Given the fact that most broadband internet connections have at least a speed of 25 Mbps, this is more than enough to have several consoles playing online at the same time. However, to be on the safe side, it’s recommended you have at least 5+ Mbps for downloads, and 3+ Mbps for uploads, and latency of between 50-100 ms.
If you’re streaming on a console with a download speed of 3+ Mbps and an upload speed of 2+ with a latency of 100 ms (we’ll explain latency in the section below), you will have a reasonably smooth gaming experience. These are speeds that even a poor internet connection can meet. You need to consider your upload speed need as well. Luckily the same rule applies, and what you actually need is very small, only about 1 or 3 Mbps. Online games are interactive, which means you are sending information back to a remote server. What upload speed is good for gaming?īut it’s not only download speed you have to consider. The exception to this is if you’re gaming over a cloud-based server like Playstation Now or Stadia. Ultimately this means you don’t need a lot of Mbps to play even modern games with high definition graphics. This means that the only information going over your connection is the buttons the player presses to control what’s going on. Why is that? It’s because the picture of your video game is not rendered by your internet connection, as it is when you stream an online video, but by your PC’s or gaming console’s graphics card. You might be shocked to learn that online gaming is not as intense on the bandwidth as most people think. In this article, we’ll take a look at the most important points about internet speed and gaming so you can know what kind of connection you need. There is a lot more to having a quality internet connection, especially for gaming, than just having a high download speed.īut don’t worry, you won’t have to go through the fine print of your internet plan just to get the answers your looking for. Internet service providers usually only advertise fast download speed, which can be misleading, but a fast internet connection does not necessarily mean a good internet connection.
Even extremely high download speeds like 400 Mbps will not eliminate lagging if latency issues range above 100 milliseconds. People seem to believe that the limiting factor is download speed, but it’s much more complicated than that. Gaming online will test the limits of your internet connection.