One of the least considered components when buying a PC is the Network adapter integrated. This usually comes standard on every computer as today it is mandatory for every one of them to have internet connectivity. The problem? Like everything there are qualities and unfortunately, being a component to which little importance is given, it ends up going unnoticed. This is why it becomes undervalued against online gambling.
When we play an online game, we have to assume that there are two ways to effect the coordination of what happens on stage by all players. The simplest is that everyone fully coordinates all players’ position and game state, so everyone has to communicate with each other. That is, via P2P. This requires a much more powerful network card since there is no server in between. The second option is to place a server, but this is only done in games with many iterations on the screen like an MMO, the problem is that everything indicates that over time we will be the users who will end up loading something something that used to be a developer thing.
Why will the network card become very important in games?
The worlds in games are becoming increasingly complex and not only in the interaction of dozens of NPCs on huge maps, but we also have a large number of elements on the screen. This in turn is a huge load on the CPU now imagine the same situation but with persistent online play where although you have a single player campaign it is designed so you can share the world with others players.
Basically, one of the most popular genres is Sandbox, and what are they really? Well, an MMO designed to be played offline, however, with the emergence of gaming as a service as one of the emerging business forms in the world of video games, your gaming PC will have the same network workload than an MMO server from a few years ago. The difference? The game creator will save on server maintenance, your PC and your friends’ PC will act as a server or host at all times, as it happens with online games, it’s easier.
Getting to manage such a number of processes can drown the central processor, which is why network adapters will have to make a qualitative leap and not only on PC, but also on consoles. So you won’t know if your system will be able to support the weight of hundreds of people on the server. At the same time it will be the means to exploit the connections of several Gbps which arrive. Of course, it’s still a trend and game publishers aren’t going to give up their slice of the profit pie.
It will not be an “additional cost” to the user
Now, if you are worried about having to pay for an additional device in the future to have an advantage in online games or the PC will not become saturated, let us tell you not to worry because the said evolution will be provided by built-in network adapters, but as with features like overclocking, manufacturers will reserve it for high-end motherboards to justify the price.
In the rest of the computers, the CPU will be in charge of processing all these network packets, which will prevent it from spending more time on the game logic and the preparation of the list of screens. In other words, it will be something that will affect the performance of games in the event that we have a computer with a rather modest motherboard. That is to say, the choice of network adapter will be what makes you win or lose games. Of course, you can always connect one in the form of a card to expand your computer’s capabilities in this regard.
