Widescreen Gaming Forum

i just moved to a new apt and im looking at the different options for high speed internet. i see this 1.5 mbps , up to 3.0 and up to 6.0 mpbs. what is the difference with this and what does it mean? will i notice a difference if i want to play online games like bf2 and cod2 ect..?? what is prefereable?

thanks

fyi, att/sbc not avail in my local (southern california). im in a verizon zone and verizons fios is not avail in my area : (..

thanks again

scott

here is some other info for people in the know.. im not sure what it means though : |

xxx xxxx avenue
Los Angeles, Los Angeles
CA 90024
Phone: 310-xxx-XXXX

about 3930 feet

Wire center (CO)
WLANCAXF

1.5Mbps should be more than fine for gaming.

There are a couple of other important things too though:

What's the connection's upload speed? (1.5Mbps is the download speed, but upload speed's quite important too).
Is there a monthly transfer rate? I don't know about you, but I really hate having a limit on how much I may down/upload.

What's the difference between 1.5Mbps, 3MBps, 6Mbps etc? Simply their speeds. This will make downloading files from the Internet faster. But it won't make your latency (ping) any better in multiplayer games (assuming you're not down/uploading stuff in the background).

i see.. so going from 1.5 mpbs to 6.0 wont see much difference in gaming, just downloading stuff. i guess going for the best deal/price is best. i know i everyone seems to have diff opinons but what about going cable versus dsl??

The bigger number is generally the download speed such as 1.5meg, 3 meg, 6 meg. The Upload speed is generally much less than the upload, somewhere between 356k-1.5meg.
Agreed that anything above 1.5 meg is fine for gaming although more is nicec when you are downloading patches or demos :D
Go for the fastest you can afford as I have yet to see anyone be sorry they upgraded to a faster service from something slower! At LEAST 1.5 down/356k up. That will give you a solid speed both to and from the server for gaming. Everything above that is icing on the cake.

Cable vs DSL? If one or the other doesn't make you sign a contract, try that one first. If the quality is not good and you have outages, you can switch quickly w/o penalty to the other. I had this happen with my cable provider (Time Warner). They could not provide me with a good solid signal quality. When it worked, it was faster than a dime ice cream. Problem was, often when I went to use it, the signal was too weak to connect or stay connected for any length of time. Like I told the service techs the 6 times they came out trying to fix the issue, "It ain't fast if it won't connect or stay connected." :oops:

DSL vs Cable.

Well, I used to use cable at my old house because it was a lot faster than the DSL available to me. I was on a 5Mbps cable, and DSL was less than 1Mbps.

When I moved to the new house I tried the cable service, but had many, many connection issues. I switched to DSL (the DSL actually had a faster service plan than cable) and I have not had 1 issue with the DSL service. I thought cable was always faster than DSL, but I have a 10Mbps DSL and the cable is rated at 6Mbps. When I check the speeds online my cable was around 4.8Mbps... but my DSL I run now is about 12-15Mbps.

Of course gaming is great, but I do think that anything around or over
T1 speed is plenty fast enough (that is 1.544 Mbps)

Thanks guys for your feedback. Ill do some price checking again and see whos offering what. maybe ill shoot for the level above 1.5, which i think verizon dsl has 3.0 in my area for about 24 a month. have to do some checking though and see who provides the cable in my area, etc.. i was dissapointed to see that sbc/att doesnt provide my area, nor does verizon fios : ( ..