Varidian wrote: »

To a degree I am in agreement with you sure - not all players will have cutting edge equipment or super fibre broadband that's a granted point... but this game is four years old;

I have a 980TI and 12 gig of ram pumping through an I7 quad... this game pc was built to run star citizen level graphics... so ESO is fish in a barrel for my comp. I can work on photoshop, run a video editing system processing an MP4 1080p HD video and listen to Spotify whiles I'm tearing around Auridon in between at the same time... I know because I do these things when I need to lol

and I still suffer from chronic break downs of FPS aswell as motivation when I only have the game running and nothing else in the background. The programming for this game is awful.

how the f^*k can a bank deposit lag? and a guild store be so choppy? just last night it made me wait 70 odd seconds to place a plant in my house "placing item" or something it said in the corner

this game has more bugs than a rain forest floor. I'm sorry but I have played Alpha stage games with smoother performance.

Trying to run StarCitizen on a Maxwell era GPU is not very wise. NVIDIA GPUs from Maxwell era and earlier did not have async compute on the hardware scheduler and it had to be added at the software level severely diminishing upper echelon DirectX 12 performance. When a game actually uses the full DirectX12 feature set you will see massive issues without async compute on the hardware scheduler like current Pascal cards have.

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

Knowledge wrote: »

NyassaV wrote: »

I've got a top of the time computer and even I have major issues in Cyrodiil be it frames, latency, or both

What is a top of the line computer to you?

I got an i7 7700 and gtx 1070 all on recent sd( 1 year old when it came out) and in cryo in the mass zegs at keeps fps go down to even 25.. otherwise around 40-50 with non huge battles.. ping instead in cyrodill is generally bad around 120-140 even sometimes and im prettty sure that is not on my end because when i get out of cyrodil then ping is 70

God I am so glad I quit PC gaming... what a PITA just to play a game.
Switched to Xbox about a year ago, no regrets at all...

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that in networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

You didn’t even bother to google that before responding? C’mon man.

It seems clear to me that you were not aware that NICs have their own processor. The offload to the main CPU is only used during excessively high data transfer rates and large packets. ESO - or any online game for that matter - generates neither.

Your guess as to the cause of rubber banding is also 100% wrong. That’s a 100% original guess though, so kudos on originality.

Rubber banding is caused by a forced resynchronization of your client side position and the server side position. Packet loss / delay can cause them to become desyncd, and when the connection is resumed, either the client side or the server side will force a change on its counterpart (the prioritizatiin varies by game).

Fun fact to further educate you... ESO uses TCP packets for everything except movement, and UDP packets for all movement. The main difference between TCP and UDP is the load imposed on the NIC’s processor. UDP intentionally throws out error checking and receipt validation in order to increase speed and to significantly decrease the drain on the processor. (Which, again, is on the NPU not the CPU).

So of all the different types of lag you could’ve chosen (skills not firing, double CC, server disconnects, etc), the fact that you chose the ONLY type of lag that occurs in UDP packets as your example of a lag caused by CPU slowdown is, IMO, very indicative of your level of knowledge.

Please stop telling people to make expensive purchases to fix problems that you do not have the knowledge to accurately diagnose.

Here is a Natural Selection developer explaining

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that in networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

You didn’t even bother to google that before responding? C’mon man.

It seems clear to me that you were not aware that NICs have their own processor. The offload to the main CPU is only used during excessively high data transfer rates and large packets. ESO - or any online game for that matter - generates neither.

Your guess as to the cause of rubber banding is also 100% wrong. That’s a 100% original guess though, so kudos on originality.

Rubber banding is caused by a forced resynchronization of your client side position and the server side position. Packet loss / delay can cause them to become desyncd, and when the connection is resumed, either the client side or the server side will force a change on its counterpart (the prioritizatiin varies by game).

Fun fact to further educate you... ESO uses TCP packets for everything except movement, and UDP packets for all movement. The main difference between TCP and UDP is the load imposed on the NIC’s processor. UDP intentionally throws out error checking and receipt validation in order to increase speed and to significantly decrease the drain on the processor. (Which, again, is on the NPU not the CPU).

