- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Two important factors here, both of which contribute to lag There's hardware lag and connection lag.
Hardware lag is basically when the computer is asked to do more than it can smoothly handle. This can be attributed to the power of your GPU or CPU, or to the amount of RAM you've got. This usually occurs when you've got more than one app running in the background of the game. Ideally, when playing, you should only have the game running and nothing else. Kill nonessentials like IM clients (besides, alt-tabbing out of the game may make in-game text messages disappear), conversion programs, iTunes, Winamp, etc, etc. Check the taskbar notification area (that's the bottom right hand corner of your screen) for any strange icons and quit them all. Fraps and Xfire, while useful in game, also take up power, so kill those if necessary. You should leave your firewall and AV on, but make sure they aren't taking up too many resources or even downloading in the background of a game.
Connection lag occurs when the game can't "talk" to the server fast enough, usually due to a lack of bandwidth. Now, Halo is notorious for having horrible netcode, and it hates 56k connections. Although upgrading to broadband is recommended, you can also, again, kill all apps that utilize the internet. IM should go, so should Limewire or anything else of the sort. Basically, anything that requires the internet to work should go while playing a game. You can choose to disable your Antivirus/Firewalls; they occasionally download updates while you're playing and can cause lag.
Proximity to the server is a pretty big factor but can be remedied by finding a server with a low ping. What it comes down to is that it's faster to send a signal from New Jersey to Texas than it is to send a signal to Abu Dhabi or something.