Harware NIC card recommendation

[MarkJohnson]

Since I've had Vista my online gaming is very choppy compared to XP which is choppy also but much less choppy.

I have been thinking about getting the Bigfoot Network's Killer NIC card to see how much it will help, but they want an awful lot of money for that NIC card. I know it has a lot of extra features but I really just want the Hardware NIC so that it takes a load off running the Windows network stack.

If anyone has a recommendation I'd be very greatful

-=Mark=-

[nitroshift]

3 things to know from you: what internet connection / speed you have, what is the configuration of the pc and what games we are talking about. Then we may help, but my suggestion is hold on for now with paying for that NIC until you answer the above.

[rendrag]

honestly, unless you're running a 5 year old PC, a hardware nic will not really help you out. There's not just enough going on that today's processors will take a major performance hit by the network stack. Yeah, you might see a 1-3 fps increase, but it's probably not worth it.

That said, i'd answer what nitro asked and then we'll see for sure

[MarkJohnson]

3 things to know from you: what internet connection / speed you have, what is the configuration of the pc and what games we are talking about. Then we may help, but my suggestion is hold on for now with paying for that NIC until you answer the above.

I have a Comcast cable connection. Speed is 6 meg with speedboost(10meg peak on downloads.) I have a D-Link DCM-202 modem with a D-Link Gamer Lounge router (DLG-4300) hardwired to PC.

I'm not too sure what you mean by "The configuration of the PC." My sig lists my hardware, I dual boot XP PRO and Vista HP x64. mostly use x64, only go to XP for whichever programs don't support Vista or 64 bit. It is a general purpose PC that I do some office work, quickbooks to manage my business, Photoshop for my pictures, watch some videos online and movies, lots of web surfing. Have a full set of free malware protection from the malware section here(Thanks Tarun)

I play Everquest II and some other MMORPGs, plus other RTS games in online mode. a couple FPS games than can be played online, and a few other misc non-internet games.

I know I'm not going to get a huge impact on my online games, but even a few frames per second will be welcome. EQ2 is very stuttering and a few FPS may even it back up to XP. I even OC my quadcore to 3.04ghz (8X380) and the higher FSB helped a little, but still lags noticeably behind XP.

I have 3 machines in my room and 3 EQ2 accounts. When no buddies are on I'll sometimes log in the other accounts and 3-box them at once and my xp machines screw up a lot from the lag of the Vista machine and my Vista toon is bouncing around and I sometimes loose follow from lagging out for too long or being on follow for a long time and slowly fall behind until I lose follow. I am in the habit already of running a few yards and pausing, especially if on a corner or they'll get stuck everytime or worse and fall off of a cliff.

If I dual boot back into XP on my Vista machine I don't have these issues, so I know it is the OS messing with me. I've even had to reinstall Vista 3 or 4 times this year and it has had the issue every time.

Let me know if you need more info

-=Mark=-

ps, I noticed Bigfoot now makes a light version of the Killer and is a little cheaper, but still kind of high at around $170 at newegg.

Edited January 2, 2008 by MarkJohnson

[nitroshift]

I'd start by updating the graphic card drivers. Does the stuttering occur when playing offline games too? I mean graphic-intensive games such as Crysis or anything off Tom Clancy's list.

[MarkJohnson]

I'd start by updating the graphic card drivers. Does the stuttering occur when playing offline games too? I mean graphic-intensive games such as Crysis or anything off Tom Clancy's list.

This post wasn't submitted for a diagnosis, I was posting for a recommendation.

I need to know if anyone makes a hardware NIC card other than Bigfoot Network's Killer NIC cards.

All the one's I look at don't seem to. even the $1k+ server cards don't seem to have an on board processor. Maybe I'm just reading it wrong.

my line of thinking is that if the network stack is taking 6-8 Cycles to procces every bit of info that passes through it, then a hardware NIC card that can offload the processing and lower the stacks proccess cyles to say 3 or less would improve my online gaming a little. that seems to be what the Killer NIC does more than anything.

In comparison it is like having on-board sound that is processed by the CPU and a sound card that has it's own dedicated processor. The on-board sound can get very choppy and lose a lot of quality, while the sound cards will have a very light load and have superb sound quality.

so, any hardware NIC recommendations anyone?

-=Mark=-

ps. to answer your question NitroShift, I don't have real big issues with offline games other than the limits of my video card. I have had this issue with online games since I installed Vista x64 almost a year ago. I've tried several things to improve it, reinstalled Vista several times, tried all kinds of drivers, etc... I had no real improvement other than the overclock helped noticeably which shows to me it is having quite the impact, I guess MS beefed up the stack in Vista to make it more secure or some reason.