Items tagged with Nic
Gigabit Ethernet has been a long-running standard on desktop PCs and in mainstream networking gear. In fact, it’s been almost two decades since gigabit network controllers appeared on desktops systems. Aquantia Corporation is looking to muscle into the space, however, with a pair of brand new network interface cards that offer multi-gigabit network speeds – and they can do so on existing wiring.“Historically, networking capabilities, such as Gigabit Ethernet introduced in PCs in 2000, defined a significant stepping stone in the PC evolution. But for the past 17 years, that Ethernet port has stagnated at 1 Gigabit, and become a bottleneck for IT professionals, gamers, and performance users at...
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It was almost a month ago to the day that Qualcomm Atheros introduced the world to its Killer Wireless-N 1202 Wi-Fi module (with Bluetooth) and Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet controller, but the former sat in limbo since then without a launch partner. Well, it's found one in Dell, which plans to make its Alienware subsidiary the first to offer the souped up Wi-Fi module. "Alienware continues to be the leader in performance laptops and we appreciate that its customers are used to getting the best gaming experience possible," said Mike Cubbage, director of business development, networking business unit, Qualcomm Atheros. "The Killer Wireless-N 1202 will continue the tradition of delivering a superior...
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Bigfoot Networks has quietly gone from a niche startup that only targeted hardcore gamers, to a company that seems to be cracking into new parterships all the time. They've already managed to get their products into mainboards and GPUs, and now they're taking them to the most sophisticated spot yet: Alienware notebooks. Bigfoot's "Killer" line of networking gear is famous for one thing in particular: prioritizing bandwidth usage in order to reduce jitter and make online gameplay smoother compared to standard, non-optimized NICs. They've managed to do a swell job with it, and reviews are overwhelmingly positive. Now, those buying an Alienware will be able to get that same technology right inside...
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Well, there's really no choice but to give it up for Bigfoot Networks. The company that was simply selling standalone Killer gaming NICs a few months ago now has a bunch of new partnerships under their belt, with an integrated NIC/GPU on the market, a mainboard deal with Asus and now, a motherboard deal with another huge vendor: Gigabyte. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week, Bigfoot and Gigabyte came together to announce the new line of G1-Killer gaming motherboards, which will soon ship with Killer's E2100 networking platform built right in. These boards will obviously be aimed at hardcore gamers who are willing to pay a premium for the very best in class; aside from buying...
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Bigfoot Networks may have found their niche and their big break all at once, and they aren't even introducing a new product at CES. The secret? Partnerships. A few months ago, the company managed to get their Killer E2100 gaming network interface card integrated into a shipping GPU. The card manages bandwidth and has been shown to help online gamers have a smoother experience regardless of their connection. But the thing is, hardly anyone wants to buy a dedicated NIC. But if you integrate that NIC technology into a product that someone was already considering? Gold mine. At CES this week, Bigfoot Networks introduced a partnership with Asus, which means that Asus will soon ship a ROG Rampage III...
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Well, this is sneaky. MSI has just revealed that they will be hosting a press event at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show, and the funny thing is they aren't telling what will be there. But they are telling who will be sharing the stage with them: Bigfoot Networks. That's the company responsible for creating the Killer NIC card, a dedicated gaming NIC that has been well received in the gaming arena. It has shown to reduce ping times and lag, and generally smooth out online gameplay. Killer has already integrated their NIC technology onto a GPU, but the obvious next step is to integrate it into mainboards. MSI is a respected motherboard manufacturer, and while we aren't specifically told that...
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Now this is the definition of convergence! A graphics card, and a network card, all wrapped up in one nice, neat package. The package is being co-delivered by Bigfoot Networks (providing the NIC) and VisionTek (providing the GPU). The end result is the VisionTek Killer HD 5770, which is a PCIe x16 card that only takes one slot in your motherboard, but provides a wealth of functionality. Bigfoot has been widely known in the hardcore gaming sector, as they have produced a number of dedicated network cards up to this point. Their cards are known for steadying jitter and generally providing a better, smoother gaming experience compared to onboard NICs. Their network cards have their own memory and...
