ok, I heard it messes up the server or something, but then again, I got this info from a guy who thought his router was a "firewall"... thanks for the replies.drummerdude21

A massive amount of data needs to be relayed to the game server and back to your PC. In action games when you press the fire button the information is passed to the server and your player will fire its weapon. Simple? Well, not really. You have to take into account what else is going on. There are other players there as well, all moving about and blowing things up. Also take into account doors opening, lifts moving, more players entering the server and you have a huge amount of data to shift via your modem. Hence, the faster your connection the more data you can handle and the less "latency" you're likely to receive.

LATENCY & PING

When you play a single player game on your own machine against the computer you'll have hardly any latency at all. You'll aim at whatever is on screen and hit it no problem. However, when you play a game online you'll have to face a latency, as does every gamer. This is displayed as your "Ping time". On a modem you can expect ping times of 120 - 250ms (milliseconds). This is the time it takes for data from you to be sent to the games server (i.e. you fired a shot), and back to your machine again (i.e. shot has been fired). The ping time can change during a game, especially when there is a lot of action on a player's screen as there will be more data shifted to and from your machine. Some players will have lower ping times than you. This is due to the different connection types available to the net:

A ping of anything less than 350 is playable. Trying to play with anything higher is like trying to sprint through a sea of treacle with lead weights attached to your legs. You will also see players with a huge range of pings. The reason for this is mainly down to three factors: Distance from the games server, how the Players have set-up their configuration, and their connection speed.

A player with a ping of 50 is going to be able to react slightly faster than a player with a ping of 200 so in a one on one situation the lower ping player will have an edge. One factor still remains and that’s skill. Give a player who has never played online an ultra fast connection and another with a modem who knows the game inside and out and the skilled player will come out on top. So even if you do not have the lowest ping in the world you will still enjoy competing against other players on the game of your choice. As with all things in life, practice makes perfect.

LAG

You'll see this mentioned a few times, and is one word you are bound to hear constantly from other players and something you're going to love to hate. Lag occurs when data from your machine to the games server is interrupted. To you this will appear as though you are stuck to the spot and can't move/shoot, and anyone seeing you in the game will get a easy kill as you will be locked to the spot. Lag usually is temporary and only occurs for a few seconds.

TWEAKING YOUR GAME

It's very easy to get performance-greedy with PC games. Unlike console games, PC games give you a number of options to make your game look, or sound better. If you have a high-performance PC this shouldn't be a problem, but if your PC can't handle it it may make the game jerk along slowly.

It's better that the game runs smoothly than looks nice - and this is especially important once you start playing online.

It should be quite easy to improve performance simply by visiting the graphics/visuals area in the options menu. You'll be given an option of screen resolution - basically a higher resolution makes a game look nicer, but your PC will have to work harder to achieve this. For most PCs and games it's best that you try to stick to an 800x600 resolution.

Other than that you may be given several other options. If you're given a choice of High, Medium and Low for options like "Character Detail" and "Texture Quality" set them down to medium, and if that doesn't help, put everything down to low - it'll make your gaming experience much smoother. Likewise, go for "Bilinear Filtering" over "Trilinear Filtering" and "16-Bit" Colour Depth over "32-Bit".

Also, make sure you're not running any unnecessary programs elsewhere, especially in your system tray (bottom right of your screen - right click unnecessary icons and exit them if possible.)

"D" END!