Counter Strike: Source Performance on the Killer Xeno Pro

It’s difficult to quantify the performance of a network card whose claim to fame is lower pings and higher frame rates. The issue is in running reliable, repeatable tests while also being able to use the card for a long enough period of time to discover quirks and real-world benefits.

We eventually settled on testing three popular online games: Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source and World of Warcraft. All games were run at 1,680 x 1,050 with maximum quality settings. We tested using FRAPS, taking minimum, maximum and average frame rates for all games. In TF2 and CS:S we took 15 screenshots at ten second intervals with net_graph 3 on to record the ping times, and then averaged these. In WoW, the ping was routinely checked by eye. All tests were run three times, and then averaged to give the final results. This was about as fair and thorough as we could manage.

We tested the Killer Xeno Pro against an integrated Realtek RTL8111B Gigabit NIC and an Edimax EW-7727In wireless card connected, and used a Linksys WRT54GL router throughout.



Read our Performance Analysis.