Question Gaming online feels less responsive and accurate than it should (offline is fine)

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
Hello, ive posted here before about this issue however it never really got fixed.

The explanation to the problem im having is hard to describe, but ill try.
When im in a offline gamemode such as training or practise range the game feels perfectly fine and smooth like it should. However when i enter a online game it starts to feel alot less responsive and accurate with aiming (it might affect the movement input aswell but im not sure).
My fps remain the same almost consinstantly while differing between online and offline (200fps) it might drop to max 190fps.

My specs are:

RTX 2060 6GB

I7 8700

16gb ballistic 3200mhz ddr4 cl16 ram (recently bought)

Asus prime z390a (recently bougtht)

The problem is incredibly odd. Ive checked my entire network equipment and replaced everything with new equipment.
Ive run several DDUs without any luck.

However it gets even weirder when it differs between games.
Between overwatch and valorant it feels incredibly sluggish like i explained above but on example warzone it feels quite decent, not nearly as bad as the other games.

And even so the problem has just been different all the time. There used to be a gamemode in Overwatch where you were playing in a 12 person ffa arena, inside that gamemode (which obviously was online) it felt amazing but as soon as i entered a quickplay, comp or even a 3v3 it just felt bad again. It never feels like a stable input. However if i enter the same gamemode now it sometimes can feel good but sometimes it doesnt. Im going crazy about this...

Im incredibly annoyed at this problem hence why im desperate to find a person helping me find the solution.
Ive been trying to fix this problem for a year now. (The pc has been like this since the beginning hence why i bought new specs to eliminate solutions).

Ive checked taskmanager several times while playing but there isnt any massive problem there.
I also close down everything except for discord, the game im playing and a few softwares such as steam and razer synapse.

One last note about this. For some reason turning off xbox live applications completely (by inactivating them through services) seemed to help a little but like i said didnt solve anything.
 
Last edited:

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
I am looking for CPU and GPU utilization percentages while gaming, on and off line. Let Task Manager (Performance tab) run in background while gaming. Share that information.
Since it doesnt seem to work. Ive tried but like i said it just lowers the stats when i tab out. Is there a specific way to do it?
 
An online game can play completely differently from one multiplayer round to the next...because you're not always connecting to the same server or game host. I've never played a game that played consistently the same round after round...there is almost always a difference. The host, server, or ping is always a changing item...nothing is static.

As far as the difference between single player and multiplayer...most games run an entirely separate version of the game between the two so there's not really any way to judge them side by side. CoD is a great example...up until recently the single and multiplayer could even be installed separately.

Almost without exception everyone I game with, regardless of hardware, lowers in game quality settings in multiplayer to increase performance since doing so decreases load times and helps reduce hardware demands on the GPU and CPU.

Try running your multiplayer sessions on medium quality and see if things improve...it should knock a lot of that sluggish feel off. Also turning down options like anti-aliasing and shadow quality will have a dramatic impact on making things feel faster.

It's also a good idea to evaluate your internet connection regardless of the equipment used...hit Speedtest.net and pick servers on the other side of the country to test your connection on. Speedtest always picks a server close to you by default which does not reflect how your gaming experience will be when connecting with random people from all over.
 

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
An online game can play completely differently from one multiplayer round to the next...because you're not always connecting to the same server or game host. I've never played a game that played consistently the same round after round...there is almost always a difference. The host, server, or ping is always a changing item...nothing is static.

As far as the difference between single player and multiplayer...most games run an entirely separate version of the game between the two so there's not really any way to judge them side by side. CoD is a great example...up until recently the single and multiplayer could even be installed separately.

Almost without exception everyone I game with, regardless of hardware, lowers in game quality settings in multiplayer to increase performance since doing so decreases load times and helps reduce hardware demands on the GPU and CPU.

Try running your multiplayer sessions on medium quality and see if things improve...it should knock a lot of that sluggish feel off. Also turning down options like anti-aliasing and shadow quality will have a dramatic impact on making things feel faster.

