If you have ever seen gamers argue about "64 tick vs 128 tick", this is what they mean. Tick rate is one of the most important - and most misunderstood - numbers in multiplayer gaming. Here is what it actually is, in plain English, and how it plays out across different games.
Quick answer
Tick rate is how many times per second a game server updates the game world and sends that state to players. A 64-tick server updates 64 times a second (about every 15.6 ms); a 128-tick server every 7.8 ms. A higher tick rate makes hit registration and movement more accurate, but it costs more CPU and bandwidth.
What is a "tick"?
A game server does not track the world continuously - it updates in tiny steps, like frames in a film. Each step is a tick: the server gathers everyone's inputs, calculates the new state of the world (positions, shots, hits), and sends it back out. Tick rate is simply how many of these updates happen per second, measured in Hz.
A 64-tick server updates 64 times a second - once every ~15.6 milliseconds. A 128-tick server updates twice as often, every ~7.8 ms.
Why higher tick rate feels better
The more often the server updates, the more up-to-date and precise the game feels. At a higher tick rate:
- Your shots and movements register sooner.
- Fast, twitchy duels resolve more fairly.
- There is less of a gap between what you see and what the server knows.
In fast shooters like CS:GO, competitive players swore they could feel the difference between 64 and 128 tick - especially in close, reaction-based fights.
So why is everything not 128 tick?
Because tick rate is expensive. Doubling the update rate roughly doubles the CPU work the server has to do every second. That is why tick rate is so tied to hardware: a high tick rate needs a fast CPU and headroom to spare, particularly as player counts climb. Run too high a tick rate on a weak or overloaded server and you get the opposite of what you wanted - stutter and lag, the same symptom covered in is it your CPU or your network?
Tick rate is a promise the server can only keep if the CPU is fast enough to hit it, every single tick.
Tick rate across different games
The number and the terminology shift by game, but the idea is identical:
- Minecraft targets 20 ticks per second (TPS) - it is not adjustable the same way, so a falling TPS below 20 is the direct sign of CPU trouble, covered in reducing Minecraft lag.
- CS:GO / Source engine servers ran 64 or 128 tick, the classic 64-vs-128 debate. CS2 replaced that with Valve's sub-tick system, so there is no tickrate to choose.
- Rust typically runs at a lower server tick rate than shooters, since its world simulation load is different.
- FiveM servers vary by resource load rather than a single fixed number, since scripts add ongoing CPU cost per tick.
What a dropped tick actually feels like
When a server cannot keep up with its target tick rate, it "drops" ticks - it skips or delays an update because the CPU was still busy with the last one. Players experience this as stutter, delayed hits, or the rubber-banding also seen with network problems, which is exactly why the two get confused. The tell is that CPU-caused stutter affects everyone at once, while network-caused stutter usually hits one player at a time.
Tick rate vs FPS vs ping
These get mixed up constantly, so to be clear:
- FPS is how often your screen redraws - a client and graphics thing.
- Tick rate is how often the server updates the world - a hosting thing.
- Ping is how long data takes to travel between you and the server - a network thing.
You can have a high FPS and still feel laggy if the tick rate is low or your ping is high. They are three different pieces of the same puzzle, and they all feed into netcode.
What it means when you rent a server
If tick rate matters for your game, it is really a question about CPU. A host running fast, modern, high-clock CPUs can sustain a high tick rate smoothly; a cheap, oversold node cannot. This is the same reason CPU clock dominates server performance in general - see also how to choose a host and how much a game server actually costs once you factor in the CPU tier you need.