So of all the different types of lag you could’ve chosen (skills not firing, double CC, server disconnects, etc), the fact that you chose the ONLY type of lag that occurs in UDP packets as your example of a lag caused by CPU slowdown is, IMO, very indicative of your level of knowledge.

Please stop telling people to make expensive purchases to fix problems that you do not have the knowledge to accurately diagnose.

If all performance issues were server side we would not be receiving a Multi Core CPU support update. It would make very little sense.

A lot of individuals that do experience performance problems blame the server or ZOS incorrectly. I am not disputing that there can be network lag or at times there is. What I am trying to do is help people that are misinterpreting FPS drop and stuttering due to PC performance for server side lag.

As some people have demonstrated in this thread they don't experience lag and they listed their specifications which were on the high-end side of PC components. They also stated they experience only small amounts of lag in Cyrodil on occasion.

You're wrong about a lot of what you said but what you are implying is that PC components do not matter and that Zenimax is responsible for all of our poor performance. That is not accurate at all. This isn't cloud gaming we're running clients on our systems.

" The client loop:
- time = read clock
- read input from you
- send input to server
- add input to the input queue
- check if the server has send a new state snapshot
* if a new state snapshot has been received, update the base world state and time and remove inputs that the server indicates have been
used.
- Predict the world, using the base state and time, incorprating ALL of the input from you AT the correct times.
- render the world to the screen

The work you need to do in the Prediction step is dependent on how long your input queue is. The length of your input queue is increased by one each loop - ie, each client FPS - and shortened when the server sends you a new snapshot. " -
Natural Selection 2 developer.

Source: https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/1906233/#Comment_1906233

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Here is a Natural Selection developer explaining

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that in networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

You didn’t even bother to google that before responding? C’mon man.

It seems clear to me that you were not aware that NICs have their own processor. The offload to the main CPU is only used during excessively high data transfer rates and large packets. ESO - or any online game for that matter - generates neither.

Your guess as to the cause of rubber banding is also 100% wrong. That’s a 100% original guess though, so kudos on originality.

Rubber banding is caused by a forced resynchronization of your client side position and the server side position. Packet loss / delay can cause them to become desyncd, and when the connection is resumed, either the client side or the server side will force a change on its counterpart (the prioritizatiin varies by game).

Fun fact to further educate you... ESO uses TCP packets for everything except movement, and UDP packets for all movement. The main difference between TCP and UDP is the load imposed on the NIC’s processor. UDP intentionally throws out error checking and receipt validation in order to increase speed and to significantly decrease the drain on the processor. (Which, again, is on the NPU not the CPU).

So of all the different types of lag you could’ve chosen (skills not firing, double CC, server disconnects, etc), the fact that you chose the ONLY type of lag that occurs in UDP packets as your example of a lag caused by CPU slowdown is, IMO, very indicative of your level of knowledge.

Please stop telling people to make expensive purchases to fix problems that you do not have the knowledge to accurately diagnose.

If all performance issues were server side we would not be receiving a Multi Core CPU support update. It would make very little sense.

A lot of individuals that do experience performance problems blame the server or ZOS incorrectly. I am not disputing that there can be network lag or at times there is. What I am trying to do is help people that are misinterpreting FPS drop and stuttering due to PC performance for server side lag.

As some people have demonstrated in this thread they don't experience lag and they listed their specifications which were on the high-end side of PC components. They also stated they experience only small amounts of lag in Cyrodil on occasion.

You're wrong about a lot of what you said but what you are implying is that PC components do not matter and that Zenimax is responsible for all of our poor performance. That is not accurate at all. This isn't cloud gaming we're running clients on our systems.

The client loop:
- time = read clock
- read input from you
- send input to server
- add input to the input queue
- check if the server has send a new state snapshot
* if a new state snapshot has been received, update the base world state and time and remove inputs that the server indicates have been
used.
- Predict the world, using the base state and time, incorprating ALL of the input from you AT the correct times.
- render the world to the screen

The work you need to do in the Prediction step is dependent on how long your input queue is. The length of your input queue is increased by one each loop - ie, each client FPS - and shortened when the server sends you a new snapshot.

