Do I need more Mbps?
Cox offers three different tiers of high speed internet service. I had no clue, even though Helpful Guy at Cox told me that it's been that way for two years. We are using the middle level of service. The Guy actually was very Helpful, since he plays WoW and told me what tier he has and what kind of results he's getting. We shared server names and he said he'd welcome any tips (we're going steady now).
The tier I have now is called "Preferred" and features 5 Mbps down and 2 Mpbs up. The next tier is called "Premier" with 15 Mbps down and 2 Mpbs up. The extra cash each month is $15. There is no installation fee, and it's simply pressing a button.
My question is this: What the fuck do these numbers mean? I realize more is good and faster is better, but how can I tell if this is my problem with lag in Ironforge and MC? How can I tell if my lag problem is (a) Blizzard hates Macs, (b) my computer is too old, or (c) I need more Mbps?
15 comments:
Short answer is there's no easy way to figure this one out.
The part about networking is that between Blizzard to you, there are any number of "hops" or systems that the data goes through. Your fastest data stream is only going to be as fast as the slowest "hop" in your network connection.
If your current service is handling all the data it gets fast enough, upgrading to "Premier" won't do any good. If the lag is indeed because you're being sent data faster than you can receiver it, then upgrading the service might help.
Lots of factors come into play. Your throughput (Mbps). The latency between you and Blizzard via the number of "hops". Maybe your CPU can't keep up. Or your video hardware.
Finding the bottleneck in a case like this is tough. My first inclination would be to have someone local who has no lag in IronForge bring their box (preferably a Mac) to your house. If they continue to run smoothly, you've just ruled out the network and can focus on a computer upgrade.
Process of elimination is much better than getting throughput-measuring tools, checking trace routes, profiling CPU cycles, etc.
Swapping the box is a great idea. Kathy's laptop and Cheryl's laptop both have had lag here, but those machines have had lag at other locations.
Along the same lines, I guess I can upgrade to this faster service for a month and see if it makes any difference.
Anyway, good stuff, thanks. Swapping hardware is better than doing math.
"(a) Blizzard hates Macs,"
Don't confuse hate with apathy.
I'm sure that Macs get more than the attention they deserve from Blizzard according to their 1.5% market share.
I like that whenever I say "Mac," Tom posts a comment. :)
Generally speaking, with broadband on internet gaming, it's the upload speed that'll hurt you more than the download speed. Considering that the upload bandwidth isn't improving with the jump in price, I wouldn't even consider upgrading your connection an option.
Generally speaking, there's not a huge amount of data being transferred by most online games, not compared to most major downloads.
Also, if it were an issue with connection speed, I would think you'd have lag no matter where you were, not just in Ironforge. Considering you're getting your lag whenever you go into a highly populated area, I would assume it to be a graphics card issue, and look into that first.
Hmm. I have a GeForce 4 Ti 4600 with 128 MB of VRAM. I was under the impression this was pretty good, and more than I needed for WoW. I've got 2GB of RAM (I know this isn't what you were talking about). So this is all why I was thinking that I'm just Mac-screwed at this point. Or else it's processor speed, since I've got 2x867 instead of the 1GHz recommended.
If you want to test your real throughput, try this.
IF lag could either be a video card issue, as BK suggested, or perhaps your pipe isn't delivering the information about the toons and whatnot goin' on there quickly enough. Without knowing exactly how WoW rendering works, it's hard to say.
Myself? I'd say the extra $15 a month isn't worth it...but if you do it, make sure you test your speed using that meter test I linked above before and after, to make sure you're actually getting the speed boost you're paying for.
I could seriously believe that the Mac software just isn't optimized the same way (we had similar IF lag on your network when I was over there on my laptop, and I think my video card is either comparable to yours or a little bit worse, and I had a lot less actual RAM at the time).
Thanks K, I tested with this and several tries ranged from 1000 to 1500 Kbps. Which is nowhere near the 5 Mbps they say I'm supposed to have.
Before this rigamarole, I decided that the WoW software was "not optimized" (sucks) for Macs. I saw a couple other articles that said that too. And friends who have Windoze machines tell me it's not hard to run WoW.
"I like that whenever I say "Mac," Tom posts a comment."
Usually, that would be me but Tom beat me to it. :D
No, I said "Mac" again and this time you had firsties. Uh oh...
For the most part, for PC gaming, the amount of RAM matters less than the actual speed of the RAM, something most Mac users aren't even aware exists. But, at 2 Gigs, it shouldn't matter too terribly much, and that's likely not your problem.
The thing about the video card is that the specs sometimes don't matter as much. You have a low VRAM card, these days, getting one with 256 can only help things. But, that's a hefty chunk of change for you, and at that point, you're better off just matching the 300 or so and getting a PC exclusively for WoW.
Were I in your situation, I'd go to sisoftware.com, and I would benchmark everything just to see where the weak point in the machine is, but I don't know that there's a version of Sandra for the Mac, so you might be out of luck there. If you can find a decent benchmarking utility for your machine, I'd recommend it. While it doesn't really improve anything, it lets you know the exact specs of everything, and usually can tell you where you're having problems.
For instance, me, I have slow RAM, and it sucks.
By the way, as another routine test, try lowering your resolution and various graphical sliders a bit. If that helps reduce your lag, you've narrowed it down to basically RAM and video card, and given your RAM, it's almost definitely video card.
Note that when you do said test, though, you have to make sure it's somewhat scientific. Walk into Ironforge with everything up, watch the goofy lag, then walk back out, change settings, log out, log in, walk into Ironforge, see what happens. Don't change the settings and then walk in there an hour later. :P
zomokui - That's a name for a DAoC toon right there.
My RAM speed is listed as PC2600U-25330 for one chip and PC2600U-30330 for the other three. I don't know if that's fast or slow, you are correct on that.
Oh yeah, and I really can't turn down my video settings... they're as low as they can go.
the trade off for the lag is the 2 minute patch update when the rest of the PC universe has to wait hours.
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