Why Is My Gaming Laptop So Slow? It Might Be Your VPN

You can’t win every game. Sometimes, you simply run into a more advanced or better-equipped player. But one thing you absolutely don’t want to do when online gaming is losing due to a slow internet connection.

I play a lot of competitive online games like Rainbow Six Siege, Overwatch and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (may it rest in peace). I’ve played them for thousands of hours, and of the many foes I’ve faced in those games, the worst one doesn’t even show up on the leaderboard: lag.

Getting stuck in a match where you’re operating 300 milliseconds behind the competition is no fun. Dealing with high ping when 20 minutes of your time and your competitive rank are on the line is diabolical. Here’s what you can do to fix the problem.

Let’s talk about ping

You’ve probably heard of ping if you’re an avid online gamer. Even if you haven’t, I’m willing to bet that you’ve seen a little red flashing speedometer symbol in the corner of your screen in a multiplayer game — probably right before wondering why you’ve seemingly dropped to zero health out of nowhere.

Also known as latency, ping measures the time it takes for data to move across the network. It tells you how many milliseconds between inputting a command and the server receiving it.

High ping leads to discrepancies between what you think should be happening in-game and what’s actually happening. This is why you’ll hear about gamers absolutely enraged with “lag.” It makes you feel like you’re lagging behind everyone else and will ruin any chance of having a good time.

Your ping is a product of two things: the quality of your internet connection and your location relative to where the server is hosted. For the most part, you can only really improve the quality of your internet service. Gaming companies decide where a game’s dedicated servers will be set up, and you simply need to deal with your distance from them.

If you’re looking to get an edge with your home broadband, there are many ways to do that, including upgrading your internet service, switching from a wireless to a wired connection or ensuring you have the best modem and router for the job. 

But what if your connection is masking your location, making it seem farther away than you actually are? My problem was simple, and the solution to speed up my connection was just as simple: It’s all about the VPN.

What is a VPN and what does it do to your internet?

A virtual private network, or VPN, is software that encrypts your internet traffic. It allows you to browse with much more privacy and disguise your browsing to look like it’s happening from anywhere in the world.

There are many reasons to use a VPN. If you live in a country where the press is regulated and suppressed, a VPN allows you to get an unfiltered view of what’s really going on.

I use a VPN for something far less important: Digging into the movies and shows in Netflix’s catalog that aren’t available in the United States.

Effectively tricking your broadband provider into letting you access the internet from different geographic locations can be a great way to educate and entertain yourself. There’s one time when you usually want to make sure you don’t have the VPN running, though, and that’s playing online games.

Your home internet still makes a difference. Should you upgrade?

While turning off your VPN might reduce the latency you experience while playing games online, your home broadband still matters.

I have a Verizon G3100 Wi-Fi 6 router at home, and I generally fluctuate between 200 and 400Mbps upload and download speeds, depending on how many devices are eating up bandwidth. While those numbers might be important for downloading new games, they aren’t that important for playing games online.

Ookla reported that the median download speed for American households in February 2025 was 280Mbps, and the median upload speed was 41Mbps. (Ookla is owned by the same parent company as CNET, Ziff Davis.) These speeds are more than sufficient for online gaming, so most American households should be good to go.

Your upload and download speeds will affect your latency up to a certain point, but your distance from the server is what really matters. Check out these speed tests I ran at home to see what I’m talking about.

Below, you’ll see the results of a speed test conducted with a connection to a server in Secaucus, New Jersey. This server is the closest one to my home, and I get a smooth 26-millisecond upload latency when connected to it. A 50- to 60-millisecond latency is really good for online gaming, so it’s smooth sailing for me when I’m connected to dedicated servers here in the northeast US.

Next, you’ll see the results of a speed test conducted with a connection to a server in Tokyo. This server is in a region I like to connect to with my VPN, and I get a whopping 187-millisecond upload latency here, even though my upload speed is still excellent.

A 100-millisecond latency is considered bad for online gaming, and a 187-millisecond latency will probably feel nearly unplayable. If I were connected to a Japanese dedicated server, I’d probably be walking off maps and getting stuck behind walls.

Your broadband connection might be the best it can be — you could even have a wired ethernet setup —  and connecting to a server halfway across the world will still cause you issues. There’s no way the data packets can communicate with the server as quickly as you need them to. Your upload latency is going to be a real thorn in your side.

Could turning off your VPN solve your problems?

When you route your connection through a VPN, you broadcast that you’re somewhere completely different from your current location. This throws a real curveball at the matchmakers for online games.

Almost all competitive online games use dedicated servers to host their matches. That means several servers are set up specifically for that game and spread worldwide.

Many games have separate servers for North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. I’m an American, so I join North American servers, and I generally have 20- to 30-millisecond latency when I play games.

