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Re: Meter stutter and network speed confirmation

• JLeary1 416 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 3:46 AM

  Hi all,

   

  just wanted to confirm what I have suspected for a long while now. Today, whilst playing a skins round, my meter stuttering was quite bad. Really bad in fact. Worst it has been probably for a few months. Also, I had constant trouble with loading. Got regular messages of WGT load error, the card at the end of the holes often wouldn't load for a minute or more, and disconnects due to very slow loading. What I noticed is that the loading errors and the meter glitching was happening at the same time. As soon as the loading errors and issues went away, my meter was back to super smooth.

   

  I ran a download speed test during this time while I was waiting for the wgt game screen to load, and I got download throughput speed of 46Mb/s. I am on a fibre optic service with a speed of 50Mbit / 20Mbit.

   

  I often noticed that at certain times of the day the meter is more likely to be glitchy. Just thought I would confirm that, as WGT acknowledge in this sub-forum (see WGT post in this subforum at the top of the threads), network speeds between us and WGT severs DO cause meter stuttering.

  And in this case it was solely WGT's server issues, as, like I said I was getting nearly 50Mbit transfer throughput during this time of meter stutters.

   

  And for the record I have an i7 Quad core Haswell CPU, 8GB DDR3 ram, Nvidia GTX970 with a samsung 250GB SSD and Win 8.1 optimized (I use it for video editing).

  So whilst there may be a lot of talk about "use this browser, use that browser", this has shown that meter glitches will occur as a result of issues with either your network speed or WGT server speed / network speed.

   

  This isn't a complaint, just an observation for everyone so at least we are more in the know as possible reasons when or why our meters go really glitchy.

   

  Cheers. Justin

• Jimbog1964 8,378 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 4:38 AM

  Long story short I had to play a v few rounds through an iphone 3G connection a while back - used it as a WIFI hotspot.   Pretty ordinary connection speed though, and meter still smooth as.  Rest of it dunno but seldom get a poor meter, and only have DSL broadband best of times (all I can as a where live thing).  All runs fine though doing anything I care about as quickly as I care about.  Not saying I am free of the odd late rev same as many report, but generally a very smooth meter.

  I use a sub real gaming standard laptop : Quad core i7, 8 gig RAM, some geforce 2gig 640 graphics card “oojamaflip”, windows 7 and 5400 HDD.  Runs even HD video rendering just as fast as I care it does (non commercial), and for this game way since loads.  Great for what I care about, as a non gamer, and not looking to replace anytime soon.  

  EDIT: Browser wise chrome, comodo dragon or maxthon cloud I find generally all work v well.  If one ever does play up a quick swap to another is a quick fix, and the next flash update usually solves a v seldom issue.  Flash I just keep bang up to date fwiw same as the rest of the system, save for drivers which I leave alone.

  
  

• JLeary1 416 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 4:50 AM

  Yep. I've run wgt on far less computing power than I now have. Also have had congestion from my ISP and still no meter issues (ie congestion so bad that I get throughput of 7KB/s to 200KB/s (average ADSL1 speeds or on par with poor 3G services)..

  What I am saying is that in my experience, meter glitches as far as network speeds seem to be far more sensitive to what is happening on WGT's server end than our own, but of course our own network and ping / latency can play a part. Just run a multi-threaded download from many different servers so as to max out your connection and see how you go.

  Or another way to ensure meter glitches is to run 2 instances of prime95's torture test. If you don't get meter glitches that way then I suggest check for a pulse.

  But I've found meter glitches when there is WGT loading errors, with no internet utilization at my end on a 50Mbit optic fibre connection, 90%+ free ram and 99% CPU idle..

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 8:17 AM

  Do you have the Advanced Option Background Loading turned ON in the game settings?  If so turn it OFF. 

  Downloading a bunch of files for the next hole while you are playing the current hole doesn't make sense. With your powerful PC and 50Mbit download you won't normally see any delay on the scorecard screen while the next hole loads.  But if the WGT server is congested you want any load timeouts to occur on the scorecard screen, not while the meter is potentially running.

  Only WGT knows how they handle downloading files from the server.  How many times do they retry when a request times out before declaring a load timeout?  What if there are a dozen files for the next hole? And the server is slow to respond on all of them?  That could IMO cause a lot of work in Flash handling retrys and interfere with drawing the meter on the screen.

  Flash gives priority to handling O/S and network events before drawing to the screen. (See my post in this thread for further explanation)  If too many network events fill up the alloted time drawing to the screen takes a hit and causes a stutter.

  And for the record I have a similar PC setup as you but on a 17" laptop.  I turn background loading OFF in the game setup.  My meter is great any time of day.  i7 Quad core Haswell CPU up to 3.4Ghz, 16GB DDR3L RAM, Nvidia GT740M with a 1Tb hybrid drive and Win 8.1, 25Mbit download cable.

• garyk49 2,330 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 8:46 AM

  Everyone always talks Download, but they tend to forget Upload.  You state 50/20.  I have 100/5 and most of the time works just fine.  I play on a Emachines AMD dual core with onboard graphics and 6 gig of ddr2.  It tends to work just as good as my gaming machine which has I7 2600 overclocked, 8 gig of ddr3 ram and nvidia 570 video card.  I just don't go online much with it except Steam, Uplay or origin.

   I play in either Opera, SRWware Iron, or Comodo as they are faster browsers. 

  If the upload it acting up it can't get to the servers as quick.  I run into that here with mine at times.

• JLeary1 416 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 7:08 PM

  andyson:

  Do you have the Advanced Option Background Loading turned ON in the game settings?  If so turn it OFF. 

   

  Great info andyson

   

  Much appreciated. Didn't think of that. Will try what you suggest. Kudos mate.

   

  [Edit: Mine was already turned off - it is turned off by default which I didn't know, but I have never turned it on, so that isn't it]

   

  I guess my original post stemmed from the fact that of the myriad of threads I have read on the forums here, there seemed little or no mention of network speed as far as causing meter stutter. The bulk of the comments seemed to revolve around which browser or flash version you were using.

   

  garyk49 -  Yes Upload speeds do factor into any network communication issue. Fortunately, I never see upload speed deterioration here. Even when my download speeds drop massively, upload speed tests still show a happy 18 or 19 Mb/s.

• andyson 6,415 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 8:28 PM

  JLeary1:

  [Edit: Mine was already turned off - it is turned off by default which I didn't know, but I have never turned it on, so that isn't it]

  Exactly when were you getting the Load Error messages?  During the game or only on the scorecard screen?  I'm wondering if that option works.

• JLeary1 416 Posts

  Sun, Apr 5 2015 10:19 PM

  andyson:

  Exactly when were you getting the Load Error messages?  During the game or only on the scorecard screen?  I'm wondering if that option works.

   

  In game. One time the screen went black and stayed black though on the scorecard screen. But the load errors (which I don't get very often these days) were all in game. Sometimes when everything appeared fine.