OW killing Internet?

It seems like Overwatch kills my internet performance.

This only started happening within the last 2 days. I thought it was my modem or Comcast but as I waited for them to schedule someone to come out, I noticed this only happened when I played Overwatch.

  • When I play OW, everything is perfectly smooth, fast, etc, even once I start a game, as I play it gets progressively choppier, both FPS and audio. When I check my internet at this time, its gone from a normal 400+Mbps to between 8-12-30 stuff like that.

  • The in-game stats still show high FPS, good MS etc as well.

  • Once out of a game check my internet and its still 8-12-30 Mbps-ish, but then after from seconds to a minute it will go back to normal 400+Mbps and stay there.

  • Ping tests to blizzard also actually are fine the entire time. Network and other resources for OW seem normal/low during this issue as well.

I have tried to disable my WIFI and unplug everything but my PC and it still happens so I don’t think its a device or anything else, it really seems to coincide only with OW.
I tried to move my Overwatch folder from my SSD on C to a M2 drive to another SSD and nothing helped. I did a rebuild/repair from my Battle-net client and that didn’t help either.
I’ve opened/forwarded all the Battle-net and OW ports on my Win10 firewall and on my Modem/Router.
I’ve tried closing all Apps like Razer or Corair or Nvidia experience, all that turned off and it still happens.

I have no idea where to look next, and advice?

Your issue might be related to this:

Do you have something like Killer NIC? Or maybe a firewall program that is interfering? You can also check the QoS settings on the router.

Comcast replaced my Router today with a newer faster model, same issues.

I took a screenshot of the net graph in game, you can see white lines where the audio stutter and things are happening, have no idea what it means yet.

I have a new modem, new coax, house coax tested by Comcast even some stuff replaced due to age. I think its more around OW or the PC. I can’t pinpoint anything obvious that happened in the last few days. The last updates were for Win10 critical updates and it was on 1/23:
Feature update to Windows 10, version 1809
2019-01 Security Update for Adobe Flash Player for Windows 10 Version 1908 for x64-based Systems (KB4408979)
2019-01 Cumulative Update for .NET Framework 3.5 and 4.7.2 for Windows 10 Version 1809 for x64 (KB4480056)
Update for Adobe Flash Player for Windows 10 Version 1809 for x64-based Systems (KB4462930)

Can we also look at a dxdiag? Blizzard Support - Obtaining System Files
Paste between ~~~ marks

Like this

SO its fixed, for anyone else having this issue let me tell you what I did.

If you use the net graph in game and get constant white bars, corresponding to audio and in-game stutters or somthing similar…

I was convinced it was internet at first, ruled that out, then started uninstalling anything that was installed recently, that didn’t help, I was told it was CPU throttling and my temps were too high and I needed to clean my CPU or replace thermal paste etc… I didn’t want to do that because I cleaned it out with air a couple of months ago and my Corsair wear cooler has been solid from my experience. I tested Witcher 3 on ultra let it run for an hour with 0 issues. So CPU didn’t seem like a problem.

TLDR: What I ended up doing was uninstalling EVERYTHING blizzard. All games, all clients, deleting folder, deleting some read-only .ini files. Then reinstalled everything. Boom-Fixed.

I had already “repaired” the install, that didn’t help. Give it a try if that’s helps.

1 Like