Connection fine for downloading, but sucks for games.

I am with Wow! cable internet. Currently we have the cheapest internet service from them at "768 kbps".

I am getting a steady 90-100 kB/s from it when downloading. It says on the website I get 256 kB/s upload, but I only manage to get 30 kB/s upload, but maybe that's because I misunderstand what the connection title means (ie. you don't get what it claims).

But my main problem is with gaming. Every few seconds I get a minor lag spike which freezes the game for about half a second, and it gets pretty unplayable.

I am going to call the company about this soon but I'd like to know from you guys a bit about the problem before I call them incase they try to con me into getting a faster connection which will still suffer lag spikes in games just the same.

Some games are quite demanding with the connection speed. Care to share what games are having the issue? I know if it's CS you can go into the console and enable the stats on your screen which show your u/d speed as well as frame rate. Also, check your latency with servers. A lower number is better, anything above 100ms is laggy, above 200ms and it can be unplayable.

I've been playing mostly Team Fortress 2. I don't think it is an issue with the ping. I should add that I mostly play on a server with an 80 ping. During lag spikes the ping never changes, it's pretty consistent.

I am used to playing games with high ping on previous internet services providers but I did not suffer any lag spikes. I think it may be an issue with packet loss? I don't know..

I've been testing out ETQW and Counterstrike and they appear to be lag free. But on Team Fortress 2, it seems that it does lag when things are really hectic with lots of projectiles flying around... It really depends on the amount of players, location of the server and map being played.

Will upgrading my internet speed make any difference to this problem?

I never had problems with Team Fortress 2 under my old internet service provider, although I had a faster connection at the time (but the faster connection had no effect on the ping compared to my current cheaper connection).

are you sure the lag isn't caused by your video card? You describe a scene when the card's being pushed to the max, which can slow things down. It might be painful to play, but try turning all your setting to low (and pick a low res) and playing, see if it still lags.

I'll try that out, but my PC has pretty high specs so I dunno if that would be the case. Nvidia 8800 512 mb with intel quad processor and 4 gig ram.

I get really smooth frame rates in even hectic scenes. However, it does worry me that the power supply is only 400 watts (I think).

I am running on a AMD 64 5200+ AM2, 4GB DDR2-800, geforce 8800GT 512MB

I'm on Win XP Pro SP2

I can put Team Fortress 2 at 1680x1050 res with all graphics on full and I never get low frame rates

I have used qwest DSL and earthlink DSL and I am now using comcast cable. When running on DSL my connection seemed to be more steady - no drastic changes in ping (78, 80, 85, 72, 98, etc). When I switched to comcast cable I had a less consistent ping (42, 98, 175, 45, etc) but the cable link got downloads up to 600kb and the DSL topped out at 170kb.

Note if your ping isn't changing at all (80, 80, 80, 80, etc) it's probably not accurate.

Even with the ping going between 40-180 on my current connection I still dont experience lags or spikes (once in a while but others on the server will also experience so its not me). The game is nice and fluid all the time.

hmm, no with a quad core and an 8800 your pc definitely isn't the issue. You might want a higher power PSU, but that won't contribute to your lag (if you top out your PSU you system will pretty much die, not slow down).

I think I fixed it by chaing the rate from 10,000 to 20,000. No lag after I changed that setting.