Bigfoot’s Killer-N 1102 Wireless Networking vs. the World
by Jarred Walton on August 10, 2011 10:38 AM ESTBigfoot’s Killer Wireless-N 1102: Living up to Its Name
This is one of the few times I’ve tested a product that surprised me. I figured all wireless adapters were pretty much the same, but my experience with the Killer Wireless-N 1102 card has been excellent. I can’t say I’ve ever felt wireless networking was something to worry about, but now I’ll need to reconsider. Wading through the notebooks I have on hand, I’m actually surprised at how many of them use cheap 1x1:1 2.4GHz adapters, even on $1500+ notebooks. No wonder I haven’t been impressed with wireless throughput in the past!
Going into this review, I felt that the wireless world had largely stagnated, but it turns out that I’m probably the one falling behind. I have felt on occasion that my Netgear WNR3500L router was holding me back, but I didn’t realize how much. (Before that, I had a TrendNET TEW-633GR 3x3:3 2.4GHz router that I thought was “good enough”…except for the occasional crashes and restarts. Yuck!) Testing with the Linksys E4200 router on a 5GHz radio has opened my eyes to the source of my problems: the 2.4GHz spectrum is just too crowded, so you almost never get 40MHz channels and higher connection rates. With the right router, suddenly the difference between budget WiFi adapters and expensive 3x3:3 solutions starts to make sense. Wireless networking has improved in other ways as well. For one, size matters. My oldest laptops have comparatively huge mini-PCIe adapters, and most of those aren’t even 802.11n capable. Now you can get a highly integrated 3x3:3 chip in a half-height, with the potential for Bluetooth in some cases as well.
That brings us to the star of today’s review, the Killer Wireless-N 1102. Throughput is generally equal to or better than equivalent solutions, and it can even outperform Intel’s top Ultimate-N 6300 is many tests, despite having one less spatial stream available. That’s not the real selling point, though; it’s the software, drivers, and optimizations to improve latency that allows the 1102 stand out. If the latency only helped in gaming, that might be enough, but the small file copy times show that it’s useful for non-gamers as well. I routinely copy large amounts of files and data between PCs, and in the past I’ve always felt the need to do that over a wired connection. I’m still inclined to go that route if I’m moving more than a couple gigabytes, because even the best wireless networks still fall short of Gigabit Ethernet. However, copying lots of smaller files ends up being faster than 100Mb Ethernet for a change, and if I’m not in a hurry 15-25MiB/s will get most transfers done fast enough to make hassling with wires unnecessary.
Something else that surprised me is the pricing; the Killer 1102 is roughly a $15 upgrade from Intel’s 6230, and if you’re looking at a gaming laptop, $15 is chump change. Given their earlier $200+ Killer NICs, I was afraid when Bigfoot first approached me that we’d see a repeat of such prices, but I’m happy to say that’s not the case. The Killer 1102 (and 1103) might cost a bit more than other wireless solutions, but if you care about wireless performance and latency, a $15 to $20 upgrade is reasonable.
My biggest concern is that, as good as the Killer Wireless-N is, many users will likely never notice. Faster UDP throughput generally isn’t a problem, and with most broadband connections pushing less than 20Mbps, the difference between a 144Mbps 1x1:1 connection and a 450Mbps 3x3:3 connection for Internet use is negligible. Even the lower ping times won’t matter all that much for online gaming, since a good 40ms connection between your router and a game server means the Killer Wireless-N might get 41ms average latency compared to 45-50ms on competing solutions. The removal of jitter will be a bigger benefit, but only hardcore gamers are likely to notice. Ironically, for gaming purposes Realtek’s 1x1:1 RTL8188CE is right up there with the Killer 1102 in terms of latency, and unlike the Intel and Atheros chipsets I didn’t see any large spikes during testing. (Broadcom’s BCM94322 is another 2x2:2 device that appears to have good latency in some initial testing, and it’s available with dual-band and Bluetooth support; I didn’t have time to run the full suite of tests on that card yet, unfortunately.) If you regularly use Bluetooth, you don’t do much network gaming, and/or you don’t routinely copy lots of small files, the upsell to an 1102 probably won’t be that enticing.
Ultimately, given the choice between two laptops, one with a Killer wireless adapter and one with a competing adapter, I’d prefer to get the Killer—especially on higher end notebooks. Budget and mainstream laptops can likely make do with whatever wireless adapter comes preinstalled, or look at upgrading the graphics and/or CPU before worrying about things like wireless performance. Nevertheless, if you are interested in improved wireless performance, go ahead and spend the extra money. Just don’t try using a Killer Wireless-N adapter in a crowded apartment complex with dozens of wireless routers on the 2.4GHz spectrum and then wonder why it doesn’t seem any better than your old wireless adapter.
That brings us to the final recommendation. Before buying a new laptop with the Killer Wireless-N, make sure you have a high quality router. The Linksys E4200 generally works well, but I’d be more inclined to go with Apple’s Airport Extreme. The Linksys and Airport extreme cost the same and the Airport Extreme has 3x3:3 2.4GHz support and arguably better overall performance. Then again, long-term if you’re a fan of DD-WRT you might be better off with the Cisco 4200/Linksys E4200, as the DD-WRT project has plans to add support for the 4200 but not the Airport Extreme. Once you have the router side under control, then by all means look at getting Bigfoot’s speedy Killer Wireless-N for your laptop(s).
Thanks also to Mythlogic for providing us with the test laptops. We’ll have a full review of their Pollux 1400 (Clevo W150HR) in the near future.
