Almost every beginning online gamer has experienced the problem of lag with their gaming setup–unless you had the money to start you off with a pretty insane gaming setup. So what are the ways in which you can reduce lag and improve your online gaming experience?
Lag is just one of the many problems that may hit you while gaming online. You can also experience other issues like poor graphics, interference with your gaming hardware, or a bad posture while gaming. The last thing you need is to have a downtime when you are just about to cash in on your online casino game or making that last high score to take the prize in your shooter game. Fortunately, there are plenty of tips to improve online gaming experience for novices or veteran gamers:
Wi-Fi vs Ethernet
Wireless connectivity is a great option, especially if you are trying to maintain a clean gaming setup. However, wireless connections are prone to interference and lag. Most pro-gamers will advise you to go for Ethernet connection as there is less latency or lag to deal with. Wired connections are also the best when troubleshooting for problems in your overall connection.
This is not to say that wireless connections are not the best. In fact, with a good bandwidth, the latency in wireless connections is abysmal. If you are not an avid gamer, then you should do just fine over wireless internet. There are also tips to improve your wireless connection which we explain later.
Upgrade your gaming desk
What does your gaming setup look like? Can your gaming desk hold all the components you have connected to your screen or CPU? These are some of the important questions to ask when gaming over a home desk. If your current desk forces you to slump while playing baccarats, chances are you will not get the best experience from that casino game.
Gaming desks come in different shapes. They can be L-Shaped, U-Shaped, compact or standard. The compact and standard desks fall under the ordinary category, and are ideal if you are just gambling online or playing video games that do not require a lot of components. U-shape desks are ideal if you have several curved screens connected. L-shapes are most preferable as they give you two work stations. Nevertheless, it all comes down to personal preference.
Close unnecessary programs
For a good gaming experience, sometimes you have to reduce the number of programs connected to your internet. You may be skyping your battle mates as you infiltrate enemy grounds on Call of Duty. But if your bandwidth connection is limiting, it will affect the overall gaming experience.
In addition, avoid downloading large files while playing your games to save on bandwidth. Close down any program that runs background updates as well. The alterative to all this is to upgrade your bandwidth to something faster.
Use a QoS connection
Quality of Service (or QoS) is a setting in your router that allows you to prioritize how bandwidth is allocated. You can set your router to give high priority to your online casino games or first shooter games. This is a great option, especially if you do not want to ask any of your friends or family to get off the internet while you are playing.
Keep your NAT settings to ‘Open’
Network Address Translation (NAT) is a gaming protocol that governs P2P connections. NAT settings are defined as Open, Moderate, or Strict. Keeping your NAT settings Open allows you to receive data from multiple computers within the same network. Pro gamers prefer this option as it improves the gaming experience and reduces lag.
On the other hand, if it is only two or five of you interconnected, you can limit how many people access your gaming platform by switching to moderate or strict connections.
Minimize Gaming Graphics
We all know how thrilling it is to have that 4K feel to our games. Unfortunately, setting your gaming graphics on ‘high’ will affect the game’s framerates. Most online video games give optimum performance at 60 frames per second. Compromising on this leads to a lag. The bottom-line is, it is way better to sacrifice a little graphics to maintain the best frame rate. Unless you want enemy fire to get you faster than you spot it on Gears of War.
Conclusion
These are some of the best tips to improve online gaming experience as a novice or pro gamer. Sometimes you do not need a complete overhaul of your current gaming setup to boost performance. By just doing a few tweaks, you’ll be good to.
