Why do game servers lag with few players?

[Sofia da Silva]

What actually causes random lag spikes on game servers, even when player count is low?

[Jimmy_Carter]

This confused me too. I had a server with only 5–6 players online and still got rubber-banding. Turned out the issue wasn’t player count but single-core CPU performance. Some games depend heavily on one core, so even low player numbers can lag if that core is slow.