Help with lag spikes... network tweaks?

(Cyber-Knight) #1

I’m getting lag spikes no matter what server I play on. things just going smoothly, then all of a sudden it stops for like 5 seconds. I notice it happens when many sound effects are being registered at the same time. for example, a airstrike is flying over head at the same time a grenade is going off while I just tripped over a mine.

On my lagometer, the top bar (graphics) stays a pretty constant blue with some yellow streaks. Same with the lower bar (network) stays pretty green most of the time. When the sudden spikes happen though, the lower bar just has a huge chunk missing. no red, no yellow, just green green, then BLANK, green.

I am on ADSL, and I’m running an Athlon 64 3000+, MSI RX9800 Video Card, Soltek, SL-K8AN2E-GR mobo, and 512MB Samsung PC3200 RAM. Note that my old 5 yr old comp didn’t have these kinds of spikes. Even if I was running at 10 fps, I didn’t get these subtle spikes like I am now.

I’ve tried messing with network tweaks. snaps, cl_timenudge, cl_maxpackets (setting this to equal or half of my com_maxfps) My PB is updated via pbweb.exe.

Could it be my ISP? Cuz I didn’t have this before… Should I try using a NIC card instead of my onboard mobo LAN? Could it possibly be my RAM? Keep in mind, I’m not ready to buy more RAM for my system just yet… Suggest a tweak?

Attempt to enlighten me please.

(SCDS_reyalP) #2

The blank usually indicates that something in your system is freezing. This is likely a driver or hardware issue, rather than a config issue. The fact that your old system didn’t have this happen also supports that conclusion

512 megs of ram should be plenty, unless you have some other memory hog apps open. Check if your HD light is going when your game freezes. If so, you may need to free up some memory, by closing apps, or using lower quality settings.

PB sometimes does things like this, you can test by playing on non-pb servers.

You don’t mention sound card, are you using builtin audio ? Most onboard sound devices are really bad. I would expect them just to give poor quality, but given that the hitches happen when there is a lot of sound, that might be worth investigating.

(Cyber-Knight) #3

I’m using a SoundBlaster Audigy2 (just a normal one, no suffix). Came SoundCard I used with my old computer in fact.

Quake3 uses the CPU to calculate sounds doesn’t?

(SCDS_reyalP) #4

should be fine then.

Quake3 uses the CPU to calculate sounds doesn’t?

I don’t think it uses any of the fancy hardware stuff like EAX etc.

(Cyber-Knight) #5

hmm… I don’t find myself stuttering playing Doom3…
so I don’t think it’s my ISP…

(evilsock) #6

Just out of interest, what is play like when you host your own local server? <-- is it ok then? That should give you some indication if it’s caused by local hardware issues or a genuine ISP problem.

Open ET in a window, pick a server where you see these spikes and do a Start / Run / Cmd - then do;

tracert xx.xx.xx.xx <-- IP of game server

See what the ping times are like for each router hop - try this for several game servers and compare - what’s it look like? Are you seeing high ping time responces 500ms or > ?

Then there’s all the obvious stuff that no one likes to have to do but really should to isolate the problem -

What version of O/S are you running? (if XP and SP2, have you Googled for your machine and hardware issues ?)
BIOS settings - if it will let you, save your current config and attempt to use the ‘fail safe’ options if the option is present
Are ‘known good’ drivers running for your hardware?
DirectX?
Startup applications?
Background apps?

Install a fresh copy of ET into a completely seperate directory - does this installation behave in exactly the same way as your current installation?

HTH

(Maximus191) #7

Maybe try loading your game to the main title screen (not on a server) and then drop console and type /pb_system 1 if this don’t work put it back to 0

(Cyber-Knight) #8

Okay, so I Hosted a Game (with only me in it of course) and yes, I still do get the spikes. so it probably is hardware…

hmm… what do you guys recommend I set my Paging (Virtual RAM) to?

also, what are teh lowest possible values for com_hunk/sound/zone megs? I can load up maps in like 8 seconds, so I might as well set these values low.

(SCDS_reyalP) #9

You need to find out if paging is what is causing the spikes. All you have to do is check if your HD light goes every time you spike. If it does, you either have some other program causing the problem, or you are running out of RAM. If it doesn’t then you need to look elsewhere…

With 512 megs of RAM, the default memory settting should be fine. Unless you set them insanely high, they will not be the cause of your problem.

(no_shad) #10

Try swapping your ram. I have a very similar if not identical problem and i’m pretty sure it’s my ram causing it. Depending on what setup i have…timings, dual channel,1 or 2 sticks etc. i can produce blank sections or solid red blocks on the lagometer, with the same lag and looping sound.