EndLagNow.org Forums / EndLagNow.org Forums / Lag Research

Lag on laptop Wifi?

Tytus — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:40:29 GMT

Just wondering if any of you have had lag due to WIFI from gaming on a laptop.

Since I've been desktop only for a few days, i've noticed better overall performance, and less stuttering, etc.

Of course my desktop has a Killer, but wondering what others experience gaming on a laptop has been?

Tytus

Video FPS vs. Network Latency

dyggen — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 14:25:49 GMT

This is a debate that I have been having with a friend of mine and I am hoping someone out there has some real information that can help nail down the truth (even if the truth disagrees with my perception and understanding).

We both play an MMORPG (World of Warcraft).

We, of course, experience lag from time to time.

We both have cable DSL connection to the Internet and we both have pretty quality PC's (CPU and video card-wise).

The question is what causes different types of lag and are they related?

For instance:

My understanding is that FPS is completely independent of network response time.
I can play non-Internet games and videos on my PC with the network disconnected and I get 60fps.
I play online and I get 60fps.
The only time my fps dips below 60fps is when the graphics get "busy" (lots of different complex effects on my screen at once or a whole lot of objects moving simultaneously).
I can play online and disconnect the network in mid-play and I still get 60fps...my character is standing there performing whatever action...never quite completing that action....but still doing it at 60fps display rate.

My friend's understanding is that FPS and network response time are closely, if not, directly related.
He says that if his network latency goes up, his FPS goes down.

I do not have the same experience. I have had network latency of over 2000ms and still my game displays at 60fps.

The reason I think what I think:
If I go to youtube.com and try to watch a video, if my network latency is high, the video display fps will be directly affected because 100% of that video being displayed is dependent upon data being received from the Internet in real time (streaming).

However, if I pause the video and let it catch up (cache), then I can play the video at my 60fps with no problem because now it is playing locally rather than directly from the Internet stream. The cached video is only reliant upon CPU and video card performance to determine it's FPS and not the network.

World of Warcraft is a client that plays locally on my computer (like the cached video). Therefore, so long as my CPU and/or video card are not overloaded I will always get my 60fps regardless of what the network is doing.

The game gets information about the objects on my screen (their relative position, trajectory, statistics like mana and hit points) from the data stream...and that IS reliant upon the network response time; however the rate at which those objects are displayed on my screen (FPS) is NOT reliant upon the network response time. (an example is a moving object that stops moving forward but is running in place...the object has stopped moving in a direction because the network latency has made it so the game client does not have updated information as to where that object should be...but that object running in place is displayed at 60fps)

So, if my CPU and video card are not overtaxed but my network latency is high, then I will get 60fps display rate, however objects on my screen will jump around, freeze in place (but not the whole screen freezing), disappear, run in place, etc.

Conversely, if my CPU and/or video card are being overtaxed for whatever reason, then my whole screen "stutters" and my view of the game slows or halts (freezes intermittently).

My friend thinks that World of Warcraft works like the streamed (not cached) video...if the network "lags" then the video fps will "lag" proportionally.

Sorting out the truth in this matter (what causes each type of "lag") will be extremely helpful in troubleshooting these lag issues when they come up.

Anyone out there have the knowledge (verifiable with sources, if possible) of what the difference (if any) is?

We want to know:
1.) Does network latency cause video FPS latency?
2.) Does FPS latency cause network latency?

Thanks in advance and apologies for the long, convoluted post.

LagMeter doesn't start

Nightshadow — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 10:47:05 GMT

Hi,

After I installed LagMeter it doesn't want to start. When starting I only hear a error tune and I don't get any error.

Can somone help met with this problem please?

Nightshadow

Unmentioned Lag Meter Error (version 3.0)

Renegadius — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:13:36 GMT

Alright, so basically, my installation went off without a hitch, but I can't seem to start this program up... I've included my error message below, and trust that by leaving the problem in the hands of someone more technically inclined, I can take one step closer to assessing ways of killing off lag in my laptop...

"LagMeter.exe - .NET Framework Initialization Error"

To run this application, you must install one of the following versions of the .NET Framework:
v.2.0.50727
Contact your application publisher for instructions about obtaining the appropriate version of the .NET Framework.

LagMeter error

t3dt2c — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 03:48:33 GMT

Hi,

I receive the message "Error Accessing WINPCAP please download it from winpcap.org" when i start LagMeter. Apart from that I also receive an error message when installing winpcap that states the program will only be able to use network monitor (netmon) on normal lan connections and not dial-up or vpn connections. My windows setup was made using nLite to subtract all the unnecessary services i didn't need. And I figure LagMeter would work anyway, but responding to the error message closes the program. Its related to my windows setup, so perhaps someone might recognise which service is particularly responsible for the error messages from this list of removed services:

Alerter
Application Layer Gateway
Automatic Updates
Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)
Beep Driver
DHCP Client
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)
DNS Client
Error Reporting
Fax Service
HTTP SSL
IMAPI CD-Burning COM Service
Indexing Service
Internet Authentication (IAS)
IPSEC Policy Agent
Message Queuing (MSMQ)
Messenger
Network DDE
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Network Provisioning
NT LM Security Support Provider Service
Performance Logs and Alerts
Protected Storage
QoS RSVP
Quality of Service (QoS)
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Routing and Remote Access
Secondary Logon
Service Advertising Protocol
Shell Services
SNMP
System Event Notification
System Monitor
System Restore Service
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
Telephony
Telnet
Terminal Services
Text Services Framework
Uninterruptible Power Supply
Universal Plug and Play Device Host
Volume Shadow Compy
WebClient
Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS)
Windows User Mode Driver Framework
Wireless Configuration

In which MMO have you experienced the worst Lag?

