Odd ping problem, unplayable

This problem just started happening last night.

I run a ping [poeserverip] -w 1000 -t on my end, and the
ping never spikes, i stay between 50-80ms.

I leave the ping running, fire up PoE, get into game and
press F1 to watch the latency stat graph. It is spiking
like crazy, from 50-1800. I alt tab out of game and watch
my cmd ping. It too spiked while I had PoE fullscreen, but
goes back to normal when PoE is alt tabbed. I watch for a
couple of minutes, then open PoE back up to fullscreen,
and the latency graph was a ~50ms straight line, but spikes
back up immediately.

What in the world would cause my ping to be stable while the
game is alt tabbed out but not while it is open?

For the record, I run a lean Windows 7 64 bit with no bloatware
or other programs running, period. The only changes I have made
to my setup is that I bought a new keyboard and monitor yesterday.
I play PoE on a Lenovo laptop, but its the same laptop I have played
the game on for the past 2 years with no issues whatsoever. I use
my external monitor, keyboard, and mouse to play PoE at home, then
can carry by laptop to work to play there, shhhh.

UPDATE: I disconnect my external monitor from my laptop, fire up PoE, and the ping is perfectly stable. Any clues as to why hooking up an external monitor to a laptop would cause ping spikes in PoE???

Run WinMTR as per the guide(use the ionfaces addition for the correct IP address to test) and replicate the issue(which it sounds like you can do)

I did not do that yet because I figured its on my end with the monitor, since that is the only thing that I changed last night.

I do notice that the frame time graph in PoE is spiking like crazy as well when I have my external monitor plugged in, but pretty stable when just using my laptop screen...

Grrrr....

Resolved.

My PoE resolution was still at 1366x768 (my native laptop res).
As soon as I put it to 1600x900 (my native external monitor res)
then my ping stays between 50-90 steady, and my frame time is chill.

Still it shouldn't effect latency, unless you were looking at the graph on the far left which is frame latency

Actually, I spoke too soon. Instead of trying 1 thing at a time, I changed a couple of things and attributed the fix wrongly.

I can now recreate this problem every time, and the resolution change is not what fixed the latency issue (far right graph). My monitor apparently is affecting the frequency of my wifi, because if I hardwire into my router, I have zero problems. If I go wireless with my external monitor being used, spiky ping. If I go wireless while only using my laptop screen and no external monitor, I have zero problems.