Fluctuating ping, SIM, frametime & mouse lag (Packet loss?)

RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ-2663 · September 21, 2019, 8:16pm

Hello,

I’ve been suffering from major latency issues for the last couple of weeks. I’m experiencing severe packet loss it seems. The orange packet loss icons often appear on my screen while I’m playing and my SIM values fluctuate like crazy in heavy team fights where lots of abilities are used. This also causes my machine to micro stutter (highly fluctuating frametime) and my mouse sensitivity to seemingly change whenever a stutter occurs. Can packet loss really cause mouse stuttering as if the sensitivity is constantly changing?

So far I’ve reinstalled the OS on a brand new HDD and replaced literally any component of my PC and it’s still not fixed so you’d say this all is a clear network issue. Haven’t tried a different network yet but I will soon. I’ve ran a winMTR but I seem to have difficulties identifying where exactly the packet loss is coming from. Is anyone able to help me out with that?

And is someone able to explain me how packet loss can cause severe mouse floating/stuttering, even on desktop without any applications running? I’ve tried changing the polling rates but has no effect on the problem.

Here’s my winMTR log

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |

|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|

| dlinkrouter - 0 | 933 | 933 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 0 |

|ip-213-126-171-185.ip.prioritytelecom .net - 1 | 917 | 913 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 6 |

|asd-tr0021-cr101-be112-2.core.as33915 .net - 1 | 929 | 928 | 6 | 6 | 15 | 6 |

|asd-tr0021-cr101-be112-2.core.as33915 .net - 1 | 929 | 928 | 6 | 6 | 16 | 6 |

| nl-ams14a-ri1-ae51-0.aorta .net - 1 | 917 | 913 | 6 | 8 | 52 | 6 |

| 213.46.182.194 - 1 | 929 | 928 | 6 | 10 | 84 | 8 |

| ae1-br02-eqam1.as57976. net - 1 | 916 | 912 | 6 | 34 | 2190 | 7 |

| et-0-0-3-br02-eqpa4.as57976. net - 2 | 873 | 860 | 16 | 50 | 4843 | 18 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

SPECS:
i7 3770k 3.5ghz, GTX 1660, 16gb DDR3 1600mhz on an ASrock B75M-GL R2.0

Tried different mice as well but same results. There’s no excessive hardware usage to be seen in either task manager or process explorer when running Overwatch. CPU barely passes 30% usage while GPU sticks to 22-25% usage while playing. During the SIM spikes I get the occasional frame drop but only by 3-5 frames, and the FPS is constantly fluctuating but it’s barely noticeable, only when monitoring frame times. The problem is however is that even the most mediocre fluctuation seems to cause my mouse to lose control at the moment of the lag spikes which makes the game unplayable for me, even on less aim dependent heroes hits register too late or enemies are rubber banding just at the moment I’ve lost sight of them causing them to appear in a completely different location. These things all happen very subtly but does drastically affect my gameplay. To me it seems extremely hard to pinpoint the exact issue.

Agaleith · September 22, 2019, 11:09am

Hi, RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ! o/

Regarding the mouse issue, it shouldn’t happen because of connection issues unless the connection issues cause the game to freeze temporarily, but this is rather unusual. In any case, let’s focus on those connection issues first, and see how it goes from there

So, the winMTR shows three things that worry me. First, the first line of the results, dlinkrouter (which is obviously your router). The connection time to your router should be almost 0. It shouldn’t take any time at all to cover the few meters from your PC to your router. And you can see this in the Avrg column, showing 0 milliseconds of answer time. But in Wrst, we can see that it spikes sometimes, up to 8 milliseconds. This may not seem much, but it is a lot for the router. If it takes 8 milliseconds to cover just that distance, imagine how much it would take to cover hundreds or thousands of kilometers up to our servers.

The second thing that worries me is the second line. Here you can see a 1% package loss. That means that when your router connects to the first node on the street, 1% of the packages are not coming back. It could be your router, it could be that first node, or it could be the cable between them. This loss spreads all the way down, meaning that this package loss is consistent.

