Hey guys. I bought Counter Strike Source, and I was playing it for a while but it was very slow because of my bad graphics card. I ended up moving and getting a new graphics card at about the same time, so graphically the game runs great now. However, I can't play online now because, for some reason, every server thnks my ping is too high and kicks me off. It doesn't matter what location the server is in, it always thinks my ping is too high. The starnge part is, my highest ping is around maybe 150, and I have cable internet, I believe it is a 1M connection, maybe 3. I have this same problem with every game I play that is built on the source engine and played through steam (Counter Strike: Source, Half Life Deathmatch: Source, and Day of Defeat: Source) Every other game I play the connection is fine even if the sergver is on the other side of the world from me. Anyone have any ideas on what I can do to fix the problem?

I found that CS:S was experiencing particularly poor ping when I first got it. So much so that I reverted to CS. I realised that I was using way too much memory with TSR's so from the Windows Task Manager I started working through the open "Processes" and started to close them down one by one - making note of which ones were critical to the system running, and which ones i could do without.

Now whenever I start my computer I always run Task Manager and shut off all the processes I am not goingto use. I guess you could always edit something in the Registry and startup configs to stop them from kicking in - but I would have to ask a techno boffin for that.

To stop programs from automatically starting

Start - Run - type 'msconfig' and press enter. Then goto startup and unclick. You can always reclick a box if you need it back.

I had about a 2 second skim read of this page - it might help, might not. There's no way that games would run fine from other servers on the other-side of the world. Some games would (such as RTS), some others wouldnt (FPS for example). The ping time is just too high.

What OS are you using?
Vista/XP?
Wireless/wired connection to your router?
What are the pings in these other games?

My OS Is WinXP
I have a Wired Conection, I believe a 1Mb connection
In the other games I get between 30 and 150 ping depending on where the server is.


I think that my problem is with the Source engine itself. I only have this problem on Source engine games.

Try setting all graphics, audio quality settings, etc to the lowest and see if it makes a difference.

Already done all of that Like I said, when I first started playing all I had was an on-board video adapter.

Any chance of trying this on another pc at home?

If it works fine - it's your pc. If not, it's something with your local network, router, or anything else between that and the counterstrike server.

Test your real connection speed at www.speedtest.net and told us what you got. Also, playing in server with more distance gets you higher ping.

Otherwise, in game open console, type :
net_graph 3

show us how much ping, choke, loss you got. Basically, if you got more choke, decrease your updaterate and if you got more loss, increase updaterate untill it goes both 0

useful command for you :
net_graph (0/1/2/3) - displays info about your connection status (net_graph 3 is clear and better)
rate (value) - setting for rate (I recommend rate 25000)
cl_updaterate (value) - setting for update rate
cl_cmdrate (value) - etting for upload rate

May that info help. Or you can google to optimize CS Source netcode. I've found one for you, look at this http://www.jason35.com/Netcode.htm

This post has been edited by ivantoar: May 29 2008, 01:09 PM

Ooh, that looks like some good stuff there! As a matter of fact, I do remember changing my rate ony my old connection, so I imagine I'll have to mess around with it on my newer connection. Actually, I probably shold have mentioned it before, but in the console it tells me it is getting fragments out of order, which would tell me there was something wrong with the rate that data was being sent. I just didn't know where to change that. I am at school at the moment, But I will definitely check that stuff out when I get the chance and let you guys know how it turns out