The wireless card is something where a lot of manufacturers make cutbacks, which is really unfortunate considering the comparatively small price premium to get a ‘Killer’ card instead of one of the usual dime-a-dozen Intel modules (not counting Intel’s rather uncommon Ultimate-N).The difference with a triple-steam, dual band (if your router supports it) Wi-Fi module and an inferior card is really noticeable. Not just when playing games–if you are sitting on a speedy connection you are going to see massive improvements in general.
Of course, Killer–Part of Bigfoot Networks owned by Qualcomm Atheros–is targeting gamers and gaming laptops first and foremost. Dell has offered the Alienware laptops with Killer cards for a relatively small price premium and MSI is looking to offer Killer Wi-Fi out of the box in the new GT60/GT70 laptops.
The latest products are called Killer Wireless-N 1202 and Killer E220, and aim at reducing latency for online gaming. With the Wireless-N 1202, Killer integrates Bluetooth on the chip, which has been missing before, and uses a 2×2 antenna setup that allegedly outperforms 3×3 antennas as far as latency goes, bringing it down to as little as a single millisecond.
The Wi-Fi modules use something called Advanced Stream Detect technology that sorts out the network traffic and prioritizes applications that need low latency like games and video chat, while putting less time-critical stuff like fetching emails and system updates in the background.
Source: Press release
Do you need a special router to make use of this?