Aside from helping you lower ping while playing in other regions (which is why we’ve gathered here today), this utility has a lot more other features. For instance, it can give you a much-needed boost by optimizing your hardware.
Game Fire
Looking for a quick way to lower ping while playing in other regions? Game Fire might just be the answer.
Furthermore, you can use it to perform HDD defragmentations and allocate more RAM to your games. It’s a perfect all-in-one tool for any diehard fan of PC gaming, so you might as well check it out.
Game Fire key features:
- Automatically allocates system resources to enhance your gaming sessions
- Allows you to customize optimization profiles according to your needs
- Provides you with real-time resource monitoring and optimization
- Lets you tweak system settings on the fly
- Enables you to manage games installed on your PC from a single location
3. Use Kill Ping
Kill Ping is a great tool with a quite intuitive, self-explanatory name. It does exactly what you’d expect a tool called Kill Ping to do: reduce ping and keep it at a minimum value. Well, it doesn’t exactly kill it, but you get it.
This tool is quite easy to use. Check the following steps if you’re having a hard time operating it:
- Deploy Kill Ping on your computer
- Launch the program and input your credentials
- Log into your account
- Select the game from the main screen’s dropdown menu
- Toggle between automatic and manual server selection
- Hit Next
- Select the location you want to play the selected game in
- Click Next once more
The game should be now launched and configured to run with Kill Ping’s help. If you need to configure more options, click the hamburger button (the one that looks like three stacked horizontal lines) and select Settings.
Kill Ping
Getting high ping while playing online games in other regions? Lower it for once and for all with Kill Ping.
In the configuration menu you can adjust Kill Ping startup behavior, disable your firewall, make the game skip its intro video when possible, and set Kill Ping to remember the last played game.
4. Optimize your graphics settings
More often than not, PC users get a bit over-zealous and crank graphic quality settings all the way up, even in lack of proper hardware. And in this situation, two things can happen.
First of all, if the PC can’t handle all the awesomeness, it will start dropping frames like you wouldn’t believe. Remember that a low FPS count doesn’t necessarily mean your connection is subpar, and many mistake it for high ping.
Second of all, even if your PC can somehow manage to pull it off, your connection may not be as lucky. So you’ll have to make sure your connection is fast enough to let you use maximum graphic quality settings before you drag the sliders all the way right.
With that in mind, it’s worth mentioning that one effective way to lower ping while playing in other regions is by optimizing your graphics settings. Try various configurations until you’re happy with the outcome.
You can also use third-party specialized software such as NVIDIA Control Panel for better results.
5. Troubleshoot your Internet connection
Run a speed test on your connection to make sure your high latency issue isn’t caused by more than just distance.
If you notice low speed values, your ISP might be throttling your connection, in which case a VPN could greatly help you.
However, poor connection speed values might also be caused by hardware components such as routers or modems. Thus, you could try restarting your modem/router and check if there’s any improvement.
If you’re using a WiFi connection, try switching to Ethernet, even just for a while, and see if you’re experiencing lower ping values. Wired connections are much faster and more stable than their wireless counterparts.
Last, but not least, you can try flushing your DNS by following these steps:
- Launch an elevated CMD instance on your Windows 10 PC
- Run the following commands, one by one:
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /registerdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
netsh winsock reset
Restart your PC and check if your ping value has improved for the region you’re trying to play in. Most of the times, a quick DNS flush can really improve the overall quality and speed of your connection.
6. Force-close other bandwidth-heavy apps
If you have additional apps or services running in the background, you might experience higher ping values, especially if you prefer playing in other regions.
For that reason, you may want to close any programs, processes, or services that are hogging up the bandwidth. For instance, torrenting clients can be real bandwidth mongers.
It’s worth mentioning that some of these may not go away if asked nicely, so you might have to call in the good ol’ Task Manager. After all these years, it’s still a reliable tool when it comes to terminating apps and services.
7. Make sure everything’s up-to-date
The importance of running up-to-date software on your PC is often times overlooked. However, it’s not exactly uncommon or unheard of that outdated software could cause your ping to skyrocket.
Therefore, make sure to update these components and perform version checks on them regularly:
- Your operating system
- System drivers, especially GPU and network ones (you can use specialized driver updaters for this task)
- Game files (make sure you also install the latest recommended patches, if necessary)
- Gaming platform (for instance Steam, Origin, or uPlay)
Final thoughts on lower ping while playing in other regions
To wrap it up, if you prefer playing online games in other regions, there’s a great chance you’ll experience high ping values. However, sometimes you can achieve lower ping without necessarily reverting to local game servers.
Whether you choose a VPN, Kill Ping, Game Fire, or try your luck with manual troubleshooting, these methods are guaranteed to at least shave a few milliseconds from that nasty high ping value you’re struggling with.
This post was written by Vlad Constantinescu and was first posted to WindowsReport