I am really, really angry. Maybe that's evident by the subject of the email, and you probably receive emails like this twice a day, but this one is special.

Let me tell you a story. It's a long story, but you should read it all.

This is the story of a guy named Michael, who has been an avid gamer / techno geek for the better part of 10 years. He has spent enormous amounts of money on his current computer and computer upgrades over the years. A couple years back, he read about this "Bigfoot Killer NIC" and all the bad press it was getting from Dumb People who really didn't understand how the internets worked. He could see the value in it for sure, but his system was clearly ahead of the game and was not want for the CPU cycles that were currently being used for network traffic.

Fast forward to semi-present day. Michael has 2 Nvidia 9800GTX video cards run in SLI. These things are monsters, and cover the neighboring slots because they're so big. Michael also has a PCI-E 1x sound card that he recently purchased to help supplement his aging AMD dual core, and made games sound wowowowow (seriously!) better. He decides to upgarde to a quad core, and spends some money on parts that ultimately turn out to be defective, and he returns them.

He spends about 2 weeks using his linux machine to browse the internets for a motherboard that does SLI and is socket AM3+ for a quad core. Apparently, they don't make them anymore. He finally gives up, and decides to just build an Intel based system for the first time, since AMD is basically forcing everyone to use ATI video cards with their processors now.

Then Michael sees a video online, about that Bigfoot Killer NIC thing he saw so many years ago. It demonstrates how the Killer NIC can eliminate one of Michael's biggest complaints about MMOs - the "walker lag". WOW! I have to get one of those! He says. They've come a long way since I saw them last, it looks like this would be a worthwhile investment! I'm really glad that there are companies looking out for gamers still, he says.

So, Michael scours the internets some more. He needs a motherboard that has TWO open PCI-E 1x slots that are not immediately next to the PCI-E 16x slots, and supports SLI with cpu socket 1336 for the processor hes planning on buying. It turns out there is only one, the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128375

But Gigabyte has cleverly built in a heat sink right in the way of one of the critical PCI-E 1x slots that Michael needs! Well, crap. Michael looks at pictures of the heat sink, and then at pictures of the Killer NIC, and then back at pictures of the heat sink, and then back at pictures of the Killer NIC, and does this for about a month before he decides to finally just bite the bullet and attempt to modify the heatsink. It looks like he could pretty easily remove a small section of it enough for the Killer NIC to seat properly and operate.

Finally, the day comes when he gets his parts, and he sets up a camera to document the epic:

http://locane.net/images/it_doesnt_fit.jpg

It's really, really close. So, he removes the heat sink from the motherboard, and sets about modifying it:

http://locane.net/images/modify_heat_sink.jpg
http://locane.net/images/modify_heat_sink_done.jpg

After a lot of working at it, it turns out that there is a very convenient slot where he is able to work off one of the heat sink fins and cut away the label, to reveal an *almost* perfect spot for the Killer NIC to fit in. It's SO close, but after re-attaching it's still too large by about 2 millimeters. So, Michael examines the Killer NIC card carefully, and sees that he can probably afford to clip off / file down the corner section that is blocking it from insertion:

http://locane.net/images/killer_nic_pre_mod.jpg
http://locane.net/images/killer_nic_post_mod.jpg

All done. Then he puts it in, just to test it:

http://locane.net/images/yay_it_fits.jpg

SUCCESS! Soon, Michael will be gaming in MMOs LAG FREE! SWEET! Michael spends another hour putting the new system together with the brand new Killer NIC in it and boots it up. Finally, after about 2 months of down time for lack of adequate parts, Michael can log in to all his favorite games again.

The first thing he does is throw in the Killer NIC cd to install the drivers. After all, once you have the internets you have everything. Hm, it turns out there are no drivers on the CD for XP 64, which is Michael's operating system. That's mildly alarming, but I'm sure a company like Bigfoot Networks, whose whole sales base is hardcore gamers and technophiles like Michael, has some sort of XP 64 driver available, even if not officially supported. So Michael installs the chipset drivers of the motherboard, and gets on the internets to download the XP 64 drivers he needs to make his Killer NIC work.

He checks the website. Nothing. Now he's worried. Naturally, the next thing he goes to is the forums, where (after some searching) he finds this thread:

http://www.bigfootnetworks.com/killerfo ... p64&page=2

Which explains, in detail, why Bigfoot Networks does not care enough to make XP 64 drivers for their product, and even further goes on to expound the benefits of Windows 7 64 bit, and how XP 64 is a dying operating system anyway.

Wow.

Just, wow.

All of that time, money, and effort, and the company that claims to support hard core gaming doesn't support the hardest core gaming platform there is: Windows XP 64bit.

I sincerely doubt that "5%" of your market is XP 64bit. I'd like to know where you got those numbers, because it sounds to me like some marketing executive in an office off handedly decided that XP 64 wasn't worth spending time on based on some vague poll of computer systems.

This story is to show you: I am the face of that 5% statistic. I am a person, not a number, who has spent a great deal of time, effort, and money, on trying to use your product. It is people like me, and stories like mine, that will spread throughout the internet and help or hinder your company.

--Michael

card doesn't support XP 64.

No offense, but that card looks like a total scam. Not quiet sure how something like that would help reduce latency on any level. Your biggest points of contention are going to be the peering points encountered throughout the 'net. Even if it magically did work somehow, you're only talking about nanoseconds across the local bus versus milliseconds everywhere else. Even enterprise level NICs with hardware based TOE processing engines aren't designed to reduce overall response latency. No matter what, you're going to be limited by the lowest common denominator (highest latency peer) at any given point and this is usually always outside of your machine.

If you're still hellbent on using the card, I'd say find a student and get Win7/pro - it's only $29. (Google: windows 7 student)