constant and intense ping spikes when running online games

Whenever I play an online game, which I do very often, mind you, I suffer from random and intense ping spikes. this could be anywhere from jumping to 300ms for a second or two and then going back to normal for the rest of the day to not even being able to run a game for a day straight, because I keep timing out. I've had these problems for a few months now and Considering I'm not exactly good with computers, I have no idea what is causing this. a few thing I DO know, however, is that it is not my router (it was upgraded today), and that it does not happen if I do not have any games running or if I have games which do not require an internet connection running. the connection problems are getting very annoying and i want to know how I can fix them. thanks in advance!