Choppy graphics in crowded MMO areas

[blckhaze1]

I've been mmo gaming for a long time and I have this problem with every single online game.

When I get into a crowded area.. my smooth rendoring turns turn into jumpy glitchy choppy turns. I used to think it was my outdated computers but now that I have finally built a monster, I'm still getting video lag spikes around crowdes of other people!

Here's my specs as reference:

Windows 7 home premium
i7 920 (not overclocked) on a P6T V.2
Harddrive: Velicoraptor
Gcards: SLI 512mb geforce 250 superclocked cards
Ram: 6gb OCZ running at 1666 correctly timed
Sound: Onboard
Ethernet: Onboard

I do weekly maintenance with ccleaner and MyDefrag, and its a pretty clean install. maybe 30 gb used of the whole drive. Everytime I'm done with a game.. I uninstall, (and after installs) run the ccleaner, and then the mydefrag. I'm a fanatic about keeping my Pc in tip top health. All the drivers are up to date, including nvidia.

So, I bought this new Star Trek mmo to test it out... And as soon as I enter a space dock with other PEOPLE.. not other peoples SHIPS, it starts to get jumpy again. I'm fine by myself. The graphics in that game arent like real high end or anything. I thought about getting one of those expensive ethernet cards but was told that those wouldn't really make a difference unless its put on a older PC in some conditions. My Ethernet line is 6mb, and I did a speed test and its 5mb down and 800 up.
It's the same in Aion, Conan, FFXI, WoW, (not Eve) Planetside(very old) and now STO. Crysis on high graphics is beautiful, Bioshock is too. There is one advantage... On Crysis online my framerate always jumps like one click when a enemy is near by, so its like a heads up when it chops

What can I do to stop the choppy framerate in MMO user crowded areas? Any ideas or tips greatly appreciated! Thanks




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PS, this form I am typing on keeps scrolling to the top with every keystroke.

[stopthekilling77]

Are you using a wireless card or are you using ethernet for your internet connection? From what I understand about MMOs it really depends on your internet connection and latency to keep crowded places smooth. Even so, when you have low latency and a great high-speed connection you can still run into the same problem when the games servers are overloaded.

[blckhaze1]

It's DSL, wired, belkin router and motorola modem. Do you think theres a problem with the router settings? The belkin router was pretty cheap. I don't know much about latency, maybe should upgrade to a better router or modem.

[stopthekilling77]

Well I wouldn't think that just because you bought a cheap router that its to blame, but it wouldn't hurt to run [url=http://www.speedtest.net]Speedtest's app[\url] and [url=http://www.pingtest.net]Pingtest's app[\url] just to see what kind of connection you have or if you might have a ridiculously high ping (could be the issue).

[blckhaze1]

------Ping to a location 1 hour away:
25ms ping
3ms jitter
------Ping to 2000 miles away:
58ms ping
1ms jitter
------1000 miles:
56ms ping
0ms jitter
------Speed test to 1 hour away:
5.07mbps down
0.67mbps up

It all looks good to me, I didn't make any special preporations or turn anything off before I did the tests. I guess the jumpy fps in crowded mmo areas is just their server being overloaded? and that just about every company has these issues due to money budget and buying just enough bandwidth to get by on.
Or... are my results really not that great? There has to be something wrong somewhere. I've seen videos of people doing whatever on different games I've played and not lagged in certain areas that I have lagged in.

Honestly here is what I think, as i am... I'm running around with my gun looking for meat, and THEN (framerate pause (0.25ms worth) thinking: someones near now) - - I look around, and there the other person is. So, what just happened is my PC took 0.25ms to recieve the packet that tells the PC to load another object in my game, and theres like no way to avoid this?

[stopthekilling77]

Honestly, that question would be best put to the official forums of your MMO, if its a common problem then I'm sure there are nuances they will be able to point out

[blckhaze1]

Thank you I appreciate the help

[stopthekilling77]

Thank you I appreciate the help

No problem, hope they're able to help you more than I could!