First it's been a few years since the original Killer NIC card has been released. Can you give us any info on how well that card and its K1 version had sold and if you are pleased with the reception the products received?

Well, I can speak for myself in saying that I am MORE than pleased with the product reception. There are always 3 camps of people when new products come out: people that love the idea, people that hate the idea, and people that don't know about it. The first 2 are manageable, because you know where they stand. The last camp (people who don't know about it) is the hardest. Now, with Killer NIC so widely available and shipping as defaults in many Dell & Alienware systems (as well as many other OEMs), we really have moved a lot of people from "don't know about it" to "love it". The new card, the EVGA Killer Xeno Pro, was designed after listening to the other camp (people who hate the idea), and we've worked very hard to add the features we think will make them understand and fall in love with the idea.

When the time came to come up with your next generation network card, the Xeno, what were the main goals of you and the card's development team?

The main goals were:

• Add features that people who don't understand what Network Processing is for would "get it" right away.
• Make it really easy to use and take advantage of all the features "automatically".
• Make it more affordable.

We spent most of our time on #1... dozens of surveys, customer interviews, online conversations, and trade-show conversations all compiled into a short list of things people think Network Processing would be good for.

We've added those things to our new product: namely Voice Chat Offload (why shouldn't your network card handle all your voice chat?), and also Bandwidth Control (shouldn't your network card know EXACTLY what applications have higher priority than others & do it automatically?). Both of these are part of Xeno and we've made them easy to use, while making the Xeno product line MUCH more affordable starting at just $129.99.

Can you give us an overview on the improvements made to the Xeno that make it a better network card than the original?

Well, Xeno is not just a network card. It's a network processing card. As a network card it is better than the original at RAW data throughput (something irrelevant to gamers, but maybe important to enterprise customers who are also gamers).

As a network processor we've increased the RAM allowing for more applications to run in the card & improved the interface (PCI-E is 3x faster than PCI and available on more motherboards). But really the big improvement is Voice Chat capabilities with built-in audio chip & audio interfaces (a mic port, a spkr port, a line-out port all right on the card). Combine that with partnerships with Teamspeak, Vivox, and Mumble and you get one very powerful Network Processor. Pure game performance should increase by an additional 5-10% when offloading voice chat for example over the prior generation Killer NIC.

You also wanted to have more emphasis on hardware acceleration for voice chat in games. First, why do you think this is important?

Well, our customers REALLY wanted it! It just makes sense that your VoIP should be run in an offloaded network processor. Here is a few data-points for you: over 70% of gamers would be more likely to use Voice Chat if they could be assured it would NOT interfere with their gameplay. In short, gamers want Voice Chat, but know that it does have an impact to their system in both networking and CPU!