Update: Interestingly, Mythlogic just emailed me to inform me that they're also selling the Bigfoot 1102 and 1103 adapters via Amazon. You can grab the 1102 for $40, or go whole hog with the 1103 for $60. By comparison, Intel's 6200 goes for $24 and their 6300 costs $35 (though the latter is currently out of stock). So, if you have an laptop with poor wireless that you'd like to upgrade, you can take the plunge.
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Aikouka - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Jarred, if you asked me about a year ago... I never thought I'd recommend a Netgear product. My past encounters with their networking devices has been less than stellar. Even with that, I decided to take the plunge, and I purchased a WNDR3700 a few months back. It has treated me rather well so far and that's on stock firmware. It is DD-WRT compatible; so if you prefer their firmware, you're good to flash.Compared to the Airport Extreme, it is a bit weaker on the wireless front as it only supports MIMO 2x2, but its newer sibling, the WNDR4000, supports MIMO 3x3.
The one feature I'd definitely argue for though is simultaneous dual-band. I don't think most people have homes with only 5Ghz devices. So with just a dual-band router, you'd be limited to 2.4Ghz anyway.
xand42 - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Any idea why the (default parameter) netperf tcp transmit results are so horrible across the board? I just ran netperf on my Advanced-N 6200 notebook and got 190Mbit/s to my Cisco E3000 router, basically the same value as with iperf and netcat and every other benchmark.Rick83 - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
It would be fairly interesting to see the difference between the Killer NIC, server NICs, laptop NICs and desktop NIC's from different vendors (and in different implementations).As I run only a SSD in my desktop, and have my user profile residing on a NAS (Intel i5 powered NAS, though, not limited by the available cycles and RAM) on a RAID 5, with reasonable linear throughput, network performance is quite important for me, as it accelerates such tasks as generating thumbnails of files, listing large directories, local decompression (that's probably the worst offender, and with large archives I do this on the NAS directly) and many tasks that access my user profile that may be latency or throughput limited.
For this reason I recently specifically got a mainboard with Intel network adapter, hoping for enhanced performance, but only realizing, that I'd have to hack the .inf to get driver support under my OS.
On the NAS, I am currently using the RTL 8111D chips, one connected to the switch and the other to the modem. If using a decent chip increases my samba/nfs performance, I'd put down the 50 euros for the intel pro chip in a blink.
Also you could test supported cable length, jumbo frame support, documentation (with some cards the maximum MTU is not properly documented, and it takes ages of non-fragmented pinging to discover the correct MTU) and performance of teaming and fail-over mechanisms.
Also, 5Ghz was something that I tried in my parent's home, but we couldn't even connect a machine that was one ceiling and wall away, at less than 10 meters distance. Might have been just a spectacularly bad router (Linksys 320N) or maybe 5GHz is really just for line-of-sight applications.
pityme - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Jarred,I think it would be nice to run tests of multiple wireless network interference like the kind observed in apartment/townhouse/condo situations. This is a big problem that no one seems to ever test/talk about.
ckryan - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
True that. I live in a condo building in uptown Charlotte, NC and every unit has a wireless router of one kind or another. To make matters worse, the elevators seem to interfere somehow -- along with every wireless phone and microwave, the acres of glass and the steel structure. To top it off, there's an office building right next door which has many wireless systems on its own.ckryan - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Sometimes it seems like someone has cast some manner of evil voodoo on WiFi as a whole.I bought a Killer 2100 NIC because I thought it was a good idea -- and it was on sale. It is better than Intel's on-board Ethernet (and better still than Realtek) if only just barely. In reality, I just liked the idea of dedicated hardware for my networking needs. It really did make a difference, and really is some good stuff, but probably not worth the substantial premium over garden variety PCIe NICs (for most people). I'm glad I bought it... but only because it was on sale.
The Killer product line is in the position of having a product family which does perform mostly as advertised, but becomes a tough sell when you already have onboard ethernet or wifi. It has to be difficult to sell a consumer NIC that costs as much as a 80GB SSD or mid range video card. For $65 or $70 it's great. At $140, not so much. As such, I'm glad to see them trying to put their hardware inside other hardware, like networking cordon bleu. Shoving their "NPU" onto the PCBs of video and sound cards, motherboards, and laptops is a good idea and if nothing else add a little variety to the mix. It would easily be worth an extra $25 -$35 premium for a motherboard in any price range to get their NIC over the bog standard Realtek. It can't possibly cost more than the NF200 or Hydra chips on mid and high end mainboards and is surely worth an extra $20 on top of a laptop as well. Whether they can sell this particular device sans lappy at a reasonable price or even at all remains to be seen.
honvl - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
I'm on a wireless card and want to test my latency. Where can I find this GaNE tool?Flunk - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
This result really surprised me, I was expecting results like their wired products (no difference). My guess is that the biggest factor is the support for more channels but the performance really does seem markably better. I'm gearing up to by a new Alienware laptop near the end of the year and I may very well check the box for a Killer-N upgrade.StormyParis - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Isn't there a wide gap between what tech sites review, and what users use ? I know it's part of the purview of a tech site to go for the 0.001%-of-users, bleeding-edge stuff, but... has anyone ever seen a review of mainstream Wifi adapters/laptop anywhere ? As one of the 99.999%, I'd be interested !JarredWalton - Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - link
Bigfoot offered, so I thought, "Hey, this could be fun." Well, it wasn't. WiFi testing is a real pain in the butt I've decided. Still, it would be good to look at some other products. We might come back to the subject in the near future; I'm going to see about soliciting a bunch of different WiFi adapters and see what turns up. Obviously, I have at least the 6230 and 6300 from Intel. I want to add the Killer 1103, some Broadcom stuff, etc. Really, I'd want to focus on just dual-band cards, though -- anything that can't do 5GHz becomes less interesting after playing with the Linksys E4200.