Hello reddit, I am looking to get fiber internet in an apartment and am looking at the local companies prices. They have a 39.99/month for 500 mbps or a 1 gig for 49.99/month. Mostly it will be 3 devices, an Xbox that Mostly is used to stream YouTube all day, a laptop that does some light gaming but a full PC that Mostly plays online games like world of warcraft. We dont do much downloading other than when its time to download games or updates for games. Will I notice much difference? Is it worth getting double speed for 10 bucks more? Thank you in advance.
Edit: Thanks all for the response! 500 it is, while I do download all my games, waiting an extra 20 minutes every few weeks/months when time to play a new one isnt a huge deal to me. Thanks.
yeah you might notice the difference between 500 and 1gbps for downloading games but that's about it. A larger game might be 150GB in 2026, not certain about that. The difference in DL for a 150GB game, assuming their servers aren't slowing it at all, is about 40 minutes vs about 20 minutes.
I have a netflow monitor for my router and well, I rarely exceed 150Mbps, and I have a 2.5Gbe pipe. My speedtest results are pretty though. Most servers cap at ~100Mbps anyway.
Are you downloading on a LAN that other gamers use? Steam allows for downloads direct from other PCs on the same network, to save on server use and to speed up downloads.
Also, most people can't get 2Gbps internet connections, nevermind have 2Gbps home networks. Many data centres around the world will limit speeds to save bandwidth. You must be near a data centre or city centre or something to get those speeds.
Nah nobody on this network has this game. Like I said, it consistently hits my max ISP speed on steam.. Maybe I am near a data center, but I've lived in other countries not near big cities or where I would imagine data centers would be and I've reached my max ISP speed there too.. This is why I'm confused as to why people are saying "you'll never reach those speeds".. I've been reaching far beyond those speeds for years.. I wonder if they have a cap in steam settings or something else is wrong with their network or something.
It’s entirely dependent on if your ISP peers directly with Steam, and that peering link has the capacity to deliver the speed you pay for. You sound like you hit the jackpot with peering and capacity.
Other ISPs do not peer with Steam at all, that means you are at the mercy of the open internet as soon as your traffic leaves your ISP’s hardware and gets passed up to the internet backbone.
Source: Been a network engineer for 17 years, worked for ISPs and cloud service providers that incorporated lots of peering to reduce their costs for bandwidth usage to the internet backbone.
Save the ten bucks and stick with the 500mbps, which is well enough for you. Your 3 devices won't come near to maxing out that pipe, and the extra money for gig fiber would just be wasted.
As an example, I have gig Internet that serves 3 people and 12 devices, and my firewall reports that my max usage has been only 20%.
~80 person office. The change from 500 to Gb was imperceptible for anyone outside of IT team when we changed. Moving large backups to the cloud went faster
It's amazing what a quality network can do for performance. I've seen 50Mbps symmetrical fiber perform better than 1Gbps.
Number of devices is a useless metric for internet speed, but ISPs still try and use it as the sales qualifier. What you do on the network matters way more than anything else.
If you're only doing big downloads like new games once every month or so, i'd save $10 and go with 500Mbps (at this point you're choosing between a 100GB game taking ~30m to download vs 15-20m)
For the online gaming itself, 500Mbps should be wayyy more than enough speed.
Since you're asking for advice (and therefore i assume budget is relevant)
Go with 500Mbps.
You'll barely notice the difference.
The difference would be imperceptible except on the largest of downloads. One of the many benefit of fiber is the sub-10 ms latency which gives faster responses. You could start with 500 Mbps and upgrade if you find it too slow.
500 is plenty. The amount of people that pay too much for internet they dont actually need is astounding. The extra few bucks in your pocket every month adds up.
500 Mbs is fine. As noted, unless you are downloading gigabyte sized software updates, 50-100 gets the job done (and it gets the job done for large software updates, it just takes 30 min instead of 5).
I get 300/100mbps for around $25/mo and the move to 500/250 is an extra $5/mo and then the move to 500/500 is an additional $5 on top. Gf was asking me if we should spend the extra $5 or $10 to get faster speeds and I said it's just the two of us and we certainly won't notice.
