Specs and Installation

Specifications-wise, probably the most interesting thing we see here is the availability of a USB port on the KillerNIC card. This USB port cannot be utilized by the system as an extra device location because it is designed to be used with the KillerNIC. Applications for this port, then, include using a flash device as an external hard drive that holds extra FNapps. Even cooler is that the USB port could be used with a USB sound card/headset as a jack for a VoIP FNapp. Aside from that, more astute users might question why the PCI bus was the interface of choice for Bigfoot with the KillerNIC. The way we see it, there are two good reasons to use the PCI bus: latency and user base. The PCI bus has an inherently lower latency than both PCI-Express and AGP, as both of these interfaces are derivatives of PCI. If you look at the modern gaming scene - and the modern computing scene in general, for that matter - it is fair to estimate that a good 95% of all computers being used have PCI slots. Conversely, machines with AGP slots most likely have them being used by a video card, and machines with PCI-Express may or may not have an available slot. When you consider these restrictions, PCI seems like the obvious choice.

There is also a really cool set of red LED’s on the KillerNIC which, when toggled to “blink” mode, creates a really cool airplane-style lighting effect. This doesn’t affect performance whatsoever, but it's still pretty darn sweet.

Installation

Installing the KillerNIC is no different than installing any other PCI device. There are also no extra cables to complicate things. This means two things: one, that the KillerNIC is really easy to install, and two, that it does not need a whole lot of power to do whatever it is that it does. One physically inserted in the system, all that needs to be done is sticking in the included driver DVD, clicking setup, and letting it run. The Killer tray application does a very good job at keeping all of the settings at your fingertips. It also auto-updates every time Bigfoot releases new firmware or drivers for the KillerNIC. In just a few weeks we have seen the drivers for the card mature quite a bit. The current version even has an updated tray icon! It also allows you to toggle between LLR Game mode and LLR App mode for gaming or normal use. The new revision also seems to decrease the need to REBOOT the system after changes are made, which was a nagging problem with the previous versions.