21 replies to this topic

[Burned_Follower]

Hey I'm considering moving into an apartment complex that is a total of 314 bucks cheaper than where I currently live. I'm trying to get into college next year and according to my monthly budget, I need to be able to save that extra 314 bucks a month so I can afford to start college next year.

But I just got off the phone with the person who wants to rent me the extra room that she has. She just tested her wifi internet speed using speedtest.net(i walked her through the proccess over the phone) and she says that she has 9.55MM download speed.

I've been using 40MB download speed for the last 3 years at the current apartment I'm at.

...If I were to move into this new apartment complex, will 9MB download speed be fast enough for me to COMPETE in MWO? I'm a member of the Midnight Cobras MechWarrior Mercenary Unit. We've been around for about a decade. I'm also the MNC's recruiter. We the MNC have huge plans on competing very seriously in the up coming community warfare.

So my decision on whether or not I move into this place literally hinges on whether or not if 9MB is fast enough for me to seriously compete in MWO...and this is a wifi connection we're talking about! I'm checking out her apartment tomorrow so any info I can get from you guys ASAP will be a huge help.

P.S.- I plan on playing MWO on DX11 with all the settings maxed out on 1080p rez.

-Also, if you need to know this, my PC specs are:
-CPU: FX8350 8core processor, 4.1GB per core
-GPU: XFX HD7950
-Motherboard: ASUS 990fx R2.0
-RAM: 16GB dual channel DDR3(corsair vengeance sticks)
-OS: Windows 7, Ultimate 64bit OEM
-PSU: 750watt Roswell 80+platinum
-Rubber Chicken

Edited by Burned_Follower, 21 November 2013 - 02:57 PM.

[Devillin]

Technically, it should be fast enough. I'm running MWO on a 1.5 MB service with my settings at medium. Where you might see some hits is if you are using voip as well.

[Ward Serpentine]

I know a guy that plays off of his 4G connection on his phone with little difficulty. Should be OK.

[Katus]

I am running about 7.9 Mbps and am fine. The only time I run into problems is when the wife is playing WoW, the kids are streaming video and everyone else in the house is streaming music on the WiFi to their phones. I just turn off the WiFi since all the PCs are connected by hard line and that solves that.

[Maurox]

I have asymmetrical cable (3MB down / 256KB up) and it works fine, provided nobody else is hogging it. I checked the bandwidth graph on the router and it barely used any. Much more important is latency (ping). Try pinging/mtr'ing 70.42.29.74 or 70.42.29.75, that's the ping you'll see in the game. Also, I very much doubt that the graphic settings have any impact on network usage.

[Catamount]

Yes. There is a HUGE overestimation of what MWO, and gaming in general, uses for bandwidth. Even in heavy combat, the Windows Resource Monitor reported no more than about 20KB/s down and 5KB/s up. So a 256/64kbps connection is adequate to play MWO with room to spare.

Games are sensitive to latency, not bandwidth.

Edited by Catamount, 21 November 2013 - 03:16 AM.

[Burned_Follower]

Catamount, on 20 November 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

Yes. There is a HUGE overestimation of what MWO, and gaming in general, uses for bandwidth. Even in heavy combat, the Windows Resource Monitor reported no more than about 20KB/s down and 5KB/s up. So a 256/64kbps connection downstream is adequate to play MWO with room to spare.

Games are sensitive to latency, not bandwidth.

cool, thanks guys. Just one more question...what is latency exactly?

[Wildstreak]

That's odd, I cannot play well unless I have 13-14Mb connection. When the wireless drops below that, I get choppy results.

EDIT - fixed because I did not notice a difference between Mb and MB.

Edited by Merchant, 22 November 2013 - 06:32 PM.

[darqsyde]

@Merchant: it's not the bandwidth, it's the wifi.

My connection is a WISP giving me 1.5 down and unless the connection or my router "burps"(bird, tree, antenna wobble, etc) my FPS has no relation to the speed.

My ping (latency, generally)does wobble between 30 and 150 though (generally 40-60). This _might_ affect fps, although I'm sure it would have been notice by the Aussie's or similarly "remote" users.

[Durant Carlyle]

Burned_Follower, on 20 November 2013 - 08:10 PM, said:

cool, thanks guys. Just one more question...what is latency exactly?

Ping/latency is the time data takes to go from your computer to the game server and back again. Because everything in the game is has to be authorized by the server, this is especially important in MW:O.

The smaller the ping number, the better.

[cSand]

WiFi you should be fine unless you have a bad connection, or lots of interference.

You can download WiFi analyzer app if you have an android to see which channel surrounding wifi signals are on, and then put your wifi on a channel that is least interfered with

Edited by cSand, 20 November 2013 - 10:39 PM.

[Sen]

Hard to read the numbers in here. Mb = MegaBIT. MB = MegaBYTE. By way of reference, I have a 24 Mega BIT [Mb] connection. My fastest download speeds are right around 3.15 Mega BYTES [MB] per second. [typical average]

As others have mentioned, you don't strictly speaking NEED a fast internet connection to actually play the game, though lower speeds could make it take forever to download. In this context, the more important factor is Ping [Latency] or how long it takes for the information from your computer to hit the game server (and vice versa)

Speedtest is a wonderful way to test bandwidth and latency. As Speedest was used to test at this apartment complex, I offer the following:

O/P: a 9 Mb [Mega bit] downstream connection translates out to rougly 1.1 MEGABYTES per second transfer rate. Adequate for gaming, but if you do any kind of media streaming quality could suffer. A lot depends on if you're running multiple devices, how many people are using the same connection, etc.

