New Laptop - lagging issue

TheSaw

I recently invested in a new windows 10 laptop to replace the windows 7 version that has served me well for many years.
I’m finding at times that the new laptop is ‘lagging’ massively when playing on Sky Poker. For example, when getting all-in pre with an opponent, there’s often a delay of a good few seconds before literally all 5 community cards appear at once on screen. At other times, the timer has already counted halfway down before my hole cards appear on screen with the fold, call, raise buttons. I’ve not actually missed a hand yet but it seems only a matter of time.
I didn’t buy crazy expensive with the new laptop but not bargain basement either – HP with 8th generation Intel i5 processor with 8GB RAM. I’ve got superfast fibre broadband, sit within a few feet of my router, and have never had similar issues with either my old windows 7 laptop or newer windows 10 desktop.

Has anyone encountered (and resolved) similar issues? If any ‘techies’ out there can offer any pointers it would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Angmar2626

Same issue, very similar spec new laptop and fibre. Issues only happen on Sky for me. Closing down any other programmes you have open helps somewhat but at the moment can only play max 3 tables. Previous laptop only had 4GB RAM but could cope with 6+ tables comfortably which is odd!

Tikay10

Paging @mumsie & @noseybonk

MISTY4ME

I had the same issues too from about 3 or 4 weeks ago, but as I'm not very techy, and use a oldish laptop, i thought it was down to everyone in house using the broadband at the same time, (though it hadn't been a problem in the past tbh.) I only play 3 tables as a max. (and not very often!!) but I hardwired my laptop to the router which has cured the lagging issues for me. It's not ideal though

mumsie

I'm away from my windows 10 pc .

Try this.

Click on start.
Type in

performance

Click on

Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows

Go to the Advanced tab, click on change virtual memory

Select the C: drive and give yourself more memory for your programs to run.

Something like that anyway ^^^^^

mumsie

I think you then do a restart.

kapowblamz

Meh, I've never noticed increasing VRAM to actually ever work.

Sometimes changing from the aero theme can fix lagging issues.

Other than that you'd need to post a screenshot of task manager sorted by cpu and ram usage and see what's hogging resources.

chicknMelt

Increasing your VRAM is unlikely to solve the problem. VRAM is just allowing your computer to use some of your hard drive space to store things that should be stored in RAM. Hard drive read and write speeds are far slower than RAM.

The first step should be to try and establish what the problem actually is.

Open "task manager" and look at the different tabs to see if either your RAM, CPU or HD is being maxed out, or close to it, when you are experiencing the problem.

(to open task manager right click on the start bar and choose task manager, or search it, or press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC)

Its also worth testing your internet speed. The sky software is notoriously bad at coping with a weak/slow connection

TheSaw

chicknMelt said:

Increasing your VRAM is unlikely to solve the problem. VRAM is just allowing your computer to use some of your hard drive space to store things that should be stored in RAM. Hard drive read and write speeds are far slower than RAM.

The first step should be to try and establish what the problem actually is.

Open "task manager" and look at the different tabs to see if either your RAM, CPU or HD is being maxed out, or close to it, when you are experiencing the problem.

(to open task manager right click on the start bar and choose task manager, or search it, or press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC)

Its also worth testing your internet speed. The sky software is notoriously bad at coping with a weak/slow connection

Thanks for the replies.

So, tried the VRAM fix without any noticeable improvement.
I've been monitoring task manager over past few days. RAM use is never over 40%. CPU is usually around 5% and peaks around 20%. Hard drive read/write is minimal.
I've done a broadband speed test which came out at 56Mbs.

Annoyingly the lagging still persists but seems to come and go intermittently during the course of a tournament.

chicknMelt

TheSaw said:

chicknMelt said:

Increasing your VRAM is unlikely to solve the problem. VRAM is just allowing your computer to use some of your hard drive space to store things that should be stored in RAM. Hard drive read and write speeds are far slower than RAM.

The first step should be to try and establish what the problem actually is.

Open "task manager" and look at the different tabs to see if either your RAM, CPU or HD is being maxed out, or close to it, when you are experiencing the problem.

(to open task manager right click on the start bar and choose task manager, or search it, or press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC)

Its also worth testing your internet speed. The sky software is notoriously bad at coping with a weak/slow connection

Thanks for the replies.

So, tried the VRAM fix without any noticeable improvement.
I've been monitoring task manager over past few days. RAM use is never over 40%. CPU is usually around 5% and peaks around 20%. Hard drive read/write is minimal.
I've done a broadband speed test which came out at 56Mbs.

