In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

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Ravenous
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Joined: 27 Jul 2022, 13:54

In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Ravenous » 27 Jul 2022, 15:13

A couple of years ago I started getting into csgo, I had an old dell pc with a tape modded xeon x3363, was playing on 120 fps with a 60hz monitor and I was having a good time. After a while I moved to another apartment and I started to play csgo more seriously. At first I didn't notice anything strange as I was still a noob but I would start to feel something is off soon. The issues I was having would persist over 2 years and after changing 2 computers.
The usual suspects were as you can imagine, bad hitreg, inconsistent sensitivity, input lag (pulling the mouse down to spray and bullets still went over enemies heads), getting killed by noobs who seemed to prefire me (when checking the demo nothing seemed out of the ordinary with their peeks yet from my pov I saw them for a split second and then die instantly). After many optimizations and getting a pretty powerful pc, my only gripe would remain the mouse feel.

Over the last two years I upgraded my whole setup
monitor: 60hz>75hz>240hz
cpu: xeon x3363>i5 3570k>ryzen 5600x
ram: 800mhz>1600mhz>3600mhz
gpu: old radeon>gt 1030>gtx 1060
mouse: old noname>g305>viper mini

I did all the optimizations I could find to maximize fps and reduce input lag what I felt helped the most was:
-Disabling realtek audio
-Using another power socket in my house that had grounding, initially I was using the pc with the socket I had in my room but because it's an older building it didn't have grounding so I used an extension cord for the socket in the hallway
-Using a custom windows iso
-Using MarkC fix and m_rawinput 0
-Capping my fps using the nvidia driver and leaving low latency mode disabled
-Lastly, this made the mouse movement feel a little bit normal, I set most the voltages in bios fixed instead of auto and disabled SMT(multithreading)

All the settings would change the mouse feel, sometimes I felt like I figured it out or some days the game ran perfectly. I would no longer get killed by complete noobs but I still struggled against more experienced players.

Last week I started reading through this forum again to see if there are some new tweaks that people came up with and I stumble across this topic by lowel, God bless him: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10221

I realized the ethernet cable is the only thing I never thought to change since moving here so I just unplug it and start killing bots. I was blown away, I forgot how it felt to really have a connection between the hand and what is happening on the screen. Plugging the cable back in made the feeling worse again so I swapped it with a new one I had lying around but never thought to use and low and behold, that one didn't give any issues. Gave it a week to make sure it wasn't placebo and I am happy to say none of the issues I had before came back.

I don't know if there is any moral of the story here, I just wish I caught this earlier though I am still happy I learned a lot about hardware and software along the way. Hope everyone finds what their issue is, it can be pretty angering sometimes not being able to enjoy the game you love so much.

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Chief Blur Buster
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Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 28 Jul 2022, 21:53

I've accidentally badly crimped an Ethernet cable, and created really weird lag/slowdown effects.

Bad network wiring and connectors are definitely a super-common source of lag -- whether be cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.
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assombrosso
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Joined: 29 Nov 2021, 10:34

Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by assombrosso » 28 Jul 2022, 22:25

Can we trade places? Me be you , you be me. You take away my gf and I take Ethernet cable solution, good trade off

Thatweirdinputlag
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Joined: 27 Aug 2021, 14:09

Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Thatweirdinputlag » 29 Jul 2022, 04:02

Hopefully it stays like this for you! I've tried 5e, 6, 6A UTP, 7 STP, 7 SFTP, 8 SFTP, and using onboard wireless card. Some of the ethernet cables went as expansive as $20 for 1 meter. Every time I use a new cable, everything becomes fine and dandy for about 2 days and then the hailstorm comes back.
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Cyanide_
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Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Cyanide_ » 29 Jul 2022, 05:14

Thatweirdinputlag wrote:
29 Jul 2022, 04:02
Hopefully it stays like this for you! I've tried 5e, 6, 6A UTP, 7 STP, 7 SFTP, 8 SFTP, and using onboard wireless card. Some of the ethernet cables went as expansive as $20 for 1 meter. Every time I use a new cable, everything becomes fine and dandy for about 2 days and then the hailstorm comes back.
It's an obvious question probably, but have you tried your rig in other house? Or have you tried playing offline, with mobile internet etc?

Ravenous
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Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Ravenous » 29 Jul 2022, 08:35

Chief Blur Buster wrote:
28 Jul 2022, 21:53
I've accidentally badly crimped an Ethernet cable, and created really weird lag/slowdown effects.

Bad network wiring and connectors are definitely a super-common source of lag -- whether be cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.
I have optical fiber up to my router then 1.5 meters of cable coming out of it. Maybe I should have catched this earlier because a few months ago I noticed I was only getting 100 megabits instead of 1 gbps. I called my ISP and they said that is the speed my computer is negotiating and to change some negotiating setting from auto to 1gbps. That didn't work so they said to just unplug and plug the cable back and that fixed my speed issue. I was pretty surprised my internet still worked but with limited speed because of the bad connection or something but I shrugged it off.

Thatweirdinputlag wrote:
29 Jul 2022, 04:02
Hopefully it stays like this for you! I've tried 5e, 6, 6A UTP, 7 STP, 7 SFTP, 8 SFTP, and using onboard wireless card. Some of the ethernet cables went as expansive as $20 for 1 meter. Every time I use a new cable, everything becomes fine and dandy for about 2 days and then the hailstorm comes back.

