would adding more ram lower the ping?

[sieZe]

hi

i play multiplayer games like counter-strike and starcraft and when i play counter-strike it delays a lot and it skips frames. so i
want to know if theres anything i can improve
that. im currently using cable modem, but
my system is really bad. im still using pii-
350mhz and 160mb, with 30gb hard d, and
voodoo4 on winME. i know its slow and doubt
if adding more ram will help instead of
changing the cpu.

[FooL]

Sure, the processor could be slowing you down. You could pick up a PII 450 for pretty cheap without having to upgrade your MoBo. Your RAM is on the edge of not being enough. But, it SHOULD be enough to be able to play the game.

Do you have the "eye candy" turned down a little. (I'm not saying to go back to Castle Wolfenstien days....but don't amx everything out.) The other thing to think about with the game itself is at what resolution you are playing. Try bumping that down from whatever you're playing at. Most hard-core gamers don't go above 800 x 600 even if thier system can handle it.

Turn off any programs running in the background that could be slowing a system down. This is the only time I wouldn't have my firewall/virus scanner running full-time. (That is if your NOT online only.)

One last tip, make sure you reboot the computer on a regular basis. Win ME is bad about not giving resources back once it's done with something.

[LagMonster]

I seriously doubt you will see any difference. I am sure its possible, but in your case I don't think so.

I used to play halflife with a 266 V3500 and I played on a network and got 20-30 ping. THATS damn good. I had 64MB RAM also. I would check for device conficts and DEFINATELY driver updates. Try different CS servers as a lot of are laggy. IF you need more info just ask.

[FooL]

Oops, I went back and re-read your post again. I won't delete my previous post, becuase those are still good tips.

But I think you're getting at your online playing. Trouble with cable is it's an Asynchronis data stream. Basically that is a big word for "it sucks for online gaming". Really what happens is it's not sending and recieving information close enough to each other for you not to notice "latency". In other words, if you fire a shotgun, your modem takes that information and waits a while before it sends it off. We're talking about fractions of a second here, but it's enough to mess with online gaming.

Web surfers don't notice. Not a big deal for loading up web pages and sending mail. But online gamers...well, they notice. Look into DSL if it's available in your area. Often it's the same price with just as fast or faster speeds.

But then again, consider yourself lucky. You could be sutck with 56k dial-up like me.

[Damned Angel]

I still play c-strike on an AMD k6-2 300, 194mb and a 20g drive with an xpert 2000 32mb. I get 20-30fps with eye candy turned all the way up . I'm also running it on cable and yes, it I connect to a bad server I do get lagged and occasionally drop some frames, but on a good server (less than 100ping) I have absolutly no problems. Just use the built in filters when searching for a game and set the max ping to 100. This should bring you to only the fastest servers around you so you don't have this prob.

[sieZe]

when i play c-strike on a good server, i goes
well but when some laggers with over 4000ping
the server goes crazy and sometimes i even get disconnected. the reason i suppose that
adding more ram will make it go smoother is
maybe my comp cant handle the datas fast enough and it goes slow. actually my cable
is not even fast. im using att roadrunner and
i usually get 60-100ping on a good server.
on the real fast ones i get 30-40, but that
barely happens.

[Lem0njell0]

Are you on Dial up or a broadband service?
I play Counterstrike ALL the time and play on good servers and have great pings.

[condor]

Let's get some things straight first..

Does it work fine when you're not playing multiplayer ?

if so - upgrading your Hardware isn't the solution.

if the game runs with low FPS (skipping frames) in multi-mode it can be:

a. because our connection is bad
b. because your computer isn't strong enough to draw more players etc...

but if you get high pings I'd say this is your connection is your main problem ....

upgrading the hardware my help a little but it's not the solution.

[NeoNexus]

OK Ping is a network term. It is used to test a connection to another system, therefore its a network problem if you have a high ping result. High ping times are caused by network congestion, poor medium performance or your network interface.

Try changing your ISP, test your connection to different servers, test your bandwidth using C-Net (http://webservices.cnet.com/bandwidth/)

Good Luck with it !!

[ShadowKing]

It also may be that you have one of those $12 NICs. Those are Software NICs that actually run on your computer's CPU. If you got a nice one (3Com 3C905x is best) It will probably improve your play somewhat...

[Stalemate]

SieZe, I have to agree with ShadowKing and FooL.

Your ADSL connection IS asynchronous and in my area (Canada), DSL connections are fed through a cheap-a$$ 10Mbps NIC which DOES suck resources from you CPU.

Ask for other types of DSL from your ISP or look around for cable modem service if you're a die-hard gamer