[SOLVED] Wifi on 150-250 mbps download speed, but HUGE lag spikes when gaming.

[redarrow9]

Hi, please help me figure this out.

I am using fiber optics, which gives me between 150-250mbps download speed. It's fast, however, when I'm playing games, I have huge huge lag spikes every moment which literally makes any online game unplayable. every moment my ping jumps up to 200+ and I teleport all over the place constantly. I play on local nearby servers. I am using a wifi adapter.

I've narrowed some cause of this but I don't know what it is exactly. To be clear and short, my PC has 24gb ram, and is running quad core windows 10, so this is nothing to do with my machine, and no weird softwares running. Here's where it things get weird

My internet is service gives me 250mbps.

• I bought different wifi adapters from amazon, and these ones give me 250 mbps download speed (speedtested). My current one gives me 300mbps, but it gives me unbearable lag spikes in game
• I have another old wireless adapter which gives me only 30mps, however it is perfectly stable in games. when I do speedtest, it can only go as high as 30mbps.
• I tried a different wifi adapters which promises to give 250mbps + and they do in speed tests, but when I play games, it ALSO gives me unbearable lag.

I also noticed that during speed tests, the mbps can change quite fast. it can be doing 250, but then in the next few seconds go down to 150. My theory is that while it can connect at 250mbps, if the speed changes drastically, say down to 150mbps, the rapid change can causes a spike though it is still high. my other old adapter doesn't do this and it is stable to play games with. I'm theorizing that if I am able to limit my mbps to something that is lower and stable, I would be able to play games better. Does anyone have any suggestions or something to help me fix this??

 

[DSzymborski]

Let's start with complete specs, including the game, and your router/modem information. And what kind of connection you have with your internet provider, not just the rated bandwidth.

You appear to be confusing bandwidth with latency. You can have good download speeds but high ping.

 

[bill001g]

Games do not care much about bandwidth. You could have a 1mbps connection and most likely would run fine. They care about consistent latency. Wifi is subject to interference from sources outside your house which you can do nothing about. This interference causes data retrasmission which takes time. You there for get inconsistent latency...ie ping spikes.

Pretty much this is why you should not play online games on wifi. It is too unpredictable for stable lag free game play.

 

[redarrow9]

Let's start with complete specs, including the game, and your router/modem information. And what kind of connection you have with your internet provider, not just the rated bandwidth.

You appear to be confusing bandwidth with latency. You can have good download speeds but high ping.

The complete specs are not so necessary. it is Battlefield 5 if you are wondering, and in offline games I can play enough to run 90FPS.

my router is from the service provider Telus 3200M. Actiontec3200M.
Im suppose to get 300mbps from this service provider

The wifi adapter is realtek 881 CU Wireless LAN 802.11ac USB NIC. It gets met 150-250 mbps, but there lag spikes. Please note, the high ping is not because I'm playing at servers far away. I can get as low ping as 10 and then it can jump to 600. and it is constantly doing this with this wifi adapter.

I've also tried another different wifi adapter which offers me similar download speed, but it also gives me the same lag spike issue.

I have another literally no name adapter which gets me max 30mbps, but the connection is consistent and i can play online games with no issues at all. decent ping, no spikes.

Games do not care much about bandwidth. You could have a 1mbps connection and most likely would run fine. They care about consistent latency. Wifi is subject to interference from sources outside your house which you can do nothing about. This interference causes data retrasmission which takes time. You there for get inconsistent latency...ie ping spikes.

Pretty much this is why you should not play online games on wifi. It is too unpredictable for stable lag free game play.

I understand. I have a usb wifi adapter which gives me consistent connection but at 30mbps ( which is slower for browsing the web and more) and it has no problems when playing games. But I have another one which gets met 250mbps, but I get huge lag spikese when playing game. this is the problem.

The fact that the wifi stick that gives me 30mbps but allows me to play smoothly online is proof that interference isn't an issue.

The fact that I've tried two wifi adapters which gives me 250mbps but lag spikes during the game tells me that the connection is fast but not consistent, but it also tells me its not the adapter because i've tried two different ones

 

[DSzymborski]

The complete specs are not so necessary. it is Battlefield 5 if you are wondering, and in offline games I can play enough to run 90FPS.

Then all I can do is wish you luck at resolving your problem. If you knew what was necessary to solve your problem, you already would have solved it; there are plenty of other people who need help who don't think basic information about their PC is like the nuclear launch codes.

 

[redarrow9]

I already provided them and said It's really not the PC's hardware performance as I mentioned already, and told you what kind of adapters I have + the adapter. Having quad core and 24gb ram is not going to make the connection performance run any smoother because it already does smoothly on offline.
The fact that I hadd a no name adapter which allows me to run smoothly at 30mbps while two other adapters running at 250 mbps gives me huge spikes points to me that

- for some reason though I can connect at high mbps, the high speed is somewhat not stable, and jumping from 250mbps to 150mbps. something is causing this, maybe there's some adapter setting or something. but I can play with a 30mbps wifi adapter perfectly fine. This is already enough to evidence that there is nothing about the hardware of my pc that is causing the lag spikes. it only happens when I use the 250mbps wifi adapter

 

[cryoburner]

If your system is located relatively close to your router, connect them with an ethernet cable instead, as that should get you optimum performance. Even if its not, you might want to try temporarily connecting them that way to rule out whether or not the wireless connection is at fault (which I suspect it probably is).

 

[redarrow9]

so this is what I did. with the 250 mbps adapter (realtek) I went to the advance settings in device manager and change the wireless mode value to b/g/n, before it was running b/g/n/ac. This change made it significantly better, but my mbps is lowered down to 40mbps. I'm going to try b/g now.

Why is it that when Im running ac mode it lags significantly?

 

[bill001g]

More than likely what happened when you forced it to gbn it started to used the 2.4g radio rather than the 5g radio. 802.11ac only runs on the 5g radio. 802.11n can run on both but B & G only run on 2.4g

The 2.4g frequency has better ability to penetrate walls so the signal tends to be stronger.

Wifi is very hit and miss it can work fine today and horrible tomorrow when it comes to online games. Unless you live out on some farm in the country you are always subject to lots of interfering signals coming from your neighbors.