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Bigfoot Networks has made a name for themselves in a very unique and rare market. There are only a finite number of hardcore gamers willing to pay extra for something like a souped up NIC card, but obviously more than a few are handing over their cash in order to have their ping times lowered. Any true gamer knows that ping times are the difference between survival and death, and the Killer 2100 network card has seen some rather positive reviews explaining that it actually does have reduce network ups and downs in order to keep pings and gameplay smoother. But again, it's tough to convince gamers with NICs already in their system to go out and buy another NIC. But what about people who are looking...
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To date, Bigfoot Networks has remained mostly a niche company. Only hardcore gamers know about them, and even fewer are willing to pay north of $100 for a high-end NIC card. Bigfoot Networks has had a relatively simple product line over the years: a high-end network card here, and a revamped high-end network card there. You get the drift, we're sure. But now the company is trying to break out in a big way, with a new partnership shedding light on how the company may eventually find themselves involved in other areas. Just as the CPU/GPU were able to overlap in time, Bigfoot Networks is looking beyond the Killer line of network cards by teaming with TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer...
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Bigfoot Networks generated quite a bit of buzz back in 2006 when the company launched the original Killer NIC M1. As many of you probably remember, the original Killer NIC was / is a PCI-based device that featured an on-board network processor, or NPU, that was supposedly able to lower in-game ping times and free up CPU resources, which in turn could increase framerates. The Killer NIC performed these duties by bypassing the Windows networking stack through the use of custom software and offloading network related tasks from the host CPU. And generally speaking, the Killer NIC delivered on all fronts to some degree.The $250+ price tag of the original Killer NIC was tough to justify, however,...
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Back in March, BigFoot Networks announced plans to release PCI Express-based versions of their Killer NIC, dubbed the Killer Xeno Pro and Killer Xeno Ultra. In addition to all of the features offered by the original Killer NIC, the new Killer Xeno versions were to come with more on-board memory, an upgraded network processing unit (NPU), and integrated audio for hardware-accelerated voice-chat. The main features and specifications of the Killer Xeno include: PCIe interface: provides for higher throughput. Killer Xeno NPU: dedicated smart packet processor for all network operations, ensures the delivery of time sensitive data like game control and VoIP. Plug and Play compatibility with all games....
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Falcon Northwest and Bigfoot Networks have teamed up to bring a killer gaming experience to customers building one of Falcon's best-of-class, award-winning PC systems. Gamers can now order Bigfoot Networks' Killer NIC™ K1 gaming network card as an upgrade option on Falcon Northwest Gaming PCs, including the Mach V, Talon and FragBox systems. Now Falcon Northwest customers can get the competitive edge in their online gaming experience by using the Killer NIC K1 - the only network card that reduces lag and delivers smoother, more responsive online game play.As the perfect upgrade to Falcon Northwest's high-quality custom gaming PCs, the Killer NIC™ K1 is the affordable gaming networking...
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The Wii Fit is all the rage these days. Selling like hotcakes, it was only a matter of time before another company tried their hand at virtual fitness. The first up to the plate is video game giant Electronic Arts. EA has unveiled its take on fitness. Unlike the "eastern" oriented Wii Fit, which focuses on balance and stretching, this "western" styled fitness game takes a more cardiovascular approach to fitness. EA Sports President Peter Moore has geared the game towards women, especially mothers, and aims to give people a more strenuous workout by distracting them with the fun of video games, yet still get them to sweat. "It can't feel like a workout," he said, "the team has to figure...
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PANASONIC ANNOUNCES PRICING FOR LUMIX DMC-G1, THE WORLD’S FIRST MICRO FOUR THIRDS SYSTEM CAMERA Secaucus, NJ – Panasonic today announced pricing for the world’s first Micro Four Thirds System camera, the LUMIX DMC-G1 – available in mid-November for a suggested retail price of $799.95, which includes the LUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH/MEGA O.I.S. kit lens. Also available in November, the LUMIX G VARIO 45-200mm/F4.0-5.6/MEGA O.I.S. telephoto Micro Four Thirds lens has a suggested retail price of $349.95. The LUMIX G1, available in black, blue and red models, is the first interchangeable lens camera to offer consumers a choice of colors. Weighing about half as much as a standard digital single-lens...
