We’ve written on several occasions about GameRail, the private gaming backbone providing low-latency connections to gamers. The service has announced that it is shutting down:

It is with deep regret to announce that the GameRail network has been discontinued at this time. Thank you to the gamers who have participated in the GameRail trial and support of its development as we worked to solve the issues of latency and network quality and their impact on gaming. We believe that latency and network quality will continue to affect the gaming experience and while we are still believers in the GameRail concept, the market does not appear to be ready to support a standalone network for gaming at this time.

GameRail operated a high speed network that directly connected online game players to servers hosting popular games. GameRail’s business model was to deliver superior performance to its subscribers by peering directly with ISPs, universities and game server providers (GSPs). Low latency (”lag”) is crucial in multiplayer first-person shooter games like CounterStrike, where a slow connection can leave a player at a competitive disadvantage. But gamers are also a price-sensitive crowd, as noted by Wagner James Au at GigaOm:

GameRail’s death notice suggests a broader reason: There are probably very few gamers out there willing to pay extra to become what’s colloquially called an SLPB, or “super low ping bastard.”

Is fast memory really worth it? The folks at Tom’s Hardware set out to find out, and the result is Tom’s Ultimate RAM Speed Test. Here’s an excerpt:

Memory vendors have become excellent at marketing their latest high-end products: DDR3-2000 speeds are currently considered state of the art for enthusiast Intel platforms based on Intel’s P35, X38, X48 chipsets or the new Nvidia 7 series. But how much sense do these products really make? While mainstream DDR2 memory has reached almost ridiculously low price levels - you can get two 2 GB DDR2-800 DIMMs for less than $80 - DDR3 memory at 1600 speed or faster easily costs five times as much, without delivering even double the performance. In fact, for the vast majority of users, the difference between mainstream and high-end memory turns out to be extremely small.

Their conclusion: “The results must look disappointing for the memory vendors, as the largest performance differences we found amount to 7-8% with DivX and WinRAR, while almost all other benchmarks and applications perform alike: a 1-3% performance delta cannot be noticed at all.” Read the full story for more.

Bigfoot Networks has announced a new feature for its popular Killer NIC high-performance gaming network card. Killer Bandwidth Control lets gamers fine-tune how their Killer network card dedicates bandwidth to their games and other applications. Through a simple GUI interface, users can set how Killer should allocate bandwidth usage from other applications to ensure that the game receives the bandwidth it needs for consistently smooth performance.

“Every Windows gaming PC has other non-gaming tasks running in the background vying for network resources,” said Harlan Beverly, co-founder and CEO of Bigfoot Networks. “Killer Bandwidth Control can for example, stop PunkBuster or annoying Windows updates from ruining the experience by limiting the bandwidth they can use.”

The Killer NIC gaming network card is designed to reduce the lag and latency associated with high action MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) and FPS (First Person Shooter) games. With a dedicated Network Processing Unit (NPU), Killer NIC offloads network processing from the CPU, bypasses the Windows Network Stack and prioritizes game packets to boost average frame-rates and smooth gameplay during intense game situations.

With Bandwidth Control gamers can manage the bandwidth across all applications to further maximize their game performance. Key features include: (1) Bandwidth Priority settings tell Killer NIC which applications should get preferential access when multiple applications are vying for the same bandwidth, (2) Bandwidth Limits set a minimum/maximum upload and download bandwidth speed for any game or application.

Bigfoot Networks specializes in technologies designed to fight Lag in online games. The company’s mission is to enhance Internet-based online game experiences in multiplayer action games. The company’s hardware and software solutions are targeted at gamer PCs and game hosting servers.

Bigfoot Networks Inc Killer K1 64 MB PCI Wired Online Gaming Network Accelerator NIC (B011-500-0045)

The Killer™ K1 64 MB PCI Online Gaming Network Accelerator from Bigfoot Networks™ is a Network Card designed specifically for online gamers. Killer K1 accelerates gaming by bypassing the Windows Network Stack, getting to data to your game fast. It features 333 MHz Network Processing Unit with Lag and Latency Reduction Technology. Killer K1 can be upgraded to support the Flexible Network Architecture (FNA). This allows you to run applications such as firewalls and BitTorrent clients right on your Killer instead of your CPU.

