Virgin M500 pack for Gaming

[Tombstone]

I know some might say this should be in the Internet Connectivity forum but this is specifically a question about gaming, I know obviously that the 500mb Virgin is fast for downloading etc and thats great, various broadband website reviews talk about the download speeds but few talk about the gaming experience. Its possible after all to have crazy fast speeds but terrible ping spikes/latency. Is anyone on the high end Virgin packages and doing online gaming with it, how are you finding it?

Sadly in my area I only have the choice of Sky (60mb) or Virgin (various packages)...I'm with Sky currently but the 60mb is really starting to show its age and I need more oomph really for the amount of usage I do, but am wondering how Virgin compares. Skys has been relatively steady and reasonable ping/latency with only a few spikes

 

[Toothy1911]

I had 200 for years from VM. Never ever had an issue with lag, high ping etc.
Friends are with them on big packages and it's fine, even with a few of us using it at the same time.

 

[m@rty]

You don’t need 500mb for gaming, that’s overkill. I’m on the 100mb virgin package and have no ping or latency issues at all.

 

[Tombstone]

You don’t need 500mb for gaming, that’s overkill. I’m on the 100mb virgin package and have no ping or latency issues at all.

The 500 is for work related reasons, speed is fine its more about ping spikes and latency that I was interested in when it comes to gaming wirh it. Good to hear from the two posts that it seems to be fine, thanks for the replies.

 

[DampCat]

In the 3 different houses I lived in that had virgin, I always had low ping and solid connections. It's worth pointing out though that when I did have an issue their support was utter twoddle.

 

[explicit4u]

Can only echo what everyone else has said, never had any ping or latency issues with VM (currently on VM200).

 

[McPhee]

Been with Virgin for most of the 7 years I've lived at this address. Zero drama. They've been rock solid. I did leave for one year, as BT had a silly deal. But after signing up, I discovered that the "16Mb to 30Mb" speed was more like 8, and I had all sorts of issues. It's still like that now, making Virgin the only choice (they offer up to 500Mb). I won't be leaving Virgin again.

 

[Tombstone]

Thanks for the replies, all sounds promising

 

[DaleTheWhale]

Might be worth seeing if you can get Zen in your area, Virgin Media have been somewhat faultless across the last 7 years for us but we've had periods of bad ping / latency for a couple weeks several times in the last 2 years. Support is pretty much useless when you do have issues so we're planning to move to Zen when we have the opportunity as they're meant to be the next best before we can get something better like Hyperoptic.

 

[pestt]

I'm on 100MB Virgin and our clan play on a lot of Division 2 and Battlefield servers in North America and while the ping is higher it never causes me an issue.

 

[Drake5]

Virgin 500MB for me. Can't say I've ever had issues with ping when gaming

 

[Tombstone]

Might be worth seeing if you can get Zen in your area, Virgin Media have been somewhat faultless across the last 7 years for us but we've had periods of bad ping / latency for a couple weeks several times in the last 2 years. Support is pretty much useless when you do have issues so we're planning to move to Zen when we have the opportunity as they're meant to be the next best before we can get something better like Hyperoptic.

Yeah Hyperoptic was something I'd be interested in, however, where I am pretty much the only choices available to me is Virgin or Sky (in terms of high speeds)

 

[DaleTheWhale]

Yeah Hyperoptic was something I'd be interested in, however, where I am pretty much the only choices available to me is Virgin or Sky (in terms of high speeds)

Virgin Media is night and day better over Sky, so it's worth it regardless of any hiccups it may have temporarily.

 

[MrRockliffe]

I’ve been on the 200Mb and 350Mb packages and had issues with latency, especially in Battlefield and later CoD when MW came out. I’d get pop ups of high ping where it was spiking. A normal ping test wouldn’t show this, and after tonnes of digging, it was related to the SH3 chipset. I haven’t used VM since they sent out the software update, but many consider the problem to be covered up rather than fixed, since it was an inherent design flaw with the Puma Chipset.

In terms of experience, it meant that in select games, like Battlefield and CoD, I’d experience rubber banding, where I would be moving forward, or shooting, and every now and then, the game wouldn’t register me having made an action, and would move me back to the last known spot/ammo level (I.e. as if I hadn’t made the action). This wasn’t a consistent experience, but it probably happened between 5 and 10 times in a 7-10 minute match.

I’ve always wired directly into the SH3 for my Xbox.

By comparison, after being on the 200Mb package and before 350, I was with Hyperoptic, and over WiFi, I never experienced such issues, nor do I currently on Vodafone at 55Mb.

 

[Ayahuasca]

It depends on your area and the games you play as to whether you'll notice the latency issues. The Superhub 3 that Virgin provide (which you have to use, at least as a modem) has known issues and there's still no workaround. I think some posters here would be surprised if they monitored their Virgin connection with a thinkbroadband graph. Every single one I've seen for Virgin has much higher jitter and latency spikes than the majority of Openreach network connections.

I have 2 connections at the moment, an EE g.fast connection and Virgin 500. I've had a few occasions of 100% packet loss with Virgin but fortunately, it was overnight, however, I get much lower and steadier pings when using the EE connection. Is it noticeable in the games I play? Nope, but it may be in twitch shooters like CS:GO.

 

[ED209]

I am on the 100mb package (get 110mbps down and 10mbps up).

I play the Division 2 and 1, Dibalo 3, COD Modern warfare and CSGO without any issues

My son also plays Minecraft (online servers), Minecraft Dungeons, All Roblox games and all sorts of steam games.

I never look at my ping in game but never had any issues with connection or high pings\lag etc

 

[Tombstone]

Continued thanks to all who have replied, I've arranged for the 500mb package to be set up on Sept 19th, the whole household are heavy gamers, of all manner of genres, so will be interesting to see how I find the performance over the 2nd half of this month. Sky were , naturally, not happy bunnies on the phone when I told them. They attempted to dissuade me from moving by asking me what the point was, "why anyone needs more than 30mb I dont know, why do you need it" was the main thrust of their argument. Nevertheless, we'll see how the Virgin 500 package does over this initial month

 

[ED209]

Continued thanks to all who have replied, I've arranged for the 500mb package to be set up on Sept 19th, the whole household are heavy gamers, of all manner of genres, so will be interesting to see how I find the performance over the 2nd half of this month. Sky were , naturally, not happy bunnies on the phone when I told them. They attempted to dissuade me from moving by asking me what the point was, "why anyone needs more than 30mb I dont know, why do you need it" was the main thrust of their argument. Nevertheless, we'll see how the Virgin 500 package does over this initial month

the person obviously only uses Facebook or web browsing for their internet use with that comment!

anyone that downloads games which are huge these days (some are 100GB +) would know 30mb would be painfully slow and its not like PC games are on CD\DVDs like they used too and you could buy it in store instead. Also game updates can be quite big as well so could quite easily eat up your evening or longer waiting for these to download on that connection.

 

[Dempsey22]

I'm on the 1Gb package with VM. Was on 500 for past year and 350 before that. Always been rock solid for me and never an issue with high ping or spikes etc.

 

[JohnG7]

The ping will be the same no matter what Tier you are on, it is down to you VM's local network equipment/upgraded etc etc and distance to the source.

You will see approx as 20ms as a good ping but may see as little as 17ms, if you really need very low pings (some kind of Pro gamer playing for £10,000's then cable is not the answer for now.

I was a little higher in the past like 20+ms but now see 17-18ms 99.9% of the time.