i have a broadcom gigabit controller, out of 100 it will drop 50. it is not my cable connection. is it possible my nic is bad?

Of course its 'possible', but it also may be the config you play on your games also. Help us out a bit, tell us which games your playing that are causing dropped packets. AMD Barton 3200 1024mb PC3200 Ram Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb A7N8X-E Deluxe

What is your test that you're seeing dropped packets? You should run the test by running this at the command prompt: ping www.yahoo.com -n 100 You should also try pinging your ISP's default gateway. You can get this by running ipconfig at a command prompt if you're not using a router; if you're using a router, ping it, and then ping the router's default gateway. If you get dropped packets to your default gateway, you're going to get dropped packets everywhere. Some other things to try... Install another NIC, and see if it does the same thing. It's possible the NIC is bad. Another thing to try if you don't have it is get a router, it's better for security online anyway. Ping the router, and see if you're getting dropped packets there. That will at least trace it down to your computer or the internet connection. If you get no dropped packets pinging the router, then it's something to do with the internet connection. If you do et dropped packets, it's on the computer side. If you are sure it's not your internet connection, which I don't know how you're ruling that out, I would think it would be more likely the cable between your cable modem and computer would be bad. I don't remember the last bad NIC I've run into. Have you replaced that? "Pat Buchanan, Bob Novak, and G. Gordon Liddy don't like Mark Felt. Mark Felt is truly a great man."