High-speed gaming network GameRail is using routing services from Internap Network Services (INAP) to enhance its low latency connections to its audience of hard-core gaming customers, the companies announced today. Internap helps aggregate local broadband traffic and activity on to GameRail’s nationwide private network, which connects users directly to game sites.

GameRail operates a high speed network that directly connects online game players to servers hosting popular games. GameRail’s business model is to deliver superior performance to its subscribers by peering directly with ISPs, universities and game server providers (GSPs). Low latency (”lag”) is crucial in multiplayer first-person shooter games like CounterStrike, where a slow connection can leave a player at a competitive disadvantage.

“When 20 milliseconds is a matter of ‘life and death’ – winning and losing – for an online gamer, latency, packet loss and jitter can ruin the playing experience,” said Mark Senda, chief executive officer for GameRail. “Internap’s optimized network performance solutions allow us to provide localized ingress and egress connection speeds to three milliseconds, maximizing the flow of real-time Web traffic while optimizing game play.”

Peering with Major GSPs
GameRail has direct connect peering relationships with the leading game server providers with over 80 percent of First Person Shooter (FPS) and Real Time Strategy (RTS) gaming servers attached directly to the company’s private, nationwide network. Internap’s solutions ensure that residential broadband users of all carriers are able to enjoy the optimum gaming experience. Additionally, GameRail features private peering to route traffic away from the Internet and onto its private backbone.

“GameRail has a unique and superior online gaming solution and we are thrilled to work with the company to help them evolve,” said Tim Sullivan, chief technology officer for Internap. “As a Web-reliant enterprise, GameRail’s use of our innovative, proprietary technology is a significant proof point of the power of our resources for Internet-based business.”

Online multiplayer computer gaming is one of the fastest growing entertainment activities in the U.S., with more than 40 million people now playing regularly.

GameRail is operated by Progression LLC, a facilities-based network operator with interconnection facilities in eight major US markets including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Palo Alto, Seattle and St. Louis.

Computer maker Dell announced Friday that it will be spnsoring two of the world’s most recognized gaming teams – Team Pandemic and Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls. “With these sponsorships, Dell is ratcheting up its ability to network and play directly with college student and women gamers, via gaming events, online forums and other digital media,” said Susan Kittleson, director of Dell games and customer marketing. “Dell wants to showcase PC gaming at its highest level, and there’s no better way than to partner the best talent with our awarding-winning hardware.”

Team Pandemic will be the first pro-gaming team to exclusively game on Dell XPS systems featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors and Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. “Dell’s college initiative provides us the opportunity to work closely with the industry’s technology leaders,” said Chris Lemley, president of Team Pandemic. “With Dell Unleashed as a title partner, we have a unique variety of media to further reach the college-aged gamer.”

The Frag Dolls, a team of seven women gamers, will hold a casting call for a new member as part of the sponsorship with Dell. I wrote about the Frag Dolls on GameJournalism.com back in 2004, and it turned out to be one of the best read articles on that blog (now part of Video Game Media Watch). The combination of attractive women and FPS gaming was a hit magnet, which is clearly what Ubisoft was thinking when it assembled the team. The Dell sponsorship will likely raise the Frag Dolls’ profile even further.

Applicants for the casting call will be interviewed Aug. 2-5 in the Dell booth at QuakeCon in Dallas, and the qualifiers will compete in the finals on Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas at Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) in Seattle, Aug. 24-26.

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Gigafrag.net have announced details of their upcoming Call of Duty 4 BYOC LAN event in Visalia, CA.

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The title says it all. Alienware, an über-hardware maker, presented a prototype giant curved widescreen monitor at the Consumer Electronics Show. How large is this new-fangled doohickey? Around 24 inches. Have a look at the video and weep.

I sincerely hope the monitor would have HDMI. Good luck in running Crysis at 2880 x 900 though.
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