Regarding your claim that most of what I wrote is wrong: None of what I wrote is wrong. This can all be easily checked.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Does+my+NIC+have+its+own+processor?

Regarding your claim that I think all lag is ZOS’s fault... Of the ten suggestions I listed for fixing latency issues, none of them was “blame ZOS”.

the fact that you think the only options for fixing lag are upgrading your hardware or blaming ZOS is exactly the kind of mistaken belief that causes some people to never fix their latency issues

But dude. What in the world is the rest of your post? You seem to think that the game server is predicting what the client’s FPS and graphics will be. You think that the server synchronizes graphics with the client... wow.

If I read your post literally, You think the server is sending each “snapshot” or frame to the gaming computer, as if we were each remote connecting in to the central server (IE playing ESO of the “cloud”)

At this point even the gamers with the most rudimentary knowledge of how computers work will have realized that you are incorrect.

I knew that you weren’t familiar with how these systems work, but I didn’t realize how spectacularly wrong you are. Reading your most recent post is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch.

Well, I was curious to see how you responded to the last part of my post because it is a quote from an actual developer. It's not my own words I'll add quotes to it now. I figured you wouldn't accept me offering any sort of credentials so I wanted to see if you knew what you were talking about. It's clear you do lack some knowledge on the topic. I'll go ahead and link his statement. He is a developer for Natural Selection 2.

This is on their official forum: https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/1906233/#Comment_1906233

He also worked on their game engine the Spark engine.

Apparently my GPU doesn't meet the minimum system requirements, but have been able to play for the last four years...

" A videogame console or PC will send out a new frame once it has finished performing the necessary calculations to create it. The rate at which this is achieved is measured with the frame rate. Using common 60 Hz monitor as an example, the maximum theoretical frame rate is 60 FPS (frames per second), which means the minimum theoretical input lag for the overall system is 17 ms[citation needed]. Theoretical maximum FPS is usually limited by the video monitor, since the game cannot display more frames per second than the monitor's refresh rate (with exception of turning vertical sync (v-sync) off which in turn causes graphical artifacts). In situations where the CPU and/or GPU load is high, FPS can drop below the monitors refresh rate. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_lag

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Here is a Natural Selection developer explaining

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that in networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

You didn’t even bother to google that before responding? C’mon man.

It seems clear to me that you were not aware that NICs have their own processor. The offload to the main CPU is only used during excessively high data transfer rates and large packets. ESO - or any online game for that matter - generates neither.

Your guess as to the cause of rubber banding is also 100% wrong. That’s a 100% original guess though, so kudos on originality.

Rubber banding is caused by a forced resynchronization of your client side position and the server side position. Packet loss / delay can cause them to become desyncd, and when the connection is resumed, either the client side or the server side will force a change on its counterpart (the prioritizatiin varies by game).

Fun fact to further educate you... ESO uses TCP packets for everything except movement, and UDP packets for all movement. The main difference between TCP and UDP is the load imposed on the NIC’s processor. UDP intentionally throws out error checking and receipt validation in order to increase speed and to significantly decrease the drain on the processor. (Which, again, is on the NPU not the CPU).

So of all the different types of lag you could’ve chosen (skills not firing, double CC, server disconnects, etc), the fact that you chose the ONLY type of lag that occurs in UDP packets as your example of a lag caused by CPU slowdown is, IMO, very indicative of your level of knowledge.

Please stop telling people to make expensive purchases to fix problems that you do not have the knowledge to accurately diagnose.

If all performance issues were server side we would not be receiving a Multi Core CPU support update. It would make very little sense.

A lot of individuals that do experience performance problems blame the server or ZOS incorrectly. I am not disputing that there can be network lag or at times there is. What I am trying to do is help people that are misinterpreting FPS drop and stuttering due to PC performance for server side lag.

As some people have demonstrated in this thread they don't experience lag and they listed their specifications which were on the high-end side of PC components. They also stated they experience only small amounts of lag in Cyrodil on occasion.

You're wrong about a lot of what you said but what you are implying is that PC components do not matter and that Zenimax is responsible for all of our poor performance. That is not accurate at all. This isn't cloud gaming we're running clients on our systems.

