Ping for Gaming
Not all games need the same ping. A battle royale shooter demands under 40 ms. A turn-based RPG is playable at 300 ms. Here's exactly what you need — and how to get it.
Under 20 ms — Pro level
Imperceptible input delay. Required for professional competitive play. Achievable on fibre with a wired connection.
20–50 ms — Competitive
Excellent for all genres. You will not be disadvantaged by latency at this level in any mainstream game.
50–100 ms — Casual
Fine for most games. You may notice lag in fast-paced shooters. MOBAs, MMOs, and casual games unaffected.
Above 100 ms — Problematic
Rubber-banding and delayed hit detection in any competitive game. Investigate and fix before playing competitively.
Ping targets by game genre
Game developers optimise netcode for specific update rates (tick rates) and tolerate different levels of latency depending on the pace of gameplay. Slower-paced games have more time to compensate for network inconsistency.
| Genre | Examples | Target ping | Max tolerable |
|---|---|---|---|
| FPS / Battle Royale | CS2, Valorant, Warzone, Apex | < 30 ms | 80 ms |
| MOBA | League of Legends, Dota 2 | < 50 ms | 100 ms |
| Fighting | Street Fighter 6, Mortal Kombat | < 30 ms | 80 ms |
| Racing | Gran Turismo 7, Forza Motorsport | < 50 ms | 100 ms |
| MMO / RPG | World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV | < 80 ms | 150 ms |
| Sports (FIFA/EA FC) | EA FC, NHL, NBA 2K | < 50 ms | 100 ms |
| Strategy / Turn-based | Civilization, Chess.com | Any | 300+ ms fine |
Why ping matters more than speed for gaming
Games require a constant stream of small packets — your inputs going to the server, other players' states coming back. A 10 Mbps connection handles this comfortably. Gigabit internet does not reduce ping compared to 50 Mbps because ping is determined by distance and routing, not bandwidth.
What degrades gaming performance is high ping and high jitter. Ping determines how late your inputs arrive at the server. Jitter determines whether that delay is consistent or unpredictable. A consistent 60 ms ping is far better for gaming than an average 20 ms ping that regularly spikes to 120 ms. See how jitter and ping differ →
Tick rate and why it affects how ping feels
Server tick rate is how many times per second the game server processes updates. Popular values:
- 128 tick — CS2 matchmaking, Valorant. Updates every 7.8 ms. High ping is extremely noticeable.
- 64 tick — Most Battlefied titles, older COD. Updates every 15.6 ms. Slightly more forgiving.
- 20–30 tick — Some battle royale titles. Less sensitive to ping variation.
On a 128-tick server, a 60 ms ping means your input arrives roughly 8 server updates late. On a 20-tick server, 60 ms is barely 1–2 updates. This is why the same ping feels different across games.
How to reduce your gaming ping
- Switch to Ethernet — eliminates Wi-Fi as a source of latency and jitter immediately. This is the single most impactful change.
- Select the closest server region — always choose the game server region geographically nearest to you. Routing through a transatlantic link adds a physics floor of 40–80 ms that no hardware fix can overcome.
- Close background apps — active downloads, cloud sync, and streaming on other devices create buffer bloat that spikes your ping unpredictably.
- Enable QoS on your router — prioritises gaming traffic over background transfers.
- Disable VPN — VPNs add 10–50 ms of overhead. Disable them before gaming unless you have a specific reason to use one.
- Check for ISP congestion — if ping is high in evenings but fine in mornings, your ISP is overloaded. Test at different times to confirm.
Measuring your gaming ping
Your in-game ping counter shows the round-trip time to the game server — this is the number that matters most for gaming. Run our Ping Test to measure your connection's baseline latency to a nearby server. If this baseline is already high (above 50 ms), the problem is at the network level. If the baseline is fine but in-game ping is high, the game server itself may be distant or overloaded.