Does 500mbps connection affect gaming in anyway?

[Malli Karim]

Hello

So, I'm fortunate enough to have a 500mbps unlimited connection for like 13$ a month ( instead of 100mbps for 10$ which I previously had ) and besides downloading 30GB movies very fast, are there other benefits to a 500 connection?I mean there a freaking 1Ggps connection for like 16$ here aswell.Do these connection really help you in away shape for form in gaming or others stuff besides just downloading faster?

 

[ahnilated]

No, ping times do.

 

[Pete_the_Puma]

As stated by ahnilated it is not really your bandwidth that matters when gaming but rather your latency (ping).


There are many ways to measure your internet connection speed. 500mbps is your bandwidth, meaning once your download starts it will be going up to 500mbps. Your latency measure the time it takes to get a very small amount of information from your PC to the server and back (measure in miliseconds and called "ping").

In the early days of internet you could get internet via satellite!! It had great bandwidth but terrible latency. An extreme example would be you click on your link to download something, then you have to wait 300 seconds for your request to get out to the satellite and then back to the server then back to the satellite and then back to you but once your actual download starts you get the whole movie in 3 seconds.

When gaming you are really more interested in sending small amounts of information quickly (latency) rather than the overall bandwidth (which will let you download games more quickly).

You can check your latency using websites like speedtest.net and such

P

 

[Malli Karim]

Atm I have a 100mbps router so my 500 connection doesnt work, need to get a 1gb router soon.But on speed test it says ping 7, so I'm guessing that's fine and it wont improve with the 500 one at all.

 

[Pete_the_Puma]

Ping of 7 ms is amazing!

Keep in mind that is the best ping you can get, and if the gaming server you are using is far away that number will be a little higher. Mine is 15 and I though it was very good, 7 is really outstanding.

Good luck!

 

[bill001g]

Many people are lucky to get even 2m connections and maybe 50m if they are someplace fast. Game companies really want the money from everyone they can get so they design the games to need as little bandwidth as possible. Thing like world of warcraft can be played on dialup modems at 56k although not real good anymore. Most games need well under 1m/sec.

As stated in shooter type games the latency to the server is the key issue. Other games tolerate even high latency pretty well.