Whats better for gaming?

[MBrown]

My Dad's friend had conviced us to go to DSL a while back becasue supposedly it was better than Cable for gaming. He said since people who have DSL are on their own individual line that there is no slow down where as with cable your neighborhood shares it so if everybody is on at the same time I will slow down. But lately I've been seeing more people say cable is better for gaming. What is the truth?

 

[warcrow]

DSL is shared bandwidth as well, but just at a different level in the network topology. Both are great (althought cable tends to have a higher burst rate than DSL), really. I had the option of either ADSL and cable as well, but I opted for the DSL because it was 1/2 the price.

 

[Maxspeed996]

I had the same situation except Cable and DSL are the same price....it actually drove my wife and I to Choose cable , because with our cell phones, we weren't ever using our land line anymore anyway. GOOD BYE LAND LINE. and saved myself $45 a month and haven't looked back.
as far as gaming goes , I don't think you will see a difference. I don't think the upstream/downstream are going to show their differences with just a game needing connection for streaming content.

 

[Smilin]

everything is going to vary based on who the provider is.


I've had ISDN from two providers, DSL from two providers and Cable from three.

Generally for gaming I found DSL to be a touch faster. Not that noticable though. Cable tends to have better downloads if the server on the far end isn't the bottleneck.
DSL often has better upstream bandwidth so you can sometimes actually host some deathmatch games.

All-in-all you shouldn't really notice a difference with either.

The "shared" thing is pretty much a myth. At some point you are all sharing the bandwidth of your provider.

 

[jfall]

In my area DSL is better for gaming. I find it has lower latency than my cable internet connection

 

[JBT]

Depends on the provider. in your area. Over all speed doesn't matter at all except upload if you plan on hosting games.
All that really matters if you plan on just being a client is ping time and there is no way to tell that unless you actaully have the service.
For whats its worth when I had Verizon DSL my ping times were excellent and with Cox and Charter, and Adelphia ping times have been highier. Alot of DSL companies latley to get faster speeds use interlacing which can cause ping times to increase by about 10ms or so aswell.
But again it really depends whos the DSL or cable provider in your area?

 

[cKGunslinger]

It used to be that DSL had better latency, while Cable had more bandwidth. I don't think that rule is as hard and fast as it once was however.

 

[jjones]

As others have said, it depends upon the provider. In my area cable is great for downloads but pings were better and more consistant with DSL, so I have DSL. When it comes to gaming, it's all about pings and packet loss.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

It does depend on the provider. DSL around me is so-so, whereas our cable is actually pretty good (never really run into any congested times because our cable company does a good job of making sure there is more bandwidth available for our neighborhoods than there are customers). So not only is our downstream speed 3-4x faster, the pings are usually much better as well...

 

[ockky]

it just depends really, i've had really good DSL and i've had really good cable, that being said, i've also had really bad of both too. you just have to try it to find out. that being said, i would not go with bellsouth DSL (if it is an option) because they will charge you for top rate (6meg i think) even though you may only be applicable for 3meg service and they wont say a thing ...

 

[skace]

In GENERAL, DSL = lower latency (great for gaming), Cable = more bandwidth (great for downloading).

This opinion was more true back when cable providers had lots of areas where shared bandwidth was capping in neighborhoods and people would get massive packetloss. Not really an issue anymore, but in any given area the old rule most likely still applies to some degree. But these days it's more like 30ms vs 40ms. So it's usually not a ship jumping issue.

 

[NaOH]

My dsl blows in my area (max 38kbps downloads). I got cable and could not be happier. It no longer lags when my brother streams video and I am gaming.

 

[Xyclone]

The DSL rocks in my area, the cable is wish-washy, with slow-downs during different times.

<--- Happy with DSL. :thumbsup:

 

[Sniper82]

If your gaming and ping is fine with cable stick with it. Unless you can save a bit by going with DSL over cable.

 

[sswingle]

Went to cable, dropped the landline phone, will never go back.

 

[tuteja1986]

DSL BECAUSE of its constant speed and also has better upload speed than Cable usally do.

But you can't go wrong with either.

 

[Mavrick007]

DSL is better here because they do not cap your download per month, nor do they throttle P2P networks.
Cable is faster here but there's just so much going against it to not make it worthwhile.
The pings seem to be about the same with a slight edge going to DSL here for gaming.

 

[networkman]

Originally posted by: jjones
As others have said, it depends upon the provider. In my area cable is great for downloads but pings were better and more consistant with DSL, so I have DSL. When it comes to gaming, it's all about pings and packet loss.

Exactly the same experience in my area. There's zero competition in my area for cable, so the latency blows big time - averages well over 100ms.

DSL thru my current provider is 40 to 50ms average.

 

[Todd33]

My friend and I had SBC DSL. He dropped it for Comcast cable. He also went to VOIP and dropped his copper line. He has far more issues with stable service (I never ever get an outage, he gets at least 3-4 a year). He also has issues with his VOIP when his bandwidth is being tapped out by downloads. You may save money with the cable package, but you get some issues that DSL+phone doesn't.

 

[SoundTheSurrender]

I always got dropped on my DSL so I switched to Comcast and it kicks ass.

 

[Lazy8s]

In my experience cable gets alot more disconects than DSL. Also, with DSL I could get a static IP so I could make some money on the side with web services. Honestly though, it's 6 of one, half-dozen of the other. I prefer the stability of DSL but when I move in January I will probably get cable simply because of price.

 

[Janet Reno]

My old Cable had a higher max DL rate.

But the problem was my cable was always going out. So I switched to DSL and couldn't be happier, even though it's slightly slower in terms of high end download speeds for the same speed of line.

In terms of gaming, pings on some servers are slightly lower, and on an asian server I play on it's slightly higher at times. It works out to about even though.

What matter most here is that my internet is always on now.

 

[JackBurton]

FIOS. But if I can't have that, I prefer cable. That being said, I hate my DSL (that's the only thing available in my area now). :|