[SOLVED] Network connectivity inconsistent between two devices with the same network adapter..

[prestoncole27]

Hello right off the bat here are the specs for all items related to this issue.

Main PC : WIN 10 64 bit,GTX 1070, Ryzen 7 2700x, 16 gigs of ram, and a MSI B450- A pro motherboard.
Network adapter : Netgear AC1200
Laptop: It's a generic non flagship WIN 10 64 bit HP Laptop 15-dy1xxx, i5-1035G1, 12 gigs of ram, and under motherboard in system info it's just named 86C9
Router: GigaSpireGS2020E
Devices connected to the internet: 5
Internet type: Dual band 2.4GHz to 5GHz 1 Gigabit connection fiber optic. (Adapter has been set to 5GHz only during testing due to being just 5 ft away from router)

So i've noticed my PC's internet connectivity has declined to the point where online gaming is pretty much unplayable, My ping jumps around like crazy in any lobby and most of the time I just get kicked for connectivity issues. (Note when I say online gaming I do not mean Google Stadia the only reason it's involved is for internet testing purposes) I decided to use Google Stadia as a real time benchmark, With that said I launched Red Dead Redemption 2 on my main PC and it was stuttering constantly with resolution jumping from 480p to 1080p so at that point I decided to run a speed test and got around 30 mbps down and 30 up(On average run all tests multiple times and took the average). After that obviously something is very wrong so I connected my phone to the wifi and do a speedtest and I get about 125 mbps. So now I know that's it probably not the internet and it could be the wireless adapter. I grabbed my laptop, disabled the internal network adapter and plugged in the AC1200 ran the speedtest and got 140 mbps on average. I opened Red Dead on Stadia and it ran flawlessly with no stuttering and at 4K with no resolution drops. So now I figure the issue is isolated and it has to be something with the connectivity on my main PC? That's all I got on the issue so far any help would be greatly appreciated, Thanks.

 

[bill001g]

Why did not you not try your desktop machine on a ethernet cable.

Wifi is known for this problem. It is not the speedtest number that matters. Most games use well under 1mbps.....I have no idea what stadia uses i suspect it is much higher. Stadia is actually worse for testing because it is also affected by random issues in the internet path.

What games care about is extremely consistent latency..ie ping times. It is not uncommon to get random spikes of a few hundred ms on wifi and this causes lag in games. This is generally caused by interference both from devices inside your house and outside your house.

It is very hard to compare even the same wifi nic in different devices. Since you put a desktop nic into a laptop I am assuming it is a USB device. These have tiny antenna and many times low power output. When you plug them into a desktop machine most times the metal case of the machine will block a lot of the signal. It might help to get a USB extension cable.

In the end you should try to find a different solution than using wifi to play games, it is just to unpredictable. You could look at MoCA and powerline networks instead.