What is minimum speed required for gaming seamlessly?

So yeah in the past I have had issues with ping spikes due to too little bandwidth (where I had no other devices or active programs using this connection).

So I was wondering what is the minimum bandwidth required for gaming these days?

I am aware that latency is also VERY important. But that should ok on an FTTP or FTTC connection, as far I am aware.

Would a 50 DL / 13 UL Mbps FTTC connection be enough, in a house with two users? (provided they are both using the connection at the same time)

And would you need to address bufferbloat, in order to have a seamless experience for gaming?

Edited by lo22 (Thu 15-Sep-22 23:14:21)

Gaming itself doesn't need masses of bandwidth. 50/13 would be plenty for normal usage and gaming.

The time gaming needs bandwidth is downloading games/updates - depending on the platform they can be enormous.

What the second person in the house is actually doing would potentially have a bearing on it. If they video streaming, web browsing, listening to music, etc then unlikely to be any issue but if they started doing large downloads then it could possibly fill the connection. Most households of 2 people would be absolutely fine with 50/13 - there are benefits to higher speeds but not usually essential.

However, this is all based on the "normal" and if something out of the ordinary is going on with your usage then impossible to predict what might happen.

Yeah ok, but with kind of normal usage, it should work ok!!!

Thanks once again for the info, I really appreciate it. People here are great

Specifically does anyone know which speed one needs for playing CSGO seamlessly, like where it is running smoothly with a nice stable ping all the time?

Because I have been told that 2 Mbps should be enough, but that is not really my experience...

(This is assuming a single computer with a cable connection, and no active applications, perhaps some background applications, that it can be hard to get rid off)

I really hope someone can help me out with this question!

In reply to a post by lo22:

Specifically does anyone know which speed one needs for playing CSGO seamlessly, like where it is running smoothly with a nice stable ping all the time?

Because I have been told that 2 Mbps should be enough, but that is not really my experience...

You seem to be mixing up ping (latency) and bandwidth. 2 Mbps is a measure of bandwidth, not latency.

In reply to a post by andynormancx:

In reply to a post by lo22:

Specifically does anyone know which speed one needs for playing CSGO seamlessly, like where it is running smoothly with a nice stable ping all the time?

Because I have been told that 2 Mbps should be enough, but that is not really my experience...

You seem to be mixing up ping (latency) and bandwidth. 2 Mbps is a measure of bandwidth, not latency.

I am aware of that! But I guess we can agree that if you start maxing out a low bandwidth connection, that is much easier to do for a low bandwidth connection. This will affect your latency. Or am I mistaken?

In reply to a post by lo22:

Specifically does anyone know which speed one needs for playing CSGO seamlessly, like where it is running smoothly with a nice stable ping all the time?

Because I have been told that 2 Mbps should be enough, but that is not really my experience...

If you only currently have a 2 Mbps connection and are playing online games I would suggest taking it day by day as at that speed no one is going to be able to guarantee anything.

Yes. Though it is typically not the download bandwidth that you're in danger of using up first. Most broadband in the UK has a lot less upload bandwidth than it has download.

If have a 2 Mbps ADSL connection then the upload bandwidth is likely to be really low, below 0.5 Mbps. If you run out of upload bandwidth then that will immediately badly impact your ping times.

Some games would be perfectly happy on a 2 Mbps/0.5 Mbps connection (with the ADSL typical ~30ms latency) as long as you weren't filling the upload bandwidth with other stuff. Other games would not, not every game sends/receives the same amount of data during game play.

You mentioned CS:GO, that is an old game, which is probably good news from a bandwidth usage perspective (ignoring things like voice chat at least).

A bit of Googling suggests it uses between 25-100 KBps, which is 0.025-0.1 Mbps (without any voice chat). So you'd expect it to be perfectly happy on an otherwise unloaded 2 Mbps/0.5 Mbps connection.

However, it won't take much background activity from data hungry services to eat up that 0.5 Mbps upload bandwidth and at that point the ping times will become long and inconsistent.

Though the other complication is that if you have a 2 Mbps ADSL connection, it may already have latency issues.

Have you done anything to characterise how good your latency is when nothing else is going on ?

If not, download https://www.pingplotter.com

Set it to ping your CS:GO server (or maybe ping Google's DNS servers at 8.8.8.8) and see how stable your latency/ping is when you aren't using the connection for anything else.