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It appears that a bug in a network driver used in the kernel of the latest alpha release of the popular Ubuntu Linux distro is damaging Intel network controllers, sometimes irreparably.In bug #263555 on the bugs.launchpad.net website titled, "[intrepid] 2.6.27 e1000e driver places Intel ICH8 and ICH9 gigE chipsets at risk", it is noted that the NVRAM on Intel 82566 and 82567 based LAN controllers is being corrupted, but the bug seems to have affected only notebook users at this point..."In some circumstances it appears possible for the 2.6.27-rc kernels to corrupt the NVRAM used by some Intel network parts to store data such as MAC addresses.This is limited to the new e1000e driver, and reports...
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One of the key challenges of digital photography technology has been to try to capture images as well as the human eye does. While optics have made significant improvements in recent years, modest enhancements to the resolution density of the electronic sensors have kept the lofty goal of mimicking human perception as just a pipe dream. But scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have now made a breakthrough that might take a giant leap toward reproducing human-eye-like sight in an electronic sensor. Their breakthrough comes in the form of liberating the light-sensing array from the traditional planar or flat surface, which tends to introduce "aberrations."...
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According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a dangerous legal precedent has just been set that can potentially unravel existing federal privacy protections for e-mail and Internet usage. The alert from the EFF is not just to sound a general warning, but it also takes the form of an Amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief, filed with the federal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for the court's legal finding to be overturned. In the recent case of "Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media, LTD., vs. Motion Picture Association of America" (MPAA), the owners of TorrentSpy accused the MPAA of violating the federal Wiretap Act by intercepting e-mails. Apparently,...
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AMD hosted a small gathering in the London NYC Hotel yesterday to showcase some of their existing products and technologies, to show off a few products built by their partners, and to demo some products due to be released in the coming months. We attended the event and took a few photos of the various demo stations and thought we'd share them with you here.We're sure many of you have already seen a few of the items that were on display, but we were able to get a bit more up close and personal with a few of them and can give more insight into their operation. The various demo stations were filled with different types of systems / devices and all of them featured an AMD product or technology at...
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Hypersonic PC Unveils Avenger Notebooks, Their First 12-inch Mobile Solution that Offers High Performance without Sacrificing PortabilitySunnyvale, Calif.—May 22, 2008—OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, components, and system builds, today announced Hypersonic PC is making their solution more mobile than ever. Geared toward the enthusiast who wants their go-anywhere notebook to be powerful, the Avenger AG2 Notebook series feature unparalleled performance in a sleek, colorful, and compact 12-inch size for superb mobility. The AG2 may be small, but packs in the performance and energy-efficiency of Intel® Core™ 2...
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OK, now we're just getting silly. The revamped XO laptop prototype is out, as proposed by the OLPC project. (One Laptop Per Child) The last version got bogged down by infighting between its developers over the choice of operating systems, utilities, software, and of course, the ultimate cost of the units themselves, which skyrocketed over time. Interest is the unit is still high, of course, as many people are captivated with the idea of giving impoverished children worldwide a better chance at an education. OLPC unveiled the XO2 laptop yesterday, and its look, specifications, and pricetag are unbelievable. Literally unbelievable, if you ask us.The new version loses the green rubbery keyboard,...
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We just caught wind of a couple of new iPod-related accessories from Addonics that we thought you'd all like to see. The company has just announced two new products that can benefit iPod owners in a few ways. The first product is a 1.8"ZIF to 2.5" IDE hard drive converter that gives users the ability to connect an iPod hard drive to virtually any PC, as long as it has an IDE port. If you've got a dead iPod that's still loaded with files, this adapter will allow you to gain access to all of those files that would otherwise be lost. Click For Larger Images The second product is a 1.8" ZIF to Compact Flash (CF) Adapter. This...
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Panasonic is developing a tough little UMPC based on Intel's Atom technology and they're calling it the Toughbook. The specs aren't entirely clear other than the platform itself and the fact that it should live up to its name:“Little information is available, but we have a water, dust, and shock resistant computer with 5.6” touch screen.”We're curious to see how they've pulled off water resistance in a device that is rumored to feature have several ports of various kinds, but we're not sure how many divers are going to need a UMPC anyhow....
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