LAGWAR | PC GAMING'S BEST IN TOP NOTCH MEDIOCRITY

I had made a post a couple weeks back that I had received one of Bigfoot Networks Killer K1 Network Interface Cards and that I would be posting a benchmark/review of the product in the upcoming weeks. Shortly after my post I received an email from one of Bigfoot Networks PR reps asking if I would be interested in their latest and greatest product they have teamed up with EVGA to create, the KILLER XENO PRO. The gamers ultimate network interface card.

Already having the Killer K1 model in-hand, I went ahead with the install just to test the waters while waiting for the XENO PRO. To be totally honest, it was a complete pain. I actually wound up giving in and waiting for the XENO PRO to arrive rather than testing the K1.

The “killer” issue I had with the K1 was that the drivers and software that came with it did not support Windows XP Service Pack 3. Being an avid PC gamer who at the time was using Windows XP on a regular basis, Service Pack 3 is a must. I visited the Bigfoot Networks website and downloaded the K1 driver and software package for Windows XP SP3, flashed the card, and installed the software package and drivers. The issue I continued to have from there on out was that the killertray.exe would crash consistently upon a system restart. I was unable to find much information on a solution to this issue and decided to scrap the review of the K1, mark it off as a loss, and wait for XENO PRO.

And here it is in all its glory, the EVGA KILLER XENO PRO 400MHz NPU.

While the card’s packaging is extremely protective it also has some really snazzy cosmetic appeal to it. The packaging is exactly what we’ve come to expect from EVGA products as well as Bigfoot Networks. As you can see in the photo above the contents of the box is made up of: the card, driver installation disc, 1/8” audio patch cord (for external audio connections, to be reviewed later), a four-pin audio cable (for internal audio connections, to be reviewed later), and an installation and chat user guides.

The obvious differences noticed between the XENO PRO and the Killer K1 at first glance was size. Take a look at the image below. You will notice that the XENO PRO is about half the size of the Killer K1. This is due to new technology, which allows for smaller and less expensive parts. This probably helped with the lower price tag of $129.99 the XENO PRO carries versus the previous K1 ($149.99) and M1 ($249.99) models. Also, the XENO PRO sports PCI-Express versus the PCI bus compatibility of the K1/M1 models.

Now, the not so obvious differences. Here are the hardware specs for the XENO PRO:

And the hardware specs for the Killer K1:

For this particular review I wanted to capture what I feel most consumers would be purchasing this product for and that’s the hope of a performance gain while playing online games. The XENO PRO actually does a whole lot more than prioritizing data packets on a network though. It can actually do voice chat applications like Teamspeak but we will review that at after we’ve had more time to really play around with that feature to see what it’s fully capable of. So for now we’ll just stick to the in-game performance benchmarks and will report back later for a review of the additional features the card supports.

Performance benchmarks are a tricky trade in the world of online games. There are so many supporting factors in determining what’s causing your performance to be terrible, bad, good, or great. At least, those are the four levels of performance I seem to experience while gaming online. So the best method we could think of using for this particular review was to do latency (ping) monitors (when available) during intense action while playing and to also do a frames per second benchmark.

Games like World of Warcraft have a latency monitor built-in, so this makes it easy to document your ping. For the ping benchmarks, we want to jump into some intense graphical action where we know lots of packets are being sent back and forth across the network and record the latency every minute for five minutes. The five recordings were then added up and divided by five to have an average frame rate. We did this a total of five times. Then took the five averages from the 25 total recordings, added them up, then divided that number by five to reach an overall average frame rate. This was done with the XENO PRO and again with an on-board NIC.

For the frames per second benchmarks we used Fraps to run a five minute benchmark five separate times during graphically intense game play in the chosen games. This comes out to 25 minutes total of FPS benchmarking. We added up the average frame rate recorded from each of the five benchmarks and then divided them by 5 to get our overall average frame rate. This was done with the XENO PRO and again with an on-board NIC.

We used an upper mid-grade gaming machine for this test as I felt using top notch hardware all around wouldn’t give a good depiction of the benefits the card offers to the average gamer. I would find it hard to believe that the majority of online gamers are using the latest CPU’s, video cards, etc. I prefer to stick to hardware closer to what I believe the masses would be using to perform tests like this to create real world results.

On to the good stuff! Let’s jump right in to the nitty gritty. Here are the benchmarks we came up with using the system I explained above. Keep in mind that benchmarking latency or even frames per second in an online game, especially an MMORPG is very tedious and results will vary based on location, internet service provider, etc. We hope that the method we chose to use in this review of the XENO PRO will give some pretty accurate results and give you a good idea of what it can do to enhance your in-game performance and overall gaming experience. The first string shows the latency results and the second string shows the average frames per second benchmark from each of the four games tested.

Before we show you the results, here’s a quick overview of the game play and video settings used in each game.

Here’s a few notes about the type of game play used for each game:

• Call of Duty 4 – ATF Clan Server (12 vs 12 Team Deathmatch)
• World of Warcraft – Alterac Valley (40 vs 40 Large scale zone)
• Guild Wars – Random Arenas (4 vs 4 Team Deathmatch)
• Warhammer Online – T4 Scenarios (12 vs 12 through 24 vs 24 Zone Control)

The Verdict:

The EVGA KILLER XENO PRO sure is one sweet piece of hardware. Actually, it’s every PC gaming enthusiasts dream and for $129.99 MSRP I’m guessing it’s popularity will surpass that of the Killer K1/M1 models. But from a performance perspective is it worth? Not according to our benchmarks. Actually, if you look at the numbers above, there’s really no difference in the frame rate or latency numbers. I do suspect that in severe situations like the Suppression Room in World of Warcraft’s, Blackwing Lair (old school raiders know what I’m talking about), the card could possibly shine and outperform an on-board NIC. With the type of game play and settings used in our review, the card just did not outperform the on-board NIC or enhance our performance at all. We’ll call it a wash for now. At least until we review the voice chat functionality of the card and Killer software features like the bandwidth manager, maybe that’s where the XENO PRO will really shine.

Until then, maybe the photos below will be enough to entice you to drop the $129.99 to add a little more pizazz and cosmetic spunk to your personal gaming machine. Take note of the red light shining in the side panel window. Just like it’s predecessors, the EVGA KILLER XENO PRO shines on with it’s red on-board lights. Really cool stuff. As a PC gaming enthusiast; the lights alone make it worth buying, right? Pick one up from our sponsor today!