the series I was getting a lot of positive responses from you guys uh thank you a lot I'm loving it too I'm doing all this research I'm finding out which is better for what and it's really fun so I'm doing frame lency testing with this stuff and this week we're coming back with the PCI Express uh Nic from Intel the CT 9301 and we're going to be pitting that against MSI motherboards uh killer Nic so this is the onboard land controller from MSI now it's a new generation from MSI they're putting out these killer Nic so I want to find out how good they actually are and also want to find out how good the Intel is so I put these to and I've also also one more thing is I'm going to test it with and without the software cuz I want to find out if it makes a difference also a few people wanted to find out if it makes a difference too now I'm going to be testing this across three different games uh the first two games which are Black Ops 2 and heroes and new earth these two will be done at 120 Herz and the third game will be never winter which would be done at 60 HZ because for some OD reason it doesn't support 120 HZ well it does but it's buggy so these three games all low GPU settings and shadows off this puts uh least amount of strain on the CPU and GPU because I want to find out if there is a difference between the nfc's I want to find out where it is and this will definitely help show it so the let's get on with the results anyway so I'll show you guys the results now and hope you enjoy so the first part is the speed test and last last week when I did the speed test I was like I was really impressed with the router versus no router I got a 0o millisecond ping I was just like yeah it doesn't get much better than this baby 89.4 megabits per second uh 70 megabits upload but then I did the speed test with the Intel n i and my god 171 megabits per second this was just insane when I saw this pop up on my screen I was like oh my God God damn this thing delivers so this Intel uh Nic delivers on its promise of its speeds it is a fast Nic so Kudos there to Intel now another thing to note is if you guys are thinking no but that's just a speed test you won't get that in real world conditions uh have a look at this uh downloading counter- Strike Global Offensive the next day look at those megabytes per second that's megabytes not megabits 22.4 megabytes per second so if you were to put that into um megabits per second probably be like 180 so these speeds are legit and the Intel does deliver so that's a win for Intel there but let's move on to the Excel results okay so let's look at the results that we got in Excel now this is if you guys are horrified at these graphs don't be this is frame latency testing where I'm pretty much uh using a program called fraps and I'm doing in this time in this time around I'm doing 80c runs and basically what I'm doing is recording every single frame and then I'm getting an average for those frames and then I'm pitting that average against every individual frame and any frames that uh deviate from the mean will stand out in the graphs and basically what that means is that it could be if it's if the difference is too much and it stands out say above 20 milliseconds it's uh considered a slight micro stutter anything above 50 milliseconds is generally considered a noticeable micro stutter yeah let's get on to the results here we had the killer this is Black Ops 2 at 120 HZ and the killer with no software on performed really well I mean there was no noticeable um micro stuttering here so kudos to the killer with no software it did really well the worst frame was uh 12 milliseconds I believe which is an impressive result moving on to the killer with software I must admit that I did notice these two little uh deviations here they were noticeable when I was playing Black Ops 2 ever so slightly so but nonetheless it was a pretty decent result all around with this software on I thought the no software off produced a better result than having the software on uh if it's anything to go by and the worst frame was 13 Mill seconds and that happened two times so interesting to note there so these these two graphs almost look identical but they're not so anyway let's move on to the Intel now so the Intel performed really well in my opinion It produced a solid result I did not notice any of this uh micro stuttering here and even though even though it did produce a 13 millisecond frame the other frames were relatively scarce there wasn't many of them deviating from the mean so I actually did not notice that uh when when I was doing the tests the other results here yeah as you can see here there these the frames that uh deviate from the mean in with the no software on and the Intel they're scarce so basically we're going to give this win to both no software and the Intel I'm going to say probably the software on uh probably lost this just ever so slightly and again please keep in mind that this is online games there is just variance it's I can't you know ascertain my results and say conclusive evidence when it's online games because there's just variants involved so yeah that's something to keep in mind but what I will look for is inconsistencies so let's move on now to Heroes a newth 120 HZ this time the killer with no software uh did pretty impressive I thought that this there was some times where it did have these little micro stutters this time here I did notice this one in test number three I did remember noticing that one the other test though I didn't really notice the the other um uh spikes that went up to 8 and I mean again this is just an absolutely amazing result none of the frames here are going the whole time I'm playing this even on the frame lengthy Spectrum with no software on it didn't go below 60 frames per second like with the worst frame latencies uh the killer with software on the worst frame here this did go up to 42 milliseconds so this I did notice this one as well I did when I was playing the game I did notice this it was a slight micro stutter and I noticed it and I was like hm okay I'm going to look at the test results and yeah this did pop up so that was probably a loss for the software versus the no software