why is my game so laggy???

[skatevans99]

i decided to try out halflife2 deathmatch today for the first time. my question is this...why is it impossible for me to play???? i can connect to any server, but in every single one it is too laggy to even comprehend what i am doing and i just die over and over again. knowing little about this sort of thing, i tried switching to minimum resolution and all the lowest settings, but to no avail...made absolutely no difference. i use my school's internet (dl speed over 1mb/s) and from what i have read maybe its something to do with the firewall? any way i can check this? but i wouldnt think its my computer hardware as it generally plays games at max settings without much problem. any suggestion as to what i could do?

 

[G(ordon)-man]

What kinda games run on the max settings? Doom 2 or Crysis? Just some examples. And i's suggest you turn off firewall before playing.

 

[Laivasse]

Maximum bandwidth generally doesn't have a great deal to do with your quality of connection to servers, especially if it's bandwidth you're sharing with others as with a school connection.

What is your latency with the server/s in question? Check via the Steam server browser or by hitting Tab in-game. You want it to be as low as possible, certainly lower than say 100 if not 50 if you want a smooth online experience. Sorry if you already know this.

The point of a firewall is to block certain ports completely, so while they're often the culprit in situations where you can't connect at all, it sounds less likely to me that a firewall would be the issue if you're just experiencing lag. Possible, but less likely. I don't know how you would check either, further than just trying some other online games in order to confirm that this is a persistent issue.

In any case if you can play most games maxed out and the one uncertain variable is your connection, then this is almost certainly a problem with your connection and not your rig. If you're connecting to low-latency servers and it is still bad then I would be less sure of this.

@gordonman - if he's on a school network then a software firewall isn't going to be massively useful anyway (so I'd suggest the same thing, if relevant). But I was under the impression that the OP was talking about any firewalls employed by his school...?

 

[Dr.Freeman]

Maybe the internet connection of the school sucks...

 

[Walking Target]

Put in console:

net_graph 3

Tell us what you have for choke and loss.

Also, which servers are you on? Some are appallingly bad.