DOTA 2 system performance oddity

I have noticed a strange thing of late and wondered if this is known / anyone with any ideas.

There is a significant difference in performance based on whether I am playing bot matches or public games - and when I talk performance I mean how the game actually runs.

I have noticed that in bot matches the game is prone to slow down / graphical lag - especially when you have a base fight with loads of creeps and 2 teams unleashing all their abilities - however - in public matchmaking I never see so much as a skip in performance. I had turned down the graphics settings to see if that did anything but it does not.

Any ideas what the issue is ? To be honest I only use bot matches to occassionaly try stuff out so its no biggy but it is annoying and I find it rather odd.

In bot matches, the AI has to be calculated locally. Might have some effect on performance, though shouldn't have a visible effect.

Probably has to do with what SkyStorm mentioned, your in a local Bot game so your PC has to do all the lifting while online a fair bit of it is offloaded to the server. If your concerned about it, I would be looking at a CPU upgrade.

Chalk is right, bot games are hosted on your own pc. While online it is obviously on online servers.

I've noticed the oddity. My game will pause as bots pick heroes too.

That lag when picking heroes is the same lag you get when players spawn in their heroes. Only difference is, when you pick and spawn, all the bots spawn in at exactly the same time, creating one uber lag.

Thanks all for the replies, makes sense to me. I have a Laptop with a good processor and plenty of RAM but no dedicated graphics card - so I can play DOTA with all the graphic settings on and up high with no lag for online play but its clearly on the limit - add in 9 Heros controlled by the CPU and you get lag.