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Thread: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

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    Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Well I finally have a stable wireless network adapter. After buying 3, yes 3... as a last resort i tried taking the PCI card out of my old PC and googling what it says on the box, and to my suprise Sitecom have supported a product from 2004 with Vista 32bit and 64bit drivers for this year. The card is similar in looks to the Netgear WL311T, but must be older (it's a Sitecom WL-115).

    It runs better (so far..) than a DLink USB 300mb wireless N device, a 108mbps wireless G Netgear WL311T card and an awful Netnear USB device.

    The only problem is I seem to be experiencing lag spikes when playing online. I've only tried Steam games (HL 2 : Death Match, CS:S, DOD:S and TF2) - randomly every minute or few minutes it will "hang" and the action will pause, and then it'll put me back in the action but I'll either be dead or about 2 seconds behind. I actually have a low ping of around 20 - 40 on most of the servers I've tried, too.

    It's been fine for browsing so far with none of those infamous (and annoying) random cutouts and overheating. Downloading seems fine, too.

    Is this possibly a settings issue or does Vista really hate all these wireless devices that much, or have I just been terribly unlucky?

    I have disabled the windows firewall - I have on "Network discovery", "File sharing", "Public folder sharing", and "password protected sharing". This is the only PC on the network, so can I/should I turn any of those off?

    Any general advice? All is welcome.

    Thank you.

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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Does the action actually pause, or is it just the internet updating that pauses. If it's the former then I suspect it's not actually network related, rather something else. I occasionally get the same thing (whole pause) in TDU the first time my gfx card fan speed changes - there's obviously something in the driver that's getting a little hung up when it's doing fan stuff.

    So I'd check to see if that might be happening with you too - perhaps try a third party tool to disable automatic fan speed and set it at a fixed level. It might have nothing to do with it, but worth a try.

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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Thanks for the suggestion my friend, but I am convinced it's to do with Vista; specifically the way it handles wireless connections itself. Many people are reporting lag spikes every 60 seconds due to roaming issues where it "searches" for other computers at this time in the network - it's not easy to disable, though there are some programs that claim to fix it (not tried just yet).

    Here is a picture of the dreaded lag spike...



    My main issue is the constant wireless drop offs I experience in online gaming. Every few minutes there is a lag spike which affects me, effectively making me a sitting duck. It is due to the automatic polling for wireless networks that Vista performs (its equivalent of the wireless zero configuration in XP). I have downloaded a tool called Vista Anti Lag as well as batch scripts that alter the netsh settings for AutoConfig on the WLan but these have not been much help unfortunately. If I had not bought a new computer I would never have gone with Vista.

    That is exactly my problem as well.
    Last edited by WoLFe; 23-07-2008 at 11:45 AM.

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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Have you tried QOS, some routers have this, you can give priority to games and such.. I've never actually done this as i don't do wireless and have never had any issues. But it might be worth a try, i think if you google it you might find something.. I'm also on vista. I try to avoid wireless for gaming but i can see the need. Homeplugs are getting cheaper these days, would that be a viable upgrade in future?

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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Thanks for the reply Lancia, luckily that Anti-Lag Vista program is really good and has fixed everything so far.

    My wireless problems are completely solved!

    I may write to watchdog about Netgear though, they are an absolute shambles. Disgraceful, to be honest.

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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Sadly this is a really common issue WoLFe

    There is a good looking thread here that may be of use.
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    Re: Lag Spikes When Gaming..

    Disabling ssid scans fixes the problem. This is just one of many reasons why wireless is unsuitable for anything resembling low-latency links.
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