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I hate how prevalent Killer NIC chips have become. They seem to be racing to the bottom with cheap wireless and ethernet PHYs with crappy drivers, yet their rep
by r1ch 9y ago
I hate how prevalent Killer NIC chips have become. They seem to be racing to the bottom with cheap wireless and ethernet PHYs with crappy drivers, yet their reputation hasn't quite caught up. Their marketing brands them as premium and a lot of manufacturers still buy into it to target the "gaming" segment (which also hates them).
I refuse to buy any board which has these chips and will pay a small premium for an Intel or Realtek instead.
- aarmenaa 9y agoI don't recall anybody ever having a kind word to say about them. As I recall the product used to be the cheapest Atheros chips the vendor could find plus a proprietary driver that was snake oil and bugs. Not better than a Realtek and worse in a lot of cases. I suspect that they're actually cheaper than a Realtek, which is why they keep showing on consumer hardware.
- seanp2k2 9y agoHardOCP liked them at one point: https://m.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/08/gaming_killer_nic/2 https://m.hardocp.com/article/2011/09/08/gaming_killer_nic/2 I always thought of them as purveyors of snake oil and reached for Intel NICs with great results every time. I used to like Atheros for radios back in the good old bad days of WEP and MadWifi.