Edited by Sen, 21 November 2013 - 07:15 AM.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

I played on a similar connection for about a year so it'll be fine.

[John MatriX82]

Lol I have a 2464/352 and play with no hassle (Italian connections for the win xD)

[Sen]

Quote

Lol I have a 2464/352 and play with no hassle (Italian connections for the win xD)

Yea, the U.S. carriers are more worried about how to steal the last dollars from their customers than actually providing service [let alone FAST service].

Also, I hate you

Edited by Sen, 21 November 2013 - 02:14 PM.

[Wildstreak]

darqsyde, on 20 November 2013 - 09:00 PM, said:

@Merchant: it's not the bandwidth, it's the wifi.

My connection is a WISP giving me 1.5 down and unless the connection or my router "burps"(bird, tree, antenna wobble, etc) my FPS has no relation to the speed.

My ping (latency, generally)does wobble between 30 and 150 though (generally 40-60). This _might_ affect fps, although I'm sure it would have been notice by the Aussie's or similarly "remote" users.

Interesting, so far I always thought my Mb (not MB as I listed, habit that) was the cause as when I have between 12-14Mb it works much better than when I have say 5-6Mb.

My in game Ping used to be lower around 30ms but several patches ago it went to the 60s when it works.

cSand, on 20 November 2013 - 10:27 PM, said:

WiFi you should be fine unless you have a bad connection, or lots of interference.

You can download WiFi analyzer app if you have an android to see which channel surrounding wifi signals are on, and then put your wifi on a channel that is least interfered with

Unfortunately I don't have an android. Tried looking for a free PC WiFi analyzer but all I find are ones with free trials. Usually I have to guess which of the 11 channels I can use, I don't like leaving the auto-select option on, I would not like to be doing something and it changes channels while I doing whatever thus messing me up.

Sen, on 21 November 2013 - 07:13 AM, said:

Hard to read the numbers in here. Mb = MegaBIT. MB = MegaBYTE. By way of reference, I have a 24 Mega BIT [Mb] connection. My fastest download speeds are right around 3.15 Mega BYTES [MB] per second. [typical average]

As others have mentioned, you don't strictly speaking NEED a fast internet connection to actually play the game, though lower speeds could make it take forever to download. In this context, the more important factor is Ping [Latency] or how long it takes for the information from your computer to hit the game server (and vice versa)

Speedtest is a wonderful way to test bandwidth and latency. As Speedest was used to test at this apartment complex, I offer the following:

O/P: a 9 Mb [Mega bit] downstream connection translates out to rougly 1.1 MEGABYTES per second transfer rate. Adequate for gaming, but if you do any kind of media streaming quality could suffer. A lot depends on if you're running multiple devices, how many people are using the same connection, etc.

I have been using Speedtest including a special one set up by my provider but that one only lists the Mb Download and Upload speeds unlike the actual Speedtest site that lists Ping. The Speedtest site seems to offer 5 choices in Toronto (where the servers are) and I am not sure which one is being used by the MWO servers, tried all 5 but got different results for Ping (Download and Upload are only 1Mb apart on any of them):

VMedia Ins - 48ms
TekSavvy Solutions - 67ms
Start Communications - 67ms
Nexicom Inc - 48ms
Beanfield Metroconnect - 39ms

I guess MWO must be #2 or #3 since those near match my current Ping.

[Guido]

I run MWO at 90-100ms of ping, and at that rate with the current hit detection doesn't require me to lead beyond object travel time at anything short of an 800m shot with PPCs, and there's no problem with accuracy at anything requiring short ranges.

I suggest having your potential room mate run a ping test through command prompt to 70.42.29.74 or 70.42.29.75 as Maurox said. Anything lower than 110ms and it's unlikely you'll find a significant difference, since most peoples' reaction time is between 150-300ms raw. 200ms is very quick when you really stop to consider and experience it, and it won't affect anything but long shots with slow-moving weapons.

Edited by Guido, 22 November 2013 - 07:01 PM.

[Sky Ferrix]

9MB is gonna be fine, trust me. Before I upgraded to 50Mbps, I played MWO with a somewhat decent ping on a 768k DSL connection.

[Pawn Couch]

You guys are lucky.
Aussies are running and 256KB/s
And you think 9MB/s is slow.

Edited by KING PINEAPYULA, 22 November 2013 - 07:38 PM.

[Burned_Follower]

Ok, I just moved out of my apartment and I'm living with my step-dad for a few weeks, possibly for the whole month of December while I'm waiting to move into my next apartment with that free 9MB wifi connection.

My step-dad lives waaaaay out in the country and he's got the fastest connection that his ISP can provide for living out in the boonies. Here's his speed:

Ping: 53ms
Download: 2.74 MB
Upload: 0.65 MB

I got this from www.speedtest.net

I just got done doing a match five minutes before making this post and MWO ran PERFECTLY.

Infact, I was running 50-60 FPS on River City(day). I can't believe I was paying for a 40MB download connection when I could have gotten a cheaper deal. ...lesson learned I guess.

Thanks for all the imput guys.

Edited by Burned_Follower, 30 November 2013 - 05:24 PM.