Xeno sounds an awful lot like Xenu… one of the mythical figures from the Church of Scientology. I asked Harlan about that, and he laughed, saying that the Xeno is actually “One X” spelled backwards. They wanted to emphasize that this new Killer NIC was based on “1x” PCI-express technology. You can, of course, insert this card into any PCI-e slot, including a spare 16x slot.
Many vendors rely too much on the fast CPUs available in today’s computer. For example, several audio card manufacturers rely on the main CPU to process audio data. They say that CPUs are “fast enough” to process multiple surround channels without any performance hit. Integrated motherboard components like sound cards and network cards also typically require higher CPU usage for basic functionality.
When you sum it all up, your CPU could be wasting 10% or more of its processing power on things that could be offloaded to dedicated hardware. Multi-core CPUs may not help, as many games are still not multi-threaded (although they do help with multitasking while gaming). The hardcore PC gamer will certainly want all functions running on their own dedicated processor, because this will translate to higher FPS in their games… actual use may only translate into a few extra frames, but even a slim improvement is still an improvement.
There will be a few caveats to the Killer Xeno at launch time. You cannot use USB headsets. You are limited to TeamSpeak, Vivex, and Mumble. It can take longer to set up proprietary chat channels, rather than just jumping directly into a game. FNA apps written for the original Killer NIC will not work at launch.
Bigfoot Networks’ second-generation Killer NIC, dubbed the Xeno, adds a lot of features and looks promising. While some of the benefits are undeniable, It remains to be seen if some promises will be made good, and we are eagerly awaiting a sample of the card to do some actual testing. As I see it, offloading network tasks to a dedicated processor can only help. Once we are able to test the card we can spell out a definitive cost/benefit ratio.
