Quick answer
| Metric | Good for most games | Ideal for competitive play |
|---|---|---|
| Ping (to the game server) | Under 100 ms | Under 30–50 ms |
| Jitter | Under 30 ms | Under 10 ms |
| Packet loss | Under 1% | 0% |
| Download | A few Mbps per player | Same; more only helps downloads |
| Upload | About 1 Mbps per player | More if you stream your gameplay |
These are widely used guidelines, not requirements published by game makers. Different genres tolerate delay differently. A turn-based strategy game is fine at 150 ms; a fighting game is not.
Online multiplayer: why Mbps barely matters
A multiplayer game mostly sends small updates: where you moved, what you fired, where everyone else is. That adds up to a small amount of data compared with video. What matters is how quickly and consistently those updates get through.
- Ping sets the base delay. At 100 ms, the server learns about your action a tenth of a second late, and your view of other players is a tenth of a second old. See what ping is.
- Jitter makes that delay unpredictable, causing stutter and “rubber-banding”. A steady 50 ms often plays better than a ping swinging between 20 and 120 ms.
- Packet loss means some updates never arrive. Players teleport, shots don’t register, and inputs get lost.
Cloud gaming needs much more
Cloud gaming services run the game in a data center and stream video of it to you, so they need video-level bandwidth plus low latency. NVIDIA, for example, lists these for GeForce NOW:
- 15 Mbps for 720p at up to 60 fps
- 25 Mbps for 1080p at 60 fps
- 45 Mbps for 4K at 120 fps
- Under 80 ms latency from an NVIDIA data center, with a wired or 5 GHz WiFi connection recommended
Other services publish their own figures. Check the service you use.
Game downloads and updates
Modern games and patches can be tens or even hundreds of gigabytes. Here, download speed is everything:
| Download speed | Time |
|---|---|
| 50 Mbps | About 4.4 hours |
| 100 Mbps | About 2.2 hours |
| 300 Mbps | About 44 minutes |
| 1 Gbps | About 13 minutes |
Store servers often deliver less than your full speed, so real downloads may take longer.
Gaming in a busy home
The most common gaming complaint is lag that appears when someone else uses the internet. That is usually bufferbloat: other traffic fills the connection and your game packets wait in line. Two fixes work best:
- Plug the console or PC in with a cable. This removes WiFi jitter and loss.
- Turn on smart queue management (SQM or QoS) on your router so game traffic is not stuck behind downloads.
Our guides on reducing ping, reducing jitter and fixing packet loss go step by step.
Check your connection for gaming
Run the test on the device you game on, connected the way you normally play. Look at ping, jitter and packet loss first. Then open “Test details” and compare ping while downloading and uploading with your idle ping. A big jump means other people’s traffic will cause lag.