Installation of the Killer 2100 is a fairly standard affair. It’s as simple as installing any other PCIe card into your machine. There is no PCI alternative, so you must have an appropriate slot free on your mainboard. Also note, if you have to use a 16x slot due to space restrictions, or even a 4x slot on some boards, it may reduce the PCIe 16x lanes available for your graphics card from 16x to 8x. This totally depends on the motherboard you’re using, but it’s something that you should check with a tool such as GPU-Z if you’re unsure as to how your motherboard works. This would have the effect of possibly reducing FPS rather than the increases the Killer 2100 is touted to offer.




The LEDs have a pleasing appearance as the light goes through the mesh cover. Matches with some Lian Li and vented cases well, such as the one above. If this would ruin your lighting scheme (if you have one!), it can be turned off completely in the software that comes with the card.




Once you boot up your PC, before driver installation you’ll see two devices that need drivers in the device manager, as above. I recommend that you install the latest drivers from the Bigfoot Networks website, as there have been many revisions and improvements since release.




On installing the drivers and software, which come in a single package, the firmware of the card will be updated if it needs to be. This is relatively quick processes, but you may quickly stumble into it if you’re used to simply pressing ‘next’ at each screen. It’s very important that the process is not interrupted, as it may damage the card, so make sure you really do have all other open applications closed before you begin installing.

Above, you can see the first page presented to you by the Killer Network Manager software, which loads into the system tray at startup. This page provides basic information on your machine.