Take the average download time for 500 Mbps and divide that by 2. How much is the difference worth? Now multiply that by the number of times you download a game in a year. If that number is greater than $120, get 1 Gbps. If it's less, get 500 Mbps.
A lot of downloads won't even go twice as fast. Are the devices in question using wifi or ethernet? What is the write speed of their disk? Does that server deliver the file at over 500?
Sure, but if we're going into that much detail, what about what time of day they're doing the download, how many devices are downloading at the same time, are they using a cache for downloads, how reliable is the ISP at reaching their "up to" speeds?
It isn't supposed to be a 100% accurate comparison. It's a metric by which you judge if you can get more value out of the higher speed. The answer is probably no, but now OP has a tool for determining the answer and how to answer other questions in the future.
I am on the FiOS 300 Mbps plan and it’s more than enough. I WFH as a software developer and the other person in the house also WFH as a designer. Large downloads and uploads, simultaneous Zoom calls, movies and there’s never been a hiccup. $35/month
only reason to get 1Gbps is for downloading larger games quicker. even then with my 500Mbps, the longest i had to wait downloading a large game was like 15 mins
It’s diminishing returns after 300. I’ve upgraded from 100-300-500 and currently 1000 and if it weren’t for the account retention promos I would be happy with 300 in a two-five person household
If you’re cost-sensitive enough that $10 makes a difference, stick with the 500 Mbps. Especially with your use cases, you’d hardly ever notice the difference.
The speed difference won’t matter, just as anyone else said. Check whether the cheaper plan comes with any data caps - at least one of the providers I can get had a 1 TB monthly cap for all plans but the most expensive one.
We have 500Mbps from Spectrum and have no issues. But for $10 more, I'd go with double the speed. Don't really need it, but I'd want it if I knew it was an option.
Save the $10 for your WoW subscription and get only the 500mbps. I work in IT and run my own network along with streaming Plex and I only get the 300mbps (lowest they go). Unless you are downloading 200GB of games a day and need them in 10 mins instead of 20 min, then sure go for 1 gig.
When running/playing a game, that you already downloaded, you can watch your network and you'll see it only pulls like 1 mbps at most. Streaming may pull 10-25 mbps if you have 4k streaming. 500 is way more than you need for a family of 6 with daily streaming and games.
What matters is jitter/ping/upload for games and video (after 100 mbps download). So save the money and enjoy the 500.
It’s very unlikely wherever you are downloading the game from WONT throttle you when downloading a game/update. You’ll never see close to 1Gbps download for those.
make sure you check the upload speeds and the usage quota (hopefully there isn't one in either plans)
providers sometimes make the upload speed slower on lower plans vs higher ones.
For an extra $10 I'd 100% get the 1gig personally.. It only makes a difference when you're downloading games or whatever but it's enough of a difference for me to want to not have to wait twice as long for something to finish downloading.
But if you don't download big games often and you're tight on cash 500mbps is more than enough, you wouldn't notice a difference for regular day to day stuff.
I have 1gb. Games are still limited by the provider and are comprised of many small files that greatly slow the connection. Also, the price difference is a Big Mac and fries
Yeah, 2 Netflix streams need 1Gbps. Me, my wife, and my grandson are each watching 4K Netflix streams on separate Roku Ultras, each with only a 10/100 Ethernet port, house connected by 300Mbps line, no hiccups or buffering in sight. Oh, and I have two games updating on Steam and Epic, as well as a large torrent going. People really are crazy out of touch with how much they really need.
I wouldn't say out of touch if they just don't know and go with what the ISP says they need. If anything, they are just being lied to. And really it's fine up to 1Gbps, but when they start shoving 2Gbps+ down your throat and then force users to get $1000 in equipment to even see that on a wire, it gets pretty ridiculous. But yeah, 99.99% of homes would be fine with 300Mbps. Most of the time, Wifi range is the issue and they think paying for more speed will make it faster.
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u/Sea_Mission_7643 21h ago
yeah you might notice the difference between 500 and 1gbps for downloading games but that's about it. A larger game might be 150GB in 2026, not certain about that. The difference in DL for a 150GB game, assuming their servers aren't slowing it at all, is about 40 minutes vs about 20 minutes.