The client loop:
- time = read clock
- read input from you
- send input to server
- add input to the input queue
- check if the server has send a new state snapshot
* if a new state snapshot has been received, update the base world state and time and remove inputs that the server indicates have been
used.
- Predict the world, using the base state and time, incorprating ALL of the input from you AT the correct times.
- render the world to the screen

The work you need to do in the Prediction step is dependent on how long your input queue is. The length of your input queue is increased by one each loop - ie, each client FPS - and shortened when the server sends you a new snapshot.

Regarding your claim that most of what I wrote is wrong: None of what I wrote is wrong. This can all be easily checked.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Does+my+NIC+have+its+own+processor?

Regarding your claim that I think all lag is ZOS’s fault... Of the ten suggestions I listed for fixing latency issues, none of them was “blame ZOS”.

the fact that you think the only options for fixing lag are upgrading your hardware or blaming ZOS is exactly the kind of mistaken belief that causes some people to never fix their latency issues

But dude. What in the world is the rest of your post? You seem to think that the game server is predicting what the client’s FPS and graphics will be. You think that the server synchronizes graphics with the client... wow.

If I read your post literally, You think the server is sending each “snapshot” or frame to the gaming computer, as if we were each remote connecting in to the central server (IE playing ESO of the “cloud”)

At this point even the gamers with the most rudimentary knowledge of how computers work will have realized that you are incorrect.

I knew that you weren’t familiar with how these systems work, but I didn’t realize how spectacularly wrong you are. Reading your most recent post is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch.

Pretty much all of this. TBH, I'm not even sure the OP even understands what his initial post was about. There's a difference between the 'lag' people are complaining about and graphical lag. He either seems confused or has no idea wtf he's talking about. My guess it's the latter, but thank you for posting actual relevant information instead of posting misinformation.

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

@Knowledge just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think the CPU does? I know that you mistakenly believe it to be responsible for data transfer between your client and the game server, but you don’t think it does anything else?

You seem to be implying that a CPU isn’t needed for single-player games that don’t connect to the internet.

I'd prefer if you responded to the developer's statement you said " is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch. "

I'm trying to get in touch with him but I'd like to see how you respond to that before we move further.

So you're not going to address the glaring mistakes he's pointed out in your own logic? Don't be that person.

You need to learn just like everyone else. There's nothing wrong with being wrong so long as you own up to it and learn.

Knowledge wrote: »

IndyWendieGo wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Here is a Natural Selection developer explaining

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Did you seriously just write a post telling people to be certain about the cause of their “lag” and then write an essay about FPS loss, chug, and performance drops... and the importance of a video card? For LAG??

This new generation, I swear...

TL;DR lag is the result of latency problems and has absolutely nothing to do with your graphics card, frame rate, or video settings, and only is affected by your CPU via your TCP offload settings, which is to say not at all.

Actually, this is quite wrong. The word "lag" can apply to many things. There is something called Graphics Lag. NVIDIA explains it here. There is also CPU lag and you can read about it here.

While you are receiving some education about lag please also remember the CPU can become "overwhelmed" at a given time. A CPU has a throughput limit based on IPC and clock speed. When that throughput limit is reached it has to catch up. In essence, the NIC is sending and receiving information from a server, the processor is computing that information, the processor is giving the GPU draw calls, then you may have a sudden "spike" in performance demand. Perhaps you're in Cyrodil and twenty people arrive. The network data comes in, the CPU must process it, along with all movements, abilities, and the like. It has to then send the draw calls to the GPU and as this all happens, depending on your CPU, you can get lag.

In essence, if you're in Cyrodil around a small population of players and you have smooth game play and then suddenly have reduced performance in a large keep fight the problem may be on your end. This is especially true when one user with higher end hardware is not lagging and you are.

They aren't adding multicore capability because it's fun it's to improve performance and reduce lag.

