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Lag spikes: Punkbuster fault?

I've just played on a server (64 slots) runned by a nice admin who is willing to play himself, to chat and to explain server issues to his users.

On that server, everything was fine, except for a few sporadic lag spikes, happening now and then especially on relatively big and intense maps like RedOctober and Pavlov's house.- But then ping times suddenly increased and gameplay was ruined.

The admin rebooted the server and when i rejoined, 20 minutes later, i had a very low ping and something like 55-60 fps -15-20 more than my usual standards.

Well, reading what the admin was writing, those lag spikes are caused by some kind of issue with Punk Buster or between Punk Buster and RO2, not sure about it. Is that the case?
 
When in doubt, blame PunkBuster:D

Seriously though it can cause lag. Devs say it doesn't and it's just that the servers can't handle the player count or something.


Well you do realize that devs also said that "Hero weapons will be rare", or that "You can change the character language to native via option menu", or that the game would have "Realistic damage model"?

From my experimentation's, PunkBuster does cause severe FPS drop. (FPS drops from steady 70's into 20's) and increases latency/might cause lag spikes as well. (Which probably would explain some "wtf" kills I have gotten when PB has been on)
 
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Ping hikes are the least of my worries. RO2 outright freezes my PC completely, requiring a hard restart, when I play on Punkbuster servers (the majority of them).

Now THAT is game-breaking for me.


Naw its just a lag spike you have to wait it out. :D

Actually that sucks trucknuts.

edit:

@ the lag spike thing, that only started after the beta's re release, I have no idea if the two are interconnected. If anyone gets chance to chat with any server admins in the future who are having htis problem, suggest they monitor CPU usage levels, if they are locked at 100% on the cores being used by the game server it might be a good idea to decrease playercount.
 
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Have you tried playing on VAC only servers? I only play on VAC only servers so I can't really compare them. They do, however, lag pretty much too when full.

Server browser: 40 ping (regardless of number of players in game)
In game with few people (~16 players): 60-80 ping
In game with full server (32-64 players): 100-150 ping

And the sad thing is that you really notice ping of 100 in this game. I hope they can sort this out somehow.
 
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We have been noticing these lag spikes on our server. People tell us it pings great and runs smooth. However, if it's related, I have noticed lag spikes are not felt altogether but rather by individuals at different times throughout the game. Some lag, some don't.

Does punkbuster stream periodically to each client? Maybe this is causing the spikes?
 
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