in Heroes and new earth as well so the rest of the experience though was pretty smooth and the Intel ni it performs solid it was just a solid performer as you see here there's no uh real uh you know big stutters sticking out so it was it did really well as well so I'd say the victory here again goes to killer with no software and the Intel Nic uh let's move on to the last test this is never winter and now I could only do this test at 60 frames per second when I tried to put on 120 HZ even though it supposedly supported the feature it just didn't work it went back to 60 frames per second so it's something that never went to have to fix or a video with their drivers either one but nonetheless I thought it'd be good for you know the 60 HZ Gamers out there to have a look at how this game performs with the Killer and the Nic and the Intel Nic so the no software from killer did produce this time around did produce the worst frame at 42 milliseconds so that was the worst out of the whole group I think I think also the software on bridge is to 42 as well so uh it was a tie there but now interestingly enough the software on this is where things get really interesting with never winter as you guys know uh the killer Nic software is supposed to prioritize the gaming packets and now interestingly enough with never winter is when you're playing the game it downloads patch files and it patches the game while you're playing and and so I noticed when the software was on with the killer the patch files were downloading very slowly and this is why it produced this smooth result I believe uh because it was just downloading those patch files slowly it was actually working so I will give kudos to uh killer and say that their software legitimately works so if you're the Casual Gamer who just downloads a lot of stuff and plays games and you want to you know still have a good ping then leave this software on uh and definitely in never winter nights it proved that it works sorry never winter it's not never winter nights but yeah the Intel Nic and last we move on to the Intel Nic It produced an amazing result it was again a solid performer none of the frames were going over 40 milliseconds which was impressive and the rest of the frames were pretty tight so it did produce a good result I will say in this case I thought the software on possibly won this uh test with Neverwinter due to its uh due to the soft were actually working so any let's move on to the conclusion now okay so in usion uh basically yeah if you're a gamer and you've got the killer n i you do not have to go out and buy an Intel n i uh it really isn't worth the money there wasn't much of a difference I I mean this is online games it was there wasn't you know none of the killer ni I uh with the software off against the Intel ni there was no there was no standout differences I couldn't really pinpoint and say which one was better I will say that the software on in the 120 HZ games I thought it did did a little bit worse than the software off so if you guys are wondering uh turn the software off if you're not downloading anything while you're playing games turn the software off uh that's the that's my recommendation with the killer uh if if you are the type of person who downloads stuff while you are playing games then this software does legitimately work so I will say that so it's up to you guys the choice is yours the software is there I will say though lastly in regards to the Nic it does have the legit 1 gbit throughput speed it was amazing experience when I got that 170 megabytes per second download did you see the me downloading Counterstrike go that 22.6 megabytes per second freaking hell so the Intel Nic definitely delivers in terms of its bandwidth and throughput speeds I think the killer NC does as well but it has a problem where it only negotiates at 100 megabits per second on my computer I've tried to get it to a gigabit but it doesn't do it um but the Intel n definitely delivers on its speeds uh the millisecond response times were zero on both and I will say though lastly with the Nic for what it's worth I will say when I was playing Black Ops 2 it felt like when I was on the Intel n it felt like every single bullet I was firing was registering uh when I had you know when I play with the especially with the z77 extreme 4 the broadcom it felt like sometimes the bullets were missing um and with the killer n i it felt like once in a while a bullet would miss I'll be like I'm shooting this guy what what' that bullet Miss that's the kind of with the with the Intel ni I did not get that experience once so for what it's worth I will say if you're a hardcore FPS guy and really competitive then go out and buy an Nic uh that's if you're a PC like top-of-the-line player it might make it it might make that difference in competition but you guys are probably if you are a competitive FPS player you probably already have an external PCI Express Nic so anyway all in all the killer Nic from MSI is amazing onboard uh land controller I will give it a thumbs up I will give the Intel NC a thumbs up as well they both work and they both work extremely well so right guys I hope you enjoyed this please give it a thumbs up if you did and if you haven't already subscribe to Tech your city and next week I will be back with the sound card I'm going to be comparing a PCI Express sound card from isus and I'm going to be pitting that against the onboard realtech ALC 1150 so stay tuned for that I'm going to be doing a number of tests I'm going to be doing FPS tests frame latency tests I'm going to also be doing my own ears I'm going to put these things on my ears tell you guys with my at Pro let's pull these up here going to be putting these on these are awesome headphones me telling you guys which in my opinion sounds better across a variety of music genres and a variety of games I'll tell you which wise is the overall winner and also that's about it if you guys want to see the review of the Intel NC I'll put it in the description below anyway guys that's about it peace out for now oh if you have any comments or questions please put it please put a comment in the comment section below anyway peace out for now bye\n"