It's been over a week already and everything is fine, been playing almost every day and I can finally just enjoy my game instead of dwelling on the fact I am missing easy shots. My old cable was 5e, the new one is 5e as well but it was new in the package. I am building muscle memory slowly now as before my sensitivity felt different every day.
Can't believe how much time I spent in the past tweaking settings and I was never satisfied with the result. I have 2 windows installs on my pc, one that I use for anything and one that is fully optimized and that I only use for cs. I tried playing on my bloated installation and it feels completely fine, less fps maybe but still over my refresh rate of 240.

Shade7
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Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Shade7 » 29 Jul 2022, 17:20

Chief Blur Buster wrote:
28 Jul 2022, 21:53
I've accidentally badly crimped an Ethernet cable, and created really weird lag/slowdown effects.

Bad network wiring and connectors are definitely a super-common source of lag -- whether be cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.
Chief- what are the ways someone could detect/test for the effects of a bad cable? Other than just speed-tests (since that's the only test my ISP really bothered to run).

I have gigabit fiber, and get the right speeds (940 up/down).

But, I still have some lag issues, which I've narrowed down to being network related (most likely routing). Still, I'm suspicious that it could be the ethernet cable between my ONT & Router. It's a cat 5e cable that was installed quite a while ago. I switched ISPs & got gigabit fiber last year, but they reused the existing cable, saying 5e was good enough & it appeared to be in working condition.

assombrosso
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Joined: 29 Nov 2021, 10:34

Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by assombrosso » 29 Jul 2022, 18:18

Shade7 wrote:
29 Jul 2022, 17:20
Chief Blur Buster wrote:
28 Jul 2022, 21:53
I've accidentally badly crimped an Ethernet cable, and created really weird lag/slowdown effects.

Bad network wiring and connectors are definitely a super-common source of lag -- whether be cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.
Chief- what are the ways someone could detect/test for the effects of a bad cable? Other than just speed-tests (since that's the only test my ISP really bothered to run).

I have gigabit fiber, and get the right speeds (940 up/down).

But, I still have some lag issues, which I've narrowed down to being network related (most likely routing). Still, I'm suspicious that it could be the ethernet cable between my ONT & Router. It's a cat 5e cable that was installed quite a while ago. I switched ISPs & got gigabit fiber last year, but they reused the existing cable, saying 5e was good enough & it appeared to be in working condition.
The issue isn’t the in the cable, the cable simply gets affected by something in your location and acts as antenna of noise which exacerbate the issue and create noticeable lag. A bad cable can be fine in a good location, a bad cable in a location where EMI/ frequencies or that something isn’t strong enough will withstand and not get affected by what’s in the location. This is why some users here managed to fix their lag, they didn’t get red of what’s affecting the cable, they simply bought a cable that is more capable of withstanding the thing that affects bad weak cables.

Shade7
Posts: 222
Joined: 25 May 2022, 18:44

Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Shade7 » 30 Jul 2022, 00:21

assombrosso wrote:
29 Jul 2022, 18:18
Shade7 wrote:
29 Jul 2022, 17:20
Chief Blur Buster wrote:
28 Jul 2022, 21:53
I've accidentally badly crimped an Ethernet cable, and created really weird lag/slowdown effects.

Bad network wiring and connectors are definitely a super-common source of lag -- whether be cable, DSL, Ethernet, etc.
Chief- what are the ways someone could detect/test for the effects of a bad cable? Other than just speed-tests (since that's the only test my ISP really bothered to run).

I have gigabit fiber, and get the right speeds (940 up/down).

But, I still have some lag issues, which I've narrowed down to being network related (most likely routing). Still, I'm suspicious that it could be the ethernet cable between my ONT & Router. It's a cat 5e cable that was installed quite a while ago. I switched ISPs & got gigabit fiber last year, but they reused the existing cable, saying 5e was good enough & it appeared to be in working condition.
The issue isn’t the in the cable, the cable simply gets affected by something in your location and acts as antenna of noise which exacerbate the issue and create noticeable lag. A bad cable can be fine in a good location, a bad cable in a location where EMI/ frequencies or that something isn’t strong enough will withstand and not get affected by what’s in the location. This is why some users here managed to fix their lag, they didn’t get red of what’s affecting the cable, they simply bought a cable that is more capable of withstanding the thing that affects bad weak cables.
Oh I see- interesting. Thanks.

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Re: In the end it was the stupid ethernet cable

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 01 Aug 2022, 00:14

It's actually the same thing -- It's simply a game of signal-to-noise margins (S/N ratio). Once it's too low, no data can make it through or lots of error correction (lag) is occuring.

A cable that works but is kinda weak (poor conductors), or badly crimped connector, or some other defect (e.g. hairline crack in one copper wire), simply have a tighter S/N ratio. Any injection of interference more easily knocks out the signal. So it's certainly possible that the cable may work well in one location but badly in another. Borderline Ethernet cables & connectors/jacks can be quite erratic.

Whether it's a short Ethernet connection or a long DSL link, the S/N ratio game is surprisingly similar.
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