Bigfoot Networks announced today that it will be making an appearance during BlizzCon 2007 when it happens at the Anaheim Convention Center in California between August 3 and 4.

The good thing about this is that the company will be giving away Killer NIC network cards for fans who will be passing its booth. We guess you're quite familiar now what's the deal with Killer NIC.

If you're not, then we're pretty sure that you have two major problems - namely lag and latency. Bigfoot created Killer NIC with Blizzard's World of Warcraft in mind, implementing Lag and Latency Reduction Technology for a better gaming experience.

"World of Warcraft and the Killer NIC make a great combo. It is the huge demand for the Killer NIC by WoW gamers that brings us to BlizzCon. The fact Blizzard only allows ten companies to be sponsors of BlizzCon shows how much they believe in the power of the Killer NIC and what it delivers for games like World of Warcraft," commented Bigfoot Networks CEO Harlan Beverly.

The above mentioned companies include Intel, nVIDIA, AT&T, Dell, Logitech, Creative, and Cisco among others. Bigfoot's booth number at Blizzcon is S101.

This was probably the reason why the Killer NIC network card from Bigfoot Networks was included in those custom-built-for-WoW PCs. While numbers are scientifically accurate in depicting the performance of any given product, there's no substitute for real-world tests by real-world gamers, so [H]Enthusiast set out to see if this card lives up to its promise of improving frames-per-second and decreasing lag and latency.

[H]Enthusiast used CounterStrike, Quake 4, FEAR, and yes, World of Warcraft (and their related gamers) as their test subjects. The test involved the gamers playing their game on their preferred PC setup - but each setup had both the PC's built-in network card and the Killer NIC which [H]Enthusiast could switch between at any point in the game. The gamers were asked to observe any changes in frame rates and latency.

The verdict? For Quake and CS, the gamers didn't notice much of a difference between using the Killer NIC and the regular network interface card. In FEAR the gamer noticed that with the Killer NIC, his PC was "ahead of what was on the server," with less lags than the regular network card, or the NIC in his own PC at home.

It was in World of Warcraft where the Killer NIC really shone. Not only was the gamer's overall gameplay smoother, with less lags and latency, he also "felt like the Killer was keeping the server from 'spiking and lagging.'" Fluid animation, steady gameplay where he didn't have to worry about killer lags, the Killer NIC turned out to be the killer card for WoW.

So how much does it cost if you're a WoW player? A whopping US$ 280.00, a price point that generated enough industry buzz in itself. Now that's what you call a killer card. Excuse us while we take our budget to the emergency room.

It's kinda unfair that Blizzard's World of Warcraft is so ***d**n popular, that WidowPC will actually piece together for you a specially-crafted WoW-online gaming PC so you can enjoy in full glory the phenomenon that is WoW. Sigh, some of us here wonder if they plan on extending this kind of special treatment to other games that we like, like EVE Online, or Command and Conquer 3, or Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This WoW rig comes equipped with AMD's Athlon 64 FX OR Dual Core (your pick) on an A8N-E motherboard. Toss in nVidia's GeForce 7600, 11 bays for 5.25" hard drives, up to 4GB of DDR RAM, the Killer NIC ethernet card, and high-def sound that blind people can play to (oky, not in WoW, but WidowPC has an article about the blind playing shooters...).

And you get to pick between two lovely PC casings (the picture we've included), the TU-155 and RX-9, both of which look nothing like an Orc, but who's complaining? With that kind of power under the hood, grinding through Azeroth should be no problem. If you can pony up upwards of US$ 1,495 for the basic package, that is.

But tell you what, WidowPC. Throw in the option to upgrade to one of those sweet G80 mothers, and that's a deal that we'd take (even if you throw in the price differential for the G80). With that kind of power, we can then use the PC for more than World of Warcraft - like Crysis, FSX, C&C3, The Sims...