When it comes to latency, the quality of your internet connection is as big of a factor as your geographical location. If you have a choice, try to seek out a provider with a better infrastructure and service. Read reviews online and make the optimal choice for you.

This isn't an issue with most modern internet connections, but very low bandwidth can affect your ping(latency). Try to make sure that your internet plan provides the household with enough bandwidth for every PC/device that uses it. The forumla goes like this: If you start getting bad ping when others in your house start using their computers, you need to upgrade your internet plan.

Note: It is possible that there is enough bandwidth, but it isn't relegated to your PC, this can be due to low bandwidth on the data cable/Wi-Fi or admin policy. This issue can come up when you're not playing at home, and the station you're using is limited by server admins

Packet Loss is a huge factor when it comes to lag, you could connect to somone with a perect green bar and have a horrible game, because either one of you is suffering from an inconsistent connection. To avoid this, just make sure that your PC or Laptop is connected via an Ethernet cable NOT through Wi-Fi. Packet Loss can be caused by other factors as well, if you can't pinpoint the cause, contact your ISP.

Refer to the following websites to test for bandwidth, latency and packet loss:

• http://speedtest.net - You can test for bandwidth and latency here
  
• http://pingtest.net - You can test for latency and packet loss here

Note: The following section only applies if you're behind a router, if your modem is connected directly to your PC all ports are open. Some ISPs ship modems that double as routers, in this case opening ports is required.

It is never a bad idea to turn on UPnP in your router settings. Google search for the brand and model of your specific router if you need help with this. In a perfect world this would be enough to handle port forwarding. Unfortunately, UPnP is dependant on both the software and the individual router, and therefore cannot be fully relied upon.

The perfect solution is to have all ports forwarded that are used by the game. This is not a requirement to playing the game, but it expands the range of people that you can connect to, the more people do this, the less 'Unable to connect' messages you have to deal with.

The required ports are:

• Port forwarding must be enabled on the TCP port 80.
  
• Port forwarding must be enabled on the UDP and TCP port 3074.
  
• Port forwarding must be enabled on the UDP port 88
  
• Port forwarding must be enabled on the UDP and TCP port 53
  
• Port forwarding must be enabled on the TCP port 443

This is by far the most overlooked and the most important factor when it comes to optimizing the game for online play. SFIV is way better at handling this than SFxT but both games are best played if you have a constant 60 fps.

In most games this wouldn't be a problem since 3D animation can scale with FPS but Street Fighter IV is meticulously timed at 60 FPS for gameplay reasons, the engine and the multiplayer netcode will effort to stick to this framerate at all times. When you're pushing more than 60 FPS, you'll run into inconsistencies, and the netcode will have a harder time syncing the two players. Having exactly 60 is the best way to go.


The idea here is to calibrate your settings to achieve at least 60 FPS or more at all times when you're playing the game. Most current PCs should be able to max out the game completely, but this may vary for your setup. Vsync and the framerate options have to be the same for everyone though.


We will use Vsync to force the game to run at 60 FPS at all times. The in game vsync is okay but it has issues and it isn't the optimal way to go. However, we are in luck, because the game doesn't respond negatively to externally forced vsync so let us go to our driver settings and set this up. This makes a decent amount difference.

Go into your NVIDA/AMD control panel, and change the 3D settings for ssfiv.exe specifically, if it's not in the list add it, and change the vsync option to "ON" instead of "use 3D application settings".

Click to enlarge

Go and start live battles, you'll be prompted to perform a benchmark. Remember the goal is to get 60 FPS flat.

Once you optimised your settings and run benchmark you may get this:
Notice that my average FPS is 172, the game will run at a crazy speed, you'll notice this effect even if you have in-game vsync on. Obviously, the game won't run at this FPS when you're playing, but you'll experience half frames and other annoyances that can affect online play as well as induce screen tearing. In-game vsync adresses this to some extent, but not completely.

Now, let's confirm that we externally forced vsync for the game. After that run the benchmark again. Change one of the extra effects to force the game to run another benchmark. (Make sure to turn off vsync in-game):
Now that's better, my average is 60 now, this may end up being 60, 60.5, or 59.5 don't worry about it, this basically means you're getting 60 flat.

IMPORTANT: Vsync gets disabled if you go to windowed mode, both in AE and SFXT, I'm looking at ways of dealing with this, for now don't go windowed, unfortunately this limits streaming.

The goal of this guide is not only to help those that are at the recieving end of these online issues. Many times, when new players play each other, they are surprised that the online performance is inconsistent. Teaching people to adopt this as a sort of best practice when playing this game online is the way to go. Remember poor settings affect you and your opponent, inconsistent performance can affect your opponent more drastically than yourself!

If all parties play with a decent latency, opened ports and flat 60 FPS the experience can be as standardized as console.

Thank you for your attention. Now go out there and grind that PP.

Note:The same optimiztaion works for SFxT too and should be adopted by everyone playing that game as well.