The speed of our Internet connection affects the download of games, this does not support any type of discussion. If we have a faster connection we will be able to download them in less time, and the wait will be considerably reduced, but is it really an issue that we should give so much importance to? The truth is that the answer is a “Yes, but with nuances.”
Have a high internet connection speed won’t make online games work betterand it does not have to translate into a much higher experience than what we would have with a more moderate speed in basic tasks, such as browsing the Internet or playing streaming multimedia content.
With this in mind, you are probably wondering why you need an Internet connection that works at very high speeds (300 Mbps, 600 Mbps or even 1 Gbps). In the end, everything depends on your real needs, and that is that having a higher connection speed will make downloading games, and other applications and content, faster, but it will also will result in more available bandwidthand this is important when we have several devices connected at the same time.
Returning to the topic of downloading games and Internet connection speed, its real importance can only be truly understood with concrete examples. If you try to download a game like Dead Space with a 3 MB/s (24 Mbps) Internet connection, it will take a few 45 minutes, about. If you did it with a 6 MB/s (48 Mbps) connection, the time would be reduced to 22 and a half minutesand if you did it with a connection of 9 MB/s (72 Mbps) the total time would be reduced to little more than 11 minutes.
What does this mean for you, as a user? Well, very simple, to install a relatively light game with a 24 Mbps connection you would have to wait a long time, so long that you could take a long nap or watch an episode of a series (or almost). On the other hand, if you had a 72 Mbps connection, that same game would download much faster and you would not have to wait as long.
Download heavy games: Download speed wins in importance
In the previous example we have seen that the download speed of games is clearly affected by our Internet connection. Its importance is clear, but it does not seem so great since, in the end, many people don’t mind letting a game download for 10 or 20 minutes while they do other things.
However, the problem is that not all games are as light as Dead Space. When we come across titles weighing almost 80 GB, like Tekken 7, the download time with a 24 Mbps connection becomes 4 hours and 50 minutes. These are already big words, but imagine what would happen if you had a 12 Mbps connection, it would take 9 hours and 40 minutes in downloading it. Obviously, if you have a slower connection you will have to wait much longer to be able to play it.
This is the reason why I told you that Internet connection speed matters, but with nuances. In the end, its impact depends on the weight of the game, and also the state of the service that facilitates the download, since Steam, for example, does not always allow us to download at the maximum speed offered by our connection. Continuing with the previous example, a 48 Mbps Internet connection would reduce the wait to 2 hours and 22 and a half minutes, and if we reach 72 Mbps it would drop to one hour and a little more than 11 minutes.
The conclusion that we must draw from all this is very simple, having an Internet connection speed will reduce waiting times when downloading games, but the difference will gradually reduce, and very high speeds they will only have a really interesting impact when doing very heavy downloads.