My age is showing and it appears that it’s futile to fight the spread of stupidity re: term differentiation. From the article you linked me:

It's interesting to note that Lag was a term originally used only in multiplayer games. This is because when you're playing an online-based game, some level of lag (delay) is inevitable. All your actions need to be sent to a central server for the other players to see what you're doing on their screens. At the same time, the server constantly has to send data on the other players' actions to your computer. There is an unavoidable delay between when the data is sent, and when it is received by either party, which was nicely covered by the term lag. We can call it Ping Lag now to be more specific.

So I’ll give you that one. But I have to stop the rest of your nonsense.

Although it’s hilarious that you tried to let me know about the offload that I mentioned in the post of mine that you quoted but apparently didn’t read, It is criminal that you are implying the NIC’s offload to the CPU would have any discernible impact in an MMO setting.

For anyone who has actual lag issues (as in ping / latency issues, not FPS), your CPU has nothing to do with it unless your gaming computer also happens to be a data server for a local network.

The best fixes for latency issues involve the following.. please google them or ask me if you want to know more.

1. Wireless Interference on a WiFi network
2. Packet loss from a bad node on your route
3. Network card driver
4. Tweak registry to prioritize gaming over streaming
5. Router QOS priorities
6. Computer, modem and router MTU mismatch
7. NIC settings: Power saver mode / interupt / large packet / redundant QoS
8. Nagle’s algorithm - easy fix for better speed
9. Windows ****ing AutomaticUpdate - the most common problem in my experience (including automatic file backups in this too)
10. DHCP lease renewal timing and other router settings

If all of those have been fixed, you should start off by downloading Matt’s trace route to try to pinpoint the node / access point that causes the lag. If it’s caused after the packets leave your modem, a gaming VPN should fix the issue. Edit: For Australians, “fixing the issue” is more of a relative term...

What you should NOT do is use an FPS fix like chnging texture resolution or upgrading your graphics card to try to fix a ping / latency issue. Do not throw away money, and shame on OP for advising people to do just that. Credit to @VaranisArano for calling him out more diplomatically than I did.

If what you were implying were true and the Central Processing Unit played no part in computing the data being delivered through the NIC then we would be able to play on Ultra High Settings, despite number of players on the screen, with just about any CPU. That is not how a computer works, I'm sorry.

Also, in your model we would have no benefit from Multicore Processor support being added.

I'll also add that in networking traffic would literally be "dropped" if the CPU could not keep up which results in frame loss. This is what occurs when your character jumps from place to place in what we call rubber banding. This can happen at the switch (it has a CPU), the server, or on our end.

You didn’t even bother to google that before responding? C’mon man.

It seems clear to me that you were not aware that NICs have their own processor. The offload to the main CPU is only used during excessively high data transfer rates and large packets. ESO - or any online game for that matter - generates neither.

Your guess as to the cause of rubber banding is also 100% wrong. That’s a 100% original guess though, so kudos on originality.

Rubber banding is caused by a forced resynchronization of your client side position and the server side position. Packet loss / delay can cause them to become desyncd, and when the connection is resumed, either the client side or the server side will force a change on its counterpart (the prioritizatiin varies by game).

Fun fact to further educate you... ESO uses TCP packets for everything except movement, and UDP packets for all movement. The main difference between TCP and UDP is the load imposed on the NIC’s processor. UDP intentionally throws out error checking and receipt validation in order to increase speed and to significantly decrease the drain on the processor. (Which, again, is on the NPU not the CPU).

So of all the different types of lag you could’ve chosen (skills not firing, double CC, server disconnects, etc), the fact that you chose the ONLY type of lag that occurs in UDP packets as your example of a lag caused by CPU slowdown is, IMO, very indicative of your level of knowledge.

Please stop telling people to make expensive purchases to fix problems that you do not have the knowledge to accurately diagnose.

If all performance issues were server side we would not be receiving a Multi Core CPU support update. It would make very little sense.

A lot of individuals that do experience performance problems blame the server or ZOS incorrectly. I am not disputing that there can be network lag or at times there is. What I am trying to do is help people that are misinterpreting FPS drop and stuttering due to PC performance for server side lag.

As some people have demonstrated in this thread they don't experience lag and they listed their specifications which were on the high-end side of PC components. They also stated they experience only small amounts of lag in Cyrodil on occasion.

