Austin-based Bigfoot Networks has signed up with Dell to offer PC gamers a dedicated network card that will purportedly increases connection speeds.

Bigfoot claims the Killer NIC K1 will facilitate speed increases as high as 20 percent, and will be included as a $149 option on Dell XPS 730 and 630 desktop gaming PCs.

But would gamers rather spend the extra cash on a better GPU or CPU? Bigfoot CFO and general manager Mike Cubbage told Edge gamers realize the benefit of a faster connection in an online-heavy gaming world.

"Gamers wouldn’t go for an integrated graphics solution, but they would spend at least $150 to get good graphics for their games. Likewise, they’d easily make a $150 distinction in between processors that offered lesser or equal performance benefits," he argued.

Cubbage said the Bigfoot's hardware offers a performance increase on "almost any level of hardware," particularly on Windows Vista-equipped machines.

Bigfoot says its Killer NIC K1 increases speed by bypassing the Windows stack and reducing in-game ping, and by offloading network processing from the CPU to the NPU.

Bigfoot has been shipping its products on Alienware gaming PCs since July 2007. Dell is Alienware's parent company.

Bigfoot is also working on more partnerships in the U.S. and in Europe, and also has dealings with system integrators like CyberPower and iBuyPower.