Windows 7 - EVGA Killer Xeno Pro

Game lag is history.

EVGA is proud to announce the latest addition to its award winning products: the EVGA Killer Xeno Pro. Designed to accelerate real-time internet gameplay, the EVGA Killer Xeno Pro fights game lag, smooths game play and boosts frame rates. Also included is hardware-accelerated voice chat that ensures hiccup free communication during the most intensive game sessions. Gamer-grade network traffic prioritization and security tools further prove that this is not your grandmas networking card. Get the competitive edge today with the EVGA Killer NIC Pro!

How does it work?

Bigfoot Networks™ technology is optimized for online gaming and real-time communications applications. The EVGA Killer Xeno Pro uses a 400MHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) to offload all networking operations. The NPU acts as a co-processor dedicated to running the networking portion of games and other applications. This NPU, along with Bigfoot Networks™ patented software algorithms, accelerates, prioritizes and shapes the packet stream that goes to and from the computer, thereby allowing EVGA Killer Xeno Pro to bypass the Windows Stack and allow the NPU to handle all the network functions. This results in the CPU being able to run at full speed, while checking for and receiving network data as fast as possible.

• This Process:
• Optimizes and speeds network operations
• Prioritizes game network traffic to ensure game data is always injected into the game the instant it arrives.
• Offloads packet processing for latency intensive applications, like VoIP, to provide clear and clean communications
• Frees up the CPU to do more game logic and other computations.

As a result, gamers see less lag, better frame rates and smoother, more responsive gameplay during intense action. In fact, on average, gamers see from 10% to 20% increase in frame rate!

Features

Smooth Gameplay During Fast Action - Bigfoot Networks Network Processing Unit (NPU) frees up vital CPU resources to boost frame rates and smooth out gameplay experiences during the even the most intense action.

Hardware-Accelerated Voice Chat - Hardware-accelerated voice chat is fully offloaded from the CPU, processed on Killer Xeno’s dedicated audio chip and accelerated through Xeno’s NPU. Killer Xeno is bundled with TeamSpeak 3 Lite and TeamSpeak 2, the #1 Voice Chat program for online gaming. Killer Xeno also supports Mumble, a free and open-source, cross-platform voice application.

Optimized for Gaming - Killer Xeno is the only network card that delivers an ideal online experience, with 128MB of onboard RAM, a dedicated network processor, an audio processor for online voice chat and a PCI Express interface.

Faster Frame rates - Smart packet optimization sorts and accelerates time-sensitive Internet traffic, bypasses the Windows® Network Stack and transfers packets directly to and from games, improving game responsiveness and frame rates for that competitive edge.

Bandwidth Control - The Killer Xeno’s Hardware Bandwidth Control technology serves as a Network “Traffic Cop” that smoothes the online experience across all Internet applications – VoIP, streaming video, downloads and web surfing – even while gaming.

Optimized for Applications - 128 MB of onboard RAM allows more Killer technology applications like voice chat and Bandwidth control to be run on the card simultaneously enabling better system performance.

Plug and Play - Delivers Plug-&-Play compatibility with all online games. The Killer Xeno works with all online games for improved performance right out of the box.

I don't play online, but this actually makes me want to

I wonder if it has on any impact for non-gaming networks etc

It's just like your GPU, your graphics cards has a processor to allow the CPU to do other things, while it processes all graphic needs. This just does all the network related stuff, so its more to do with just your computer performance, and not your networks.

I can not see how it could possibly make your game faster aside from a very, very slight increase. It will not make your internet faster or anything of that nature.

A cool idea but not a big enough of a bottle neck to really need a solution to..

(edit: just posting info generally, I'm sure you already knew that info!)

I have purchased this item and I am wondering if it actually works with Windows7 build 7100, and from what I have read the performance increase should be compared to that of switching from onboard sound to a sound card, not a dGPU. I purchased it mainly because I have a PC Gaming sickness, not because I think it will make a huge difference in my online games. LOL

I love this company!!!
Ok I dont have one of these cards nor do I plan on buying one. the reason I love them cause they are playing off the old mind set of the past that Intel used for the P4.
Is your internet slow buy a new P4 system and it will run so much better. LOL.
On a serious note I am wondering how these cards help take things off the CPU so 3nkidu if you bought one do some benchmarks for me one on a regular nic with and one with one of these doing all the stuff a normal user does not just gaming and let me know.

I normally wouldnt mind doing this, but becuase I am adding this to a brand new MB which will have the onboard NIC disabled in the Bios from the time of the first boot (to avoid driver issues) I will not be able to. I have read a ton about this and the other Killer NICs and I really dont expect to see a huge difference in anything other than Source games (because they are CPU intensive and the Killer NIC bypasses the windows network stack (?) and it has a onboard NPU.) Plus I am hoping that it will improve the chat quality a bit, some of my games like Killing Floor have horrible quality ingame chat.

Update: One of the users (urbantank) says the he uses the vista64-bit drivers in the 7100 build and they work fine.