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Does gaming online "download" megebytes?

James SheperedJames Shepered Registered User regular
edited February 2010 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Simply playing online, like over Xbox Live, will my internet "download" megabytes? As to interefere with download thresholds?

James Shepered on

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    EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator mod
    edited February 2010
    Yes.

    Echo on
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    James SheperedJames Shepered Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    *facepalm* Okay. I hate where I love and the internet I am restricted to using. fml.

    James Shepered on
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    KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    Any sort of internet activity will download (and upload) information - that's pretty much what the internet does. However, the amount of information down/uploaded while playing a game for an hour will (usually) be much lower than the amount of information it takes to download, say, an hour of porn.

    KalTorak on
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    wonderpugwonderpug Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    This article has a good overview of how much bandwidth various activities use, including gaming.

    Lazy version:
    5-8 KB/s for a first person shooter
    <1 KB/s for an MMO

    wonderpug on
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    taliosfalcontaliosfalcon Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    wonderpug wrote: »
    This article has a good overview of how much bandwidth various activities use, including gaming.

    Lazy version:
    5-8 KB/s for a first person shooter
    <1 KB/s for an MMO

    That article seems to be using only very old games as examples (looks like it was made in 2002)..most modern MMOs top out around 20 KB/s in my experience and probably average at 15 (i keep a bandwidth meter running at all times and Aion, CO and STO are all around there)most fps' seem to use around the same or slightly less. So worst case scenario figure 70ish MB/hour

    taliosfalcon on
    steam xbox - adeptpenguin
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    psychoticdreampsychoticdream Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    does OP have a limited gb internet service??
    thats probably why he's asking this

    psychoticdream on
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    mcdermottmcdermott Registered User regular
    edited February 2010
    psychoticdream wrote: »
    does OP have a limited gb internet service??
    thats probably why he's asking this

    Well, duh.

    I've found a lot of FPSs run upwards of 100kb/s (bit, not byte) while playing. That should come out to (ballpark, I suggest monitoring it youself) upwards of 50 megabytes (not bits) per hour...as somebody else seems to have said. Repeating FTW.

    Just install a decent bandwidth monitor and see for yourself what it's using. I recommend getting a router that can run custom firmware (like a Linksys WRT54G), installing something like Tomato or DD-WRT, and just use it's built-in bandwidth monitoring...it can tell you exactly how much traffic is coming and going over your WAN port (whereas most PC based solutions will both include LAN traffic and miss, obviously, shit like Xbox traffic).

    mcdermott on
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    FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited February 2010
    Turn off VOIP features in games that have text chat if you want to save a decent chunk of bandwidth.

    For Xbox Live, you can turn off all voice by going to Preferences -> Voice -> Mute All or Friends Only

    FyreWulff on
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