Annoyingly the lagging still persists but seems to come and go intermittently during the course of a tournament.

Do you mean you have been monitoring task manager while you play?

In terms of internet speed, latency may be more important than your actual connection speed. You could monitor this while you play by opening a command prompt (search "cmd", or + , then type "cmd") and running the following command. "ping www.sky.com /t"


This will continually (every second or so) connect to sky.com and tell you how long it takes for a response, amongst other things. I tried running it on my computer and got response times between between 10ms and 45ms, with around 90% of the responses being under 15ms. When you are experiencing the problem, look and see if there is a patch of longer response times, or maybe just one of them.


Its likely the connection is the problem somehow, judging by what you have said about the task manager it doesn't seem like your computer is struggling at all.

kapowblamz

Try changing from the default aero theme as well. Google how to do it. It's unlikely but worth a shot.

mumsie

Also, can you post whats in your startup ?

Like so.

TheSaw

chicknMelt said:

TheSaw said:

chicknMelt said:

Increasing your VRAM is unlikely to solve the problem. VRAM is just allowing your computer to use some of your hard drive space to store things that should be stored in RAM. Hard drive read and write speeds are far slower than RAM.

The first step should be to try and establish what the problem actually is.

Open "task manager" and look at the different tabs to see if either your RAM, CPU or HD is being maxed out, or close to it, when you are experiencing the problem.

(to open task manager right click on the start bar and choose task manager, or search it, or press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC)

Its also worth testing your internet speed. The sky software is notoriously bad at coping with a weak/slow connection

Thanks for the replies.

So, tried the VRAM fix without any noticeable improvement.
I've been monitoring task manager over past few days. RAM use is never over 40%. CPU is usually around 5% and peaks around 20%. Hard drive read/write is minimal.
I've done a broadband speed test which came out at 56Mbs.

Annoyingly the lagging still persists but seems to come and go intermittently during the course of a tournament.

Do you mean you have been monitoring task manager while you play?

In terms of internet speed, latency may be more important than your actual connection speed. You could monitor this while you play by opening a command prompt (search "cmd", or + , then type "cmd") and running the following command. "ping www.sky.com /t"


This will continually (every second or so) connect to sky.com and tell you how long it takes for a response, amongst other things. I tried running it on my computer and got response times between between 10ms and 45ms, with around 90% of the responses being under 15ms. When you are experiencing the problem, look and see if there is a patch of longer response times, or maybe just one of them.


Its likely the connection is the problem somehow, judging by what you have said about the task manager it doesn't seem like your computer is struggling at all.

Yes, I was monitoring whilst in play.
Did the 'ping' thing Saturday and got similar outcome with around 90% being about 14ms, Also had a few longer response times and also some "request timed out". Most of these were single events but occasionally they'd be 2 or 3 grouped together. It did appear that these coincided with lagging on some hands.

kapowblamz said:

Try changing from the default aero theme as well. Google how to do it. It's unlikely but worth a shot.

Sorry Kapowblanz, that sentence is beyond my understanding of IT. That said, I did google it as suggested but from what I've read the "aero theme" is not a feature on windows 10???

mumsie said:

Also, can you post whats in your startup ?

Sorry Mumsie, I lack the necessary IT skills / intelligence* (*delete as appropriate) to post an image on here, so in the old fashioned way I've got:
Microsoft OneDrive (high impact)
Microsoft Office 2010 (low)
HP Message Service (low)
Delayed launcher (medium)
Mcafee Security start up (none)
Realtek WOWL utility (not measured)
Synaptics Touchpad (low)
Windows defender notification (low)
BIOS time 3.3 seconds

I've subsequently disabled One Drive as I don't use it and Mcafee as I have a 5 device Norton subscription.
Interestingly, I played quite a lot on Sunday and the 'lagging' which has bugged me since getting the laptop a couple of weeks ago had all but disappeared.
I guess the next few days will determine if it's gone for good.

kapowblamz

Try this

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/disable-visual-effects-windows

It's worth a go and can't cause any harm.

kapowblamz

The problem is the Sky client just isn't that well optimised. You can find people with brand new desktops that can't handle 6+ tables or so and then people with worse desktops that can play 15 tables fine. I don't know where the bottleneck is. It could be anything. @NoseyBonk thinks it could be a memory leak.

HiJoker

If you're using the client, I would recommend switching to the web browser version, much better from my experience