You're wrong about a lot of what you said but what you are implying is that PC components do not matter and that Zenimax is responsible for all of our poor performance. That is not accurate at all. This isn't cloud gaming we're running clients on our systems.

The client loop:
- time = read clock
- read input from you
- send input to server
- add input to the input queue
- check if the server has send a new state snapshot
* if a new state snapshot has been received, update the base world state and time and remove inputs that the server indicates have been
used.
- Predict the world, using the base state and time, incorprating ALL of the input from you AT the correct times.
- render the world to the screen

The work you need to do in the Prediction step is dependent on how long your input queue is. The length of your input queue is increased by one each loop - ie, each client FPS - and shortened when the server sends you a new snapshot.

Regarding your claim that most of what I wrote is wrong: None of what I wrote is wrong. This can all be easily checked.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Does+my+NIC+have+its+own+processor?

Regarding your claim that I think all lag is ZOS’s fault... Of the ten suggestions I listed for fixing latency issues, none of them was “blame ZOS”.

the fact that you think the only options for fixing lag are upgrading your hardware or blaming ZOS is exactly the kind of mistaken belief that causes some people to never fix their latency issues

But dude. What in the world is the rest of your post? You seem to think that the game server is predicting what the client’s FPS and graphics will be. You think that the server synchronizes graphics with the client... wow.

If I read your post literally, You think the server is sending each “snapshot” or frame to the gaming computer, as if we were each remote connecting in to the central server (IE playing ESO of the “cloud”)

At this point even the gamers with the most rudimentary knowledge of how computers work will have realized that you are incorrect.

I knew that you weren’t familiar with how these systems work, but I didn’t realize how spectacularly wrong you are. Reading your most recent post is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch.

Pretty much all of this. TBH, I'm not even sure the OP even understands what his initial post was about. There's a difference between the 'lag' people are complaining about and graphical lag. He either seems confused or has no idea wtf he's talking about. My guess it's the latter, but thank you for posting actual relevant information instead of posting misinformation.

As I've told Thogard, what I Copy and Pasted was a developers statement from Natural Selection 2 speaking on this matter. It wasn't my words. Thogard is stating the developers statement " is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch. "

https://forums.unknownworlds.com/discussion/comment/1906233/#Comment_1906233

What part of your original post do you not understand?

Judas Helviaryn wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

@Knowledge just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think the CPU does? I know that you mistakenly believe it to be responsible for data transfer between your client and the game server, but you don’t think it does anything else?

You seem to be implying that a CPU isn’t needed for single-player games that don’t connect to the internet.

I'd prefer if you responded to the developer's statement you said " is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch. "

I'm trying to get in touch with him but I'd like to see how you respond to that before we move further.

So you're not going to address the glaring mistakes he's pointed out in your own logic? Don't be that person.

You need to learn just like everyone else. There's nothing wrong with being wrong so long as you own up to it and learn.

TBH, I think he's just trying to pass the buck on developers now and not admit to making mistakes. But given the source material of the OP and his threads as well as asking developers from other games for 'help' in an 'internet argument' is not only touching, it's perfect for this popcorn I just popped.

Knowledge wrote: »

Judas Helviaryn wrote: »

Knowledge wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

@Knowledge just out of curiosity, what exactly do you think the CPU does? I know that you mistakenly believe it to be responsible for data transfer between your client and the game server, but you don’t think it does anything else?

You seem to be implying that a CPU isn’t needed for single-player games that don’t connect to the internet.

I'd prefer if you responded to the developer's statement you said " is akin to someone claiming to be a doctor saying the reason you feel depressed is because the feel good butterflies in your head had a spell cast on them by a witch. "

I'm trying to get in touch with him but I'd like to see how you respond to that before we move further.

So you're not going to address the glaring mistakes he's pointed out in your own logic? Don't be that person.

You need to learn just like everyone else. There's nothing wrong with being wrong so long as you own up to it and learn.

If your CPU is incapable as more and more load is put on it, it will begin to slow down.

If you sound out gullible slow enough, when adding this context to your original post, it sounds like oranges.