How to lower ping rates.

[David M]

Does anyone know how to lower ping rates in a game other than buying one of those really expensive NIC cards? I have a damn fast internet connection, typically 17mb, but sometimes my ping rates in games really stink...which of course means you get blown away more frequently. What do I need to tweak in order to lower them?

[pam123]

Just sometimes?
Is there a pattern ?
With your specs you don't need an expensive NIC card.

[David M]

Hi Pam. No pattern. Just wondering if there are techniques for reducing ones ping rate.

[Force Flow]

Two things...check to see that nothing else is hogging the bandwidth (an application firewall usually helps in determining this), bumping up the bandwidth (yours seems more than adaquate), or change ISPs (the ISP's network might be clogged.

Also, if you're far away from the relay point, your ping may be a bit high. Also, if a significant number of people are on the same service on the same street, the ping may be a little high.

[liambl]

The only thing that affects my online ping rates is distance from the server itself. Playing on US or euro servers usually results in 250-350 ping, but on a NZ server (hard to come buy) its around 40ms. Most games have a decent selection of AU servers which I get ~60 ping on so I usually choose those. Those so called "gaming" NICs are just a gimmick, and your ping has everything to do with whats between your modem and the server, not the PC.

[Force Flow]

The hardware in fact does have some affect. Junk brands/models won't perform as well as better or accepted brands/models. Granted, a standard quality NIC will result in pretty much the same performance as a specialized gaminig NIC (ie, Killer NIC), although I've seen some claims that showed slightly better performance. Not enough to matter in the long run, though.

[David M]

Is there any difference in speed between a separate NIC card and the motherboards ethernet port connection to the internet? If there is might a separate cheapo sub $50 NIC card be worth it?

[pam123]

Originally Posted by David M Is there any difference in speed between a separate NIC card and the motherboards ethernet port connection to the internet? If there is might a separate cheapo sub $50 NIC card be worth it?

For the really expensive NIC card the answer seems to be both "Yes" and "No", it depends on what games you play.

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/articl...50aHVzaWFzdA==

Or, it can but it probably won't.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2037155,00.asp


A much cheaper card might help with lag if you were heavily cpu bound but that doesn't appear to be your problem

[Masaki 7-11]

It looks like the really expensive NIC card doesn't really do all that much over a normal integrated NIC. It might make sense to get a discrete NIC card if the integrated one is defective or not running up to spec (although I don't see the need to spend a lot of money on a discrete NIC card; a $12 D-Link [or similar] NIC card would be good enough). If you are using an old router, it might help to upgrade either the router or the firmware; however ping performance is usually dependent on what applications are running (if you have networked applications running while gaming, that will increase the ping), your internet connection (generally if you have DSL or faster ping is pretty consistent), the distance to the server (the longer the distance, the higher the ping) and the performance of the server (if the server has trouble handling all the clients, ping will increase).

[Alaron]

Just to clarify David, have you looked to see where the servers you use are located? There really isn't anything to help pings when you play on far remote servers, compared to one located close to you. Of course, if you're playing on a server in California, and your pings are too high, then you might experiment with some of the suggestions here.

[ktkendall]

Think about the fact that you get 100Mb full duplex, and the transmit and receive are on separate wire pairs from your NIC to the ethernet port it is plugged into, then compare that to even your superfast 17Mb cable broadband connection which is transmitting and receiving simultaneously over the same circuit, then who knows what type of connections are out there to get to the server you are experiencing problems with, and I think, that the problem probably isn't with your NIC card. Try doing a tracert to the server next time you experience those high ping rates and you will probably see which leg of the journey is causing the slowdowns. You can go to sites like www.dslreports.com and do speed tests and follow some of the registry tweaks there to optimize everything possible on your PC as far as sending and receiving data as fast as possible. I've had great results by following the simple registry tweaks found there.

[David M]

Thanks everyone....much appreciated.