I made mention of a router to handle PPPoE up there. Also I fully admit I am biased by my experience supporting Checkpoint. It also should be noted that the BRAND of PPPoE can vary considerably in its effectiveness. PPPoE, all brands, by nature and design adds additional information to packets so can (not always) cause packet loss/retransmits which screw up streaming video and in worse cases even totaly drop a connection.

If I were running a PPPoE connection I would use DR.TCP to set my MTU at 1200 and call it good. You can go to www.dslreports.com and in their Tools section there is a tweak tester. It will run a little test then ask for info about your line (type, advertised speed, brand of PPPoE) then give suggestions for tweaking for best network performance using DR.TCP (with a download link to it). It is not a perfect test but works pretty well.

Your ping times, of course, are probably independent of PPPoE software as you know. Probably has more to do with the actual providers network or the copper itself.

You have a static IP and PPPoE? That is about unheard of. Are you sure you have a static on your router to the CO or are you set behind the router with a static on the PC itself and dynamic for the router to the CO? Just currious.

Hell, PPPoE could be great for gaming or it could suck, lots of variables there and a lot depends on the PPPoE software from what I understand. I personaly don't like it but that is because of my personal bias.