When I have Proton VPN on and set to Japan, the matchmaker sees me as playing in Asia and will place me into servers hosted in Asia. In these servers, my ping sits somewhere up in the three-digit territory. For all intents and purposes, I’m screwed.

Routing your connection through a VPN will most likely slow down your internet connection, even if you’re connecting to a server from your own region. 

Even if you’re using a VPN to bounce your requests off a server located close to your physical location, your network request still needs to take another detour before finishing its charted course and communicating with the game.

One of CNET’s resident VPN experts, Moe Long, explained that routing your broadband connection through a VPN is like ordering food through DoorDash. The more stops a driver has to make, the longer it will take for your food to get where it needs to go.

There are rare cases where a VPN might help you find lobbies with better connections in online games. If you live in places that unfortunately don’t get dedicated servers that host matches for your favorite game, a VPN might be able to find you the closest possible connection. Even still, there are no guarantees this will work. Treat the VPN as a privacy tool, not a means to improve your online gaming connection.

It’s important to remember that the slight increase in connection times due to VPN usage likely won’t tangibly affect you if you’re not playing an online game. If you’re seeing substantially slower speeds, there are steps you can take to fix that. 

There are other reasons to consider your VPN while gaming. You want to be vigilant about something like a storefront’s terms of service. Leaving your VPN on while buying a game on Steam, for example, could be a bannable offense. But at the end of the day, a VPN has many benefits outside of improving your broadband experience.

Other causes for slow gaming

Besides using a VPN, there are other factors that can lead to your gaming laptop performing poorly.

Overheating

Your laptop’s cooling system can deteriorate over time. Dust particles and other debris can collect on the system and block the airflow, which can lead to your laptop’s temperature rising and overheating. Your laptop overheating can impact its performance due to slow processing speeds, laptop crashes, diminished battery life and in extreme cases, it can damage the hardware.

Ram

Random Access Memory, or RAM, is your laptop’s workspace. According to HP Inc., RAM is a storage space in your laptop that temporarily stores data that the central processing unit, or CPU, needs to access. When you launch a game on your laptop, your laptop must access data stored in its RAM. If your laptop is not equipped with enough RAM, accessing the data in the computer’s RAM will be slower and can impact your laptop’s performance. To determine how much RAM your laptop needs, this will depend on the system requirements of the specific game. Most game developers display the RAM requirements for your laptop, be sure to consider this detail before playing a specific game.

Storage space

Your laptop’s Solid-State Drive capacity, or SSD, can affect the loading time of your game. The SSD is the storage unit in your laptop that is responsible for managing, synthesizing, writing and distributing data, which is essentially stored in memory cells. Most modern games require a certain amount of storage for installation. Moreover, games that are in 4K high-definition may require a sizable memory footprint. Consider how much storage space your game will take up on your laptop, and whether you need to upgrade your storage to accommodate the game.

Graphic settings

In some cases, your graphics settings might be to blame for slow performance. Frames Per Second, or FPS, measures your laptop’s ability to render graphic frames every second. The higher the FPS, the smoother your gaming experience will be. You can adjust your graphics settings to achieve a higher FPS. These include but are not limited to turning up the shadows, reducing the Anti-aliasing settings, reducing or turning off the dynamic reflections, turning off ambient occlusion and reducing render scaling below 100% to improve performance. Adjusting your graphic settings will not always guarantee an improved gaming performance. Other factors may point to more extreme and irreversible cases, such as damaged laptop hardware.

Final thoughts on the risks and rewards of gaming without a VPN

VPNs provide you with security and privacy as you browse the internet. They help make sure you don’t expose your personal information online. While it’s possible to be doxxed through online games, your safety depends on the game you’re playing.

As I mentioned, most modern online games will route you to a dedicated server, a third-party lobby everyone joins to play a match. These are pretty secure, and you’re generally safe to have your VPN turned off while playing on dedicated servers to ensure the most competitive experience.

Older games, on the other hand, sometimes use peer-to-peer connections to facilitate multiplayer matches. With no dedicated server to route your packets through, your data is essentially streamed directly to the other participants in a multiplayer session. Peer-to-peer connections are susceptible to IP grabbing, which can lead to doxxing or other exposure of personal information.

If you’re playing a game that uses peer-to-peer connection for multiplayer, it’s better to keep your VPN turned on to stay safe and secure. You might be unlikely to boot up a game using a peer-to-peer connection, but some massive titles, such as Grand Theft Auto Online, still use this type of server hosting.

Most competitive ranked games use dedicated servers. But outside those situations, it’s not worth sacrificing your privacy for a higher rank in a video game.

Why Is My Gaming Laptop So Slow FAQs