Is 100mbps fast enough for gaming?

If you’re wondering if 100mbps is fast enough for gaming – here’s what we think.

If you’re new to hardware, networking can be an extremely daunting topic to approach. Aside from the deeply technical understanding needed to wrap your head around it – the jargon doesn’t exactly lend itself to the layman, with words like packets and nodes not really making much sense.

Fear not, we’re going to help you overcome the networking hurdle so that you can find out if 100mbps is fast enough for gaming.

Is 100mbps fast enough for gaming?

Before we begin, let’s go over a few basics. For example, what exactly does mbps mean?

What does mbps mean?

MBPS stands for megabits per second, which is slightly counter intuitive to what we already know. mb surely stands for megabyte, right? Well, yes, it does, but it also stands for something else in the mbps acronym.

A mega bit is an eighth of a mega byte, despite sharing the same abbreviation, and is usually used to record the rate of data transfer between nodes (or devices, put simply).

So, 100mbps roughly equates to a download speed of up to 12.5 MB/s.

Does download speed matter for gaming?

While 12.5 MB/s download speed is more than enough for streaming TV and video, does it even affect gaming? After all, once you download a game, it’s done, you don’t have to do it again.

You’d be right for questioning if download speed matters for gaming, as in fact, it’s not as important as you think. What really matters is your latency, which actually plays a part in deciding your download speed.

Latency is essentially the time it takes for data to transfer between two points, so when you’re gaming, you’re going to want to minimise latency as much possible. Latency is interchangeable with ‘ping’, which should be familiar with all gamers, and having a high ping is one of the worst things that can happen to a gamer.

Verdict – Is 100mbps fast enough for gaming?

In short – yes, 100mbps is more than fast enough for gaming. If your internet speed is anywhere near that, it means you have an extremely low latency. And, as we now know, having a low latency is crucial for gamers.

Low latency means you’re going to be able to receive inputs from all the different nodes in-game without suffering from a drop in connection, so this is what really matters.

However, while latency is crucial for gaming, that doesn’t mean that download speed should be ignored. Having the fastest internet connection is without a doubt going to help you out – and we might recommend you take a look at a few of these guides on the best routers for gaming and the best WiFi 6 routers.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does download speed change when gaming?

If you’re gaming, you’re both uploading and downloading data from other networks. This decreases your overall download speed in other areas of the network.

Is 100mbps enough to stream gameplay online?

100mbps is also more than enough to stream your gameplay on services such as Twitch and YouTube.