Finally, if you compare the Avrg and Wrst columns, you’ll notice that the difference is kind of consistent with what we saw in the router line up intil the nl-ams (that’s Netherlands-Amsterdam) line, that suddenly goes from 8 milliseconds (which is wht we want) to 52 milliseconds. This difference keeps increasing in the next few lines up to 4843 milliseconds in the last line, which is almost 5 seconds and would most certainly cause a disconnection in Overwatch. So yeah, something starting in that nl-ams line is starting to go very wrong, but doesn’t happen most of the time, which is why you have an average of 50 milliseconds, and a best result of 16 (meaning that if it wasn’t for these absurdly high spikes, you would have a really good connection to our servers).

So, what to do about it? First, restart your router (don’t turn it on for at least 1 minute, and make sure to connect all devices that use it one by one, waiting a bit each time, so it doesn’t become overloaded with sudden access requests), to try and get rid of that 8 millisecond spike in the first line. If you are using Wi-Fi, try to use a cable to the router.

Then, run the winMTR test again, and check if the situation improves, specially on the first few lines (ideally the difference between Avrg and Wrst to be as close to 0 as possible, and the % of package loss to be 0 in every line, but don’t panic if you see a 100%, as that’s probably just because of security).

Feel free to post the new results here and we’ll let you know what we see in them

RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ-2663 · September 28, 2019, 4:39am

Alright, turned off my router and made sure at least a minute passed before turning it on again. Then played another match of competitive while running winMTR. Here’s the results:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

| WinMTR statistics |
| Host - % | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
| dlinkrouter - 0 | 525 | 525 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
|ip-213-126-171-185.ip.prioritytelecom. net - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 6 |
|asd-tr0021-cr101-be112-2.core.as33915. net - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 6 | 16 | 6 |
|asd-tr0021-cr101-be112-2.core. as3391 5.ne t - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 6 |
| nl-ams14a-ri1-ae51-0.aorta. net - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 8 | 35 | 6 |
| 213.46.182.194 - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 9 | 100 | 6 |
| ae1-br02-eqam1.as57976. net - 0 | 525 | 525 | 6 | 13 | 383 | 11 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|
WinMTR v0.92 GPL V2 by Appnor MSP - Fully Managed Hosting & Cloud Provider

As for the mouse, which is a more pressing problem, it seems like that’s a CPU issue. Whenever I move the mouse anywhere, whether it be ingame or on desktop, a load of applications seem to be using CPU and usage drops again once I stop moving my mouse. As seen in the .gif here: -
(Can’t include links here for some reason. If there’s a way to send you links please let me know ) https: // i.imgur .com /p1V6TI8 .gif

It’s not my recording or my desktop in the .gif, someone else with the same problem recorded this but I’m experiencing the exact same problem. This problem started weeks ago. When I still had my i5 3550p installed that’s when the problem initially started. Weeks later after replacing it with an i7 3770k the problem persists. I’ve replaced ALL hardware components since the issue started and the problem is still there. The mouse is erratic and playing aim dependant heroes is virtually impossible due to the random changes in sensitivity.

Agaleith · September 28, 2019, 6:54pm

Hi again, RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ! o/

The good news is that now the router shows perfectly healthy in the winMTR, and there’s no more package loss. Bad news is that the issue at nl-ams keeps showing. You may need to call your internet provider about that.

Regarding the mouse issue, the only thing I can think of is closing background applications. If the CPU usage spikes like that, it’s likely that some other application is working on something, maybe trying to capture the mouse movements, so making sure nothing is running in the background should improve the situation.

RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ-2663 · September 29, 2019, 6:35am

If it were that simple I would have solved it already. It’s a really odd occurance where all programs that are ‘affected’ by mouse movement spike in CPU levels. When I stop moving the mouse, all programs immediately stop using CPU and general CPU usage drops to 1-0% while when spinning the mouse around it’s up to at least 20-30% total CPU usage, which isn’t normal. Explorer.exe, dwm.exe, csrss.exe and the system process (PID 4) seem to be mostly affected by this problem as they show the highest CPU usage when wildly spinning the mouse. Other programs join in but only spike up to max 1% usage. I’ve barely got any programs running in the background. This is a clean Windows 10 installation with only 4-5 games installed or so, nothing else. The problem is that I can’t blame the usage on one specific process since it seems like nearly all processes are affected by mouse movement. Even GPU acts up when spinning the mouse, showing up to 20% GPU usage for DWM.exe and csrss.exe when moving it.

Few weeks back I didn’t have this problem at all, even when I used to run OW on an i5 3550p with 8gigs of ram and a GTX 760. I’ve tried going back to the old setup before but it strangely that didn’t fix the problem. I have even replaced my HDD and PSU but made no difference. I’ve tried changing up in-game graphics settings, Nvidia graphic settings, messing with Windows settings, BIOS settings after doing a LOT of research online, but the problem persists. The issue exists on desktop as welI as in any game I play, not just Overwatch. I am getting really desperate at this point.

Agaleith · September 29, 2019, 2:20pm

Hi again, RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ! o/

I’m honestly at a loss here

If the spikes in CPU ussage happen with processes like Explorer.exe and dwm.exe, which are basic Windows applications, then I can’t really think of anything. I would contact Microsoft, to see if they have any insight or know of any issue that could cause this. If you feel confortable with it, you may even try some program like WPA to see if it can give you more insight into the issue, but it would be outside of what we could help you with.

RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ-2663 · September 30, 2019, 7:11pm

Yeah guess I’ll try that then. Nonetheless thanks for your support.

EDIT:

unless the connection issues cause the game to freeze temporarily, but this is rather unusual

Is this possible though? What could be the possible causes of packet loss causing game freezes? After thorough analysis it almost seems like the packet loss is the cause of micro stuttering, which in turn makes my mouse ‘slip’. Not only in games, but also on desktop. Is it possible to notice effects of packet loss in a desktop environment? Is there such thing as frame drops on desktop even?

Agaleith · October 1, 2019, 3:36pm

Hi again, RȂƗŊDǞŊĈȄ! o/

That shouldn’t happen. Still, it’s easy to test. You can do it simply by disconnecting your computer from the router and see if you still get the issue when playing offline games that presented the issue before, for example. But what I was thinking when I mentioned the game freezing due to connection was about the possibility of the game waiting for the server to respond before showing the next frames, which shouldn’t affect any other program in your computer. So again, it’s highly unlikely.

stolenvalor-2855 · February 7, 2022, 9:23pm

Hi I still have this issue at the moment. Replaced all of my hardware components by now and turns out it’s not an internet issue. I’m sure it’s something hardware-related as reinstalling Windows including formatting my SSD yields no positive results. I have no packet loss, the main issue is my mouse being floaty and unpredictable. It’s very inconsistent especially when performing precise movements. My aim is always off, and it’s very hard to keep track of where my enemies are this way. When I do a 180 turn ingame my screen always ends up in a different direction.

I’ve replaced my old i7 3770k with a i5 9400f including new motherboard Asus Prime B354M-K and DDR4 Corsair LPX 3200mhz RAM. I’ve got a Gsync monitor and everything looks very smooth while playing; I have no FPS drops, and none of my components are overloaded while playing the game. It’s just the mouse that’s going haywire and I have no idea how to solve it. I’ve tried different mice as well and replaced the power supply once. I’m using a 750 watts power supply at the moment. I’m using a GTX 1660 gpu. I’ve been googling hoping to find others with the same card in the same boat as me but no luck so far. The graphics card is the only thing I’ve not replaced after getting a new mobo. If there is anyone who can help me out with this would be much appreciated.

Interesting detail is that the mouse issue persists in the UEFI BIOS.

Veadsarias · February 8, 2022, 5:34pm

Stolenvalor: please do create a separate topic for this - a latency issue from September 2019 is very unlikely to contain any information relevant to a mouse/BIOS problem from 2022.

Closing out this thread.