Bigfoot Networks has been floating around for a while with its range of high-end, latency-dropping network cards for the enthusiast market. Today, the company has announced that they will be just a little easier to get hold of as Dell will now be selling the luxury NICs in its Alienware line of enthusiast PCs.
Both the Killer Xeno Pro and the Killer 2100 cards can be added to the aforementioned systems for a premium of £70 and £120, respectively. Of course, that's a lot of money to pay for something that most of us take for granted, but Bigfoot's NICs offer a lot more than you'd get from integrated networking.
Both cards come with a 400MHz processor and 128MB RAM that can run applications, including firewalls and BitTorrent clients, without the need to hassle the rest of the system. The Xeno Pro also has dedicated microphone and headphone ports for direct VOIP communication, again without calling on the CPU.
What makes the cards special, though, is the ability to completely bypass the Windows networking-stack, dropping latency to an absolute minimum. The included software also allows you to prioritise various services to make sure that your games are always given as much bandwidth as they need. The result is smooth and consistent gameplay when the online action starts to get a little crazy.
Real-word impact has always been... shall we say, questionable, but the Killer NICs could be ideal for anyone who demands nothing but the best when they're playing online, and could be the perfect addition to that shiny new top-end Alienware rig. They can be added to Alienware systems from Dell right away on the Aurora, Aurora ALX, Area-51 and Area-51 ALX models.