It's also a good idea to evaluate your internet connection regardless of the equipment used...hit Speedtest.net and pick servers on the other side of the country to test your connection on. Speedtest always picks a server close to you by default which does not reflect how your gaming experience will be when connecting with random people from all over.
Alright. Thanks for the tips! I always play on the lowest settings in every game except valorant really. To prevent this exact thing.
And i get whatchu mean with connection feeling different, however its hard to describe but with my old pc i obviously didnt have the same connection but it was still feeling like it should while playing.
Hence why im so confused about this specific problem that have been active since the purchase of my pc.

Ive always wondered if something is bothering the connection or that im getting directed to a server far away from me... who knows. I dont know how to find that out tho. Is there anything to do about this?
 
Ive always wondered if something is bothering the connection or that im getting directed to a server far away from me... who knows. I dont know how to find that out tho. Is there anything to do about this?

A lot of games hide the server connection so you'll have to dig for it in the game menus...but most games will at least tell you what region you're connecting to even if you can't change it. I've had guys in my gaming group get pushed to servers outside their region...we are all located in North America but one of our guys was pushed to Europe which made no sense. If you're lucky the game will let you connect manually to servers through a list...in which case I've always sorted the server list by ping and connected to the lowest one available. Other games use host based connections which really are not good...it's just a way for them to go cheap and not invest in servers all over the country. I believe in those scenarios the gamer closest to the actual sever is used as the host and everyone else connects through that person to the server...which usually results in a lag fest.

As far as your hardware in your PC the only thing you can really do is optimize what you have. Having the fastest storage drives you can afford helps a lot...also having a lot of fast memory so the game can keep what it needs in memory and not hit the hard drive as often can help. I run strictly NVME m.2 drives to hold my my game files and 32gig of low latency memory in my gaming rig. I also reboot my cable modem and wifi router weekly to try and reduce network impacts to my gaming as much as possible.

One other thing to consider is the bloatware that Windows comes with now. It's a good idea to go into the Privacy settings and disable all of the report back crapware Windows has running...and there is a ton of it. Also scheduling Windows updates and virus scans so it's not downloading update files or running scans in the middle of your gaming session is a good idea.
 
Last edited:

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
Alright. Thanks for the tips! I always play on the lowest settings in every game except valorant really. To prevent this exact thing.
And i get whatchu mean with connection feeling different, however its hard to describe but with my old pc i obviously didnt have the same connection but it was still feeling like it should while playing.
Hence why im so confused about this specific problem that have been active since the purchase of my pc.

Ive always wondered if something is bothering the connection or that im getting directed to a server far away from me... who knows. I dont know how to find that out tho. Is there anything to do about this?
Good comments above. By the way, your files still aren't publicly available.

Regardless, what is the CPU utilization percentage difference when gaming off-line vs. on-line?
im confused on how to make them public...
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
Did it work?
Yes. Honestly, you should have been able to read them and see if there are any significant CPU usage levels. Stand by.

When the tool is running, it keeps track of CPU utilization (see below for an example):

3eZJud0.png
 
Last edited:

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
The highlighted area indicates how hard your CPU is working. Intent is to determine if there is a significant difference between on-line and off-line gaming. Very straight-forward comparison.
Well is there any bad things about the comparison? i mean i still dont get normal statistics etc hence why i sent it here. How much difference in % is bad??
Since it looks realy differnet in these files.
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
Ignore the files. Just use the utilization section I highlighted. Just need to know if there is a greater than 10% difference between on-line and off-line gaming.

Run hwmonitor and fire up a game, let run in background. Play a few minutes, and tab out. Check the numbers.
 

TheCitruss

Prominent
Aug 12, 2019
54
0
530
Ignore the files. Just use the utilization section I highlighted. Just need to know if there is a greater than 10% difference between on-line and off-line gaming.

Run hwmonitor and fire up a game, let run in background. Play a few minutes, and tab out. Check the numbers.
But everytime i tab out it doesnt show the correct stats since the game isnt focused anymore.