Looking for a NIC to offload CPU cycles for game server

[randomName]

I need recommendations. I'm illiterate when it comes to NIC cards.. and pretty much everything, lol.. but I'm looking for a NIC card to replace my Onboard NIC that will help offload CPU cycles.

 

[belawrence]

As a general rule, use a Intel chipset based NIC, and avoid Realtek based ones like the plague.

 

[GregN]

Though it is most likely Snake Oil, you can take a look at the VisionTek Bigfoot Killer 2100 Gaming NIC.

I personally second the endorsement of Intel NICs, and they are not expensive at all.

Several folks have pointed out, there are windows tweaks, combined with router based QOS that will probably have a greater effect on Network Gaming performance.

QOS, quality of service, settings essentially increase the amount of bandwidth available to your gaming machine/traffic.

There is a pretty exhaustive discussion of how to turn your box into a lean mean gaming machine here. I do recommend understanding the tweaks, the give and takes of them, before just blindly changing your system. Definitely do a checkpoint before changing things, and take an incremental approach: Change, measure, change, measure.

 

[bendsley]

Are we being realistic here? Are you using anywhere near your whole cpu for processing the TCP/IP stack? What CPU are you running right now?

If you have a gigabit NIC and you're running a FULL GIGABIT connection, 100% utilization all the time, then yeah, something better would be fine. But really...offloading TCP/IP onto the card (TOE) or TCP Offload Engine is going to cost you a great deal of money. Think only of doing TOE with 1gig or 10gig connections doing a great deal of throughput....constantly.

If your consumer router supports it, do something on the QOS side. Most consumer routers let you do some sort of QOS for simple things like web browsing or gaming, but that's about it.

If for some reason you're still intent on getting a NIC with TOE, the go get this Dell card. It's a broadcom chipset and it will do TOE for you. It's the cheapest I could find after a quick search. It won't do you any good though, as you're not going to utilize the card.

Since you said you're illiterate when it comes to NIC cards.....stay away from TOE and whatnot. It's not for you. This is coming from an enterprise network / server admin with 15yrs in the business.

Edit: One other thing. The KillerNIC cards are crap. They really aren't needed anymore. They basically run Linux on a chip and they have tweaked the TCP/IP stack on the card for gaming and whatnot instead of using the Windows TCP/IP stack implementation. Do you need it? NO. Simple QoS on your router should be fine.

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&sku=430-3261

TOE information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP_offload_engine

 

[GregN]

Bendsley,

Not sure you actually read my post.

I do not recommend the VisionTek card ( the phrase Snake Oil should be a dead giveaway ), but I'm alot less categorical than you are. Let folks decide for themselves.

I do recommend QOS, and routers that support QOS.

I do recommend Intel NICs.

We don't know what his motherboard offers, or what CPU he is running, or how he is connecting (10/100/1000?). All of those are additional factors, without those details it is difficult to be categorical about anything.

 

[bendsley]

Bendsley,

Not sure you actually read my post.

I do not recommend the VisionTek card ( the phrase Snake Oil should be a dead giveaway ), but I'm alot less categorical than you are. Let folks decide for themselves.

I do recommend QOS, and routers that support QOS.

I do recommend Intel NICs.

We don't know what his motherboard offers, or what CPU he is running, or how he is connecting (10/100/1000?). All of those are additional factors, without those details it is difficult to be categorical about anything.

Well Greg, I did read your post. I was offering my opinion on the KillerNIC as well. You called it Snake Oil, I called it crap.

You recommended QoS. Great...I did as well.
You recommended Intel NICs. Neat. They're good. I simply gave him an option on something that supports TOE as the OP was looking for that.

Notice I did ask what CPU he had. Anyway...anything less than 1gig at full utilization makes it pointless to run something with a tcp offload engine.

People can do as they please. I didn't tell the OP to go do something and put a gun to their head telling them that's the way it is or else. He asked a question and I simply answered it.

My point is this....if your router can do QoS...great, let's utilize that first instead of going out spending a lot of money on a network card that can do TOE and not see any benefit whatsoever.

Note that this being a forum....my post doesn't have to follow or re-iterate your post or disagree with it. I can reply back to the OP just fine without having to read your posts at all. Whether you answered or not, aside from the Killer NIC part, my post would be the exact same.

 

[GregN]

I guess I was recommending looking at the context, being less categorical, and not so heavy handed. Dismiss them, no problem.

Tim has created a really congenial forum here, where folks can ask questions without feeling foolish - I really like that about the give and take here.

 

[randomName]

Hi there! And thanks alot for the recommendations

A few yrs ago I sold 2 of those snake-oil/crap Cards

I'm running a Motorola 6120 SB/Asus RT N66U/Gigabit onboard NICS on my wired connections. i7 Bloomfield 920

I do have QOS set on the Router.

How I got here was I was fooling around with my Advanced settings on my network adapter and after reading about MTU size and how it can alleviate CPU cycles I set my Jumbo packet size to 9k. As well as set my router to do Jumbo Frames. I immediately noticed a difference in gaming. The game felt like it ran alot better. Even with my 920 @ 4Ghz.

When I built my very first machine (423 socket RDR Rambus machine) I also bought a 3 Com 3CR990-TX-97 NIC card and to measure if there was a difference I used a different NIC ??maybe an onboard one, don't' remember?? but even then there was a noticeable difference.

I was recommended to get this NIC card over my onboard.

 

[GregN]

Good choice, the next step up is the 9400PT at more than 3 times the price, but doesn't offer much more.

Take a look at the linked tweaking guide, it is pretty good.

I can also recommend building your own router, pfsense has dynamite QOS features, and state table handling. You can put as much muscle behind your net traffic as you want, and more security in front of it.

 

[randomName]

What advantages does that card offer over the other. I have no problem putting forth a little extra cash for overall better performance

That tweakguide is awe-some! Still going through it I knew there were some audio latencies so those tweaks are going to help. Overall, great guide + bookmarked.

Thanks everyone for their help so far