Maximum PC

Hello everyone, I hope you had a great time during past holidays As for me, I got a ton of 4-player co-op games from steam's sales to play in our LAN parties. However, what I stared to notice is that I get surprising FPS drops when playing multiplayer vs. single player.

I tried to lower the graphics settings to get rid of the low FPS, but that didn't help... the games I recently played were renegade ops, portal 2, and borderlands. In all 3 on single player I can have [almost] maximum settings, and it'll output a good 25-30+ FPS @ 1280x720.

When I play multiplayer, however, using minimum settings in all the games (still @1280x720) will result in a very high FPS, but it will drop to 7-15 FPS every 2-3 seconds.

Now, I don't have the best machine ever (specs below), but something must be really eating my CPU cycles during multiplayer. Any ideas on what may be causing it?

[Computer specs]
HP HDX 16 laptop
1920x1080 monitor
Windows 7 Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo T9550 @ 2.66 GHz
4GB Ram DDR2
Nvidia GeForce GT 130M Core clock:600MHz, 1GB DDR2
7200RPM 500GB HDD

Check your network speed. Also, games that rely on Valve's servers (such as Portal 2) are really bad right now because the servers are overloaded from everyone buying and downloading games and playing them with friends.

I'd say try to see if you are running with the latest drivers for the graphics card and if anything other drivers/OS needs to be updated. I'd also turn off win7 aero and unnecessary services. Usually frame drops are an indication of vram dump issues, but since you have 1gb (slow though) and running on low settings, you shouldn't have these drops.

Well it happens during LAN play too.. My interet type is cable, w/ 1MB/s down 0.2MB/s up, and average latency of 30ms.

well here are new developings...

I was experiencing low frame rates in SW:TOR too... but the variation from high setting to low setting would give me only 2 frames per second more... So I figured it was my CPU that's too weak, not my video. Only thing that I know uses cpu during online games in my wifi... I couldn't believe it!

Switching to wired connection gave me an average increase of 15 FPS in SW:TOR. Now I can play on "high" with better fps then I did on "low". Also random frame drops in the games mentioned above are completely gone!

So does it really take THAT much CPU to generate wifi packets?

No, but the program usually will wait for the commands from everyone else so it knows where to move the other players. This can drive framerates down. Ever played an MMO when the server is packed?

^no, completely offbeat

Its most likely a scheduling conflict with the service and driver that was causing you issues. Check to see if you running the latest driver for the wifi. Is it builtin as part of the HP laptop or an add on usb stick? What router are you using?

I wouldn't be so sure. On Star Wars Battlefront 2, when the server is packed and the pings are low, the framerate drops too. Also, people will stand still and then teleport a ways away and become impossible to hit. This is called "Lag".
On some games, though, Jbaz is probably correct.

network lag doesn't translate to rendering lag...

I've had it happen...

What's your graphics card?

there's a lot of variables that dictates network lag, doesn't mean its all about the ping to the server, but the server's tick rate, processing power, and the net code, or the way the application deals with the network packets all the way through the seven layers of OSI and a bunch of other variables that I won't go into. What may appear to you as "graphic lag" due to the network doesn't hinder your graphic card's ability to render the scene.

just forget it. My answer was simple and somewhat simplistic, but worked ok for the purposes of this discussion. Your answer was complete, but more general, and I know that some systems will render regardless of whether the movements of other players come in. That was why I wanted to know what graphics card he has. If it is a driver problem, then a reinstallation of the driver may help, as would reconfiguring the services. If it is a network thing, then the solution may be different.

God your blind and useless.

Stop trying to give out advice to others when you have no idea yourself. It's one thing trying to be helpful, its another just being completely ignorant and pretending like you've been doing this for years... Leave it to those who have the actual knowledge and experience.

I remember a few months ago when you were wrong on something and I was right.
I never said that I have been doing this for years. I also never said I was perfect or even right most of the time. Being wrong is how you learn, and I am still learning.

I will admit that my eyesight is not that good (I wear bifocals, and my prescription is 50/17 )
I have been helpful to several people. I will not quit learning and putting in my two cents. I live in America, where I am free to make mistakes and learn from them.

Its ok that you are new to the game and trying to learn, just give out advice and info on things that you actually know than trying to BS. I'm glad you are trying to be helpful, but in more cases than not, I just see you trying to post whore and really don't solve anything and 1/2 the time, you just give out misinformation or whatever thought that is on your mind.

Seriously... Just lerk for a while and learn. You don't need to post every time someone asks a question on here.

Oh rly? This isn't some gameshow or high school...

And btw, 50/17 refers to the measurements of your frames and doesn't negate any real information about the actual prescription. It notes the Eye and Bridge, but you are missing the third number that tells the Temple measurement. Eye precision measurements actually use diopters for the first two numbers (-3 to 3) with the third being the Axis (0 to 180).

Also, visual acuity does not directly relate to the eyeglass prescription required to correct vision, because it does not specify the nature of the problem corrected by the lens, only the resulting performance.

let's just say really really nearsighted. Before I became interested in computers, I read. Constantly. When I go into the library, some of the librarians will just look at me and say, "I don't know what to suggest. I am still out of suggestions."
Others will recommend manga. I don't like Manga. I am now going to leave this thread before it becomes even more off-topic.