right as you know im haveing really bad trouble with lag for the last couple of weeks and i dont have a clue whats going on

so heres is a tracert i done looks normal to me

C:\Users\>tracert ip.theirishguard.com

Tracing route to ip.theirishguard.com
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.254
  2    43 ms    53 ms    42 ms  b-ras1.bbh.dublin.eircom.net [159.134.155.19]
  3    41 ms     *       42 ms  86.43.242.37
  4    41 ms    41 ms    40 ms  86.43.244.29
  5    41 ms    41 ms    41 ms  86.43.244.153
  6    41 ms    42 ms    41 ms  to-inex-dub-deg-gw.digiweb.ie [193.242.111.20]
  7    42 ms    43 ms    42 ms  89.234.64.91

Trace complete.

C:\Users\>ping ip.theirishguard.com

Pinging ip.theirishguard.com [89.234.64.91] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 89.234.64.91: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=121
Reply from 89.234.64.91: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=121
Reply from 89.234.64.91: bytes=32 time=43ms TTL=121
Reply from 89.234.64.91: bytes=32 time=42ms TTL=121

Ping statistics for 89.234.64.91:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 42ms, Maximum = 43ms, Average = 42ms

C:\Users\>

no packet loss either though my ping to the tig server is 65ms in cod4 not 42ms could also be the fact its 5am and i should really go to sleep

nothing wrong with those pings.

try it when you have the problem next time...

Well, in BF42, if my sound was set on a high setting, it would cause massive machine lag. That really did my head in, as I was getting pings of, well, 10, at the time.

Try disabling sound for a match. Sure, you'll get killed, but it's trial and error.

His PC has the best of the best in it Syco, so unless its a hardware conflict I doubt anything is not up to par.

Using a "Creative SB X-Fi Xtreme Gamer Fatal1ty Professional, 64MB" soundcard. BF42 was the only game with the problem: BF2 actually played better with the card. Don't think I had any problems with BFV either. Once I set the sound quality to low in BF42, no machine lag.

My point: the best bits matter not sometimes. Saying nay to something because it's the best means you've overlooked it.

If you haven't already port forward this as it's for punkbuster it may help UDP - 28962

i'd try a longer spread of pings, in game pings will always be higher than console due to the use of a different protocol and game related overheads.

Also its worth trying a larger ping packet size to see if that has any effect, and also try leaving HLSW open to see its ping graph, would give you a better idea of how the ping is varying over a longer time spread in lovely graphical form.

technically its possible they do different routing for ICMP too, which could result in far lower pings than you'd get with udp(the protocol used by the game), but thats unlikely. I'd wait till you have issues in game and then run a bunch of tests(see if the pings are bad from console then, also pings to other servers/local eircom ones, foreign ones and so on, would give you a better idea whats going on)