Admin — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:20:59 GMT

Help us determine which games lag the worst and lag the least! Feel free to add additional comments in reply to this post after taking the poll.

Thanks for the feedback!

End Lag Now

it wont work

sandeky89 — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 11:36:19 GMT

i just installd the program and it wont work. what is a JIT debugger?

LAG meter

BlackDeath — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 12:19:36 GMT

Well I was using the lag meter and I noticed that when playing CS Source that my machine would lag out for 1-2 sec I turned off the fraps and it still did it. Seems that the monitoring of traffic clogs something up ever 5mins or so. Anyone else ever have this problem?

Broadband Poll

hunter — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:46:14 GMT

Im curious as to how many people are subscribed to which broadband technologies.

KillerNIC and Linux?

wormhole — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 07:31:46 GMT

I've been nosing around in various threads, and I keep seeing a lot of info by Tytus about upping machine specs and such, and blaming a lot of latency on the MS network stack and inefficient game programming. Everything I've seen as far as tech specs show the tests were run on Windows. Well, contrary to popular belief, you can game on Linux, with some effort (Cedega is making it pretty easy actually, nowadays). So I guess my questions are...

1) Do you even plan to release drivers for Linux?
2) Have any tests been done to show improvement over the Linux network stack?

I'm not really a hardcore gamer, but this card intrigues me on so many levels (as a gamer, and an academic - I'm almost finished with an Associate's in High Performance Computing). In distributed computing, the greatest bottleneck faced is in the network. Making use of an affordable (compared to something like fiber or Infiniband) solution to speed up communications between clients could really help bring the costs down for someone needing power on a budget (my tech school has to plead with research institutions to give us time on their clusters because we can't afford to field a decent one).

I run an Opteron 170, 2 Gigs of DDR400 OCZ RAM, eVGA GeForce 7900 GT KO, and a SATA Seagate Barracuda, dual booting with Server 03 and Gentoo Linux. Not outstanding specs, but I built it to hold up for several years without needing many upgrades. Between me and the cable modem I run through a router with NAT (no reasonable choice with three other machines and a server running), and I come in at about 200ms assuming no server lag on my WoW client.

This card holds a lot of promise as a 'toy' that I can explore (who doesn't love embedded processors!?) and as a useful piece of equipment to really enhance my gaming experience. I'd just hate for it to remain a Windows-world only toy (learn from ATI - support Linux! )

DSL vs. Cable - Which one is Has Less Lag

hunter — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 17:57:00 GMT

Another DSL vs. Cable question. Wanna see what you guys think!

Fighting Lag and comparo

GameTraveler — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 10:27:50 GMT

Well, I've browsed the forums, and the BigFootNetworks pages. Seen the spec for the KN, although the sticker shock nearly had me falling out of my chair.

There's a mention that the PCI bus is sufficient for the KN, yet a few items come to mind:
* The PCI bus is generally shared with other items in the PCI slots (not that it matters with most gamers not using anything but what's on the motherboard)
* The PCI bus is typically a finite amount of available bandwidth, granted that even the older ISA bus is actually still sufficient for today's peripherals, but long since faded away
* The PCI card slots available are dwindling

On another note, I've always been a proponent of having dedicated hardware in my gaming machine for specific tasks, and avoiding any on board devices as much as possible. For example, my current box:

AMD Opteron 170 dual core 0550 UPMW CCB1E mild OC to 2.6 Ghz
Thermalright SI-120 & Panaflo 115CFM 120mm fan
Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
OCZ 550W PSU
2 GB OCZ EL Gold XTC PC4000 3-4-3-8
eVGA e-GeForce 7950 GX2
Chaintech AV710 7.1
SysKonnect 9E21D PCIe x1
Areca 1230 SATA PCIe x8 RAID controller 256 MB cache + BBU
4 x 74 GB Western Digital Raptors in RAID0
1 x 200 GB Seagate sATA JBOD
BenQ DW1640 DVD-RW/CD-RW
Thermaltake Armor full-size ATX, black
Hitachi CML174 17" LCD
WinXP SP2

Notice that I opted to leave the audio, storage, and networking to add-on cards. If I don't use the onboard stuff, then any CPU cycles that would have had to arbitrate or administer those functions will be free to direct at the game I play.

How does the KN compare to the SysKonnect NIC?

SysKonnect was chosen since they didn't use the broadcom chipsets, had consistent performance when tested against Intel and 3Com NICs (Intel has their own chip, and 3Com used the broadcom chipset), and were typically found in servers.

Quality of Service and Mobile Ad Hoc Gaming

hunter — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:53:01 GMT

This is a white paper from two reserarchers in switzerland. Dirk Budke et. al.

It discusses the importance of how QoS or Quality of Service , which is used everywhere by alot of internet applications and devices to make sure the quality of the line is being secured from the users or clients. It also mentions how mobile gaming can be affected by using methods of QoS for control over Ad Hoc (or from client to client; gamer to gamer) enviroments.

QoS in a nutshells means that this type of protocol conditioning , per say, is trying to make sure it delivers the best posssible speed and line condition so you don't get hit from anything outside the boundries.

here is the white paper. There is some techno jargon, but for those geeks, you'll understand!

http://ares.insa-lyon.fr/wons2006/Articles/05-Budke.pdf

Great read, considering that gaming is being taken to the next level on phones and portable devices! Especially with cellular technology, bluetooth, and wifi!

Lag is an interesting word...

leonziur — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 22:46:47 GMT

I've found 'lag' to be an interesting word when chatting in games. I am referring not to what the word means, but how it is used. It seems to be one of those words that can be used as a noun, adjective, verb, etc. and the ways to use the word in a sentence are seemingly endless. My personal favorite use of lag is when someone told me "Your momma lags so bad she..." I was laughing so hard when I heard that.

What's your favorite use of 'lag' in a sentence?