how much data does GTAO use?

[tiffie_lovee]

I live in the country(texas) and we have to have a cap on our data. We purchase 20gb per month. I recently started playing grand theft auto 5 online and love it! But my mom and step dad made me quit because their worried I'm using up all their internet. I guess they talked to someone that has worked at dish network for 10 years and told my parents GTAO uses 30GB per month but that doesn't sound pratical. Answers anyone??

Edited November 9, 2014 by tiffie_lovee

[rharri02]

The honest answer: you can easily hit that 20 GB cap in two or three nights of playing online. However, it will probably take you at least 15-20 hours of play time. So maybe more than a couple nights. It all depends on how fast your internet streams, your residual internet use from other devices and applications, and your latency. I'm actually surprised you can even play online with a dish connection. Satellites usually have too frequent and long latency periods to allow a smooth enough connection for optimal play.

 

In other words, that guy was mostly right about using too much data. You will need to be very careful or try to get a DSL connection through your phone company. I easily touch 100-200 GB every month from occasional gaming (2 nights a week previously but haven't played for over a month now), TV streaming, and downloading.

Edited November 9, 2014 by rharri02

[tiffie_lovee]

Yes I mean it does kick me off of psn a few times a day but then again my ps3 is pretty far from the router. I read somewhere that 30gb=1200 hours of online gaming? We don't use Netflix or hulu because that definitely would use up the data fairly quickly

[YogurtStorm]

Whoever told your parents GTAo uses 30GB/month is misinformed because maybe he assumes you play 24 hours a day / 7 days a week.

 

That said, I don't know how much bandwidth GTAo really takes but if you only have 20gb/month... I wouldn't push my luck, especially if your entire family uses internet otherwise to browse online.

[rharri02]

I will put it this way then: I download a movie that I bought from Amazon. It's 2 GB in size. My internet is 6 megabits/second which gives me 0.75 megabytes/second (8 bits to every byte). 2gb÷.75mb/s= 2666.667 seconds. 2666.667s÷60s=44.444 minutes. So it takes me around 45 min-1 hour to use 2gb at my internet speed. So at my speed, I can use 20gb in about 10-15 hours. By the way, I'm not even considering any possible simultaneous uploading that may occur as well.

 

Since you stream while playing an online game, it's safe to say that you are at or near your peak speed.

Edited November 9, 2014 by rharri02

[tiffie_lovee]

Yeah some of us use it to browse through Facebook at the most. Sucks having capped internet I just want to play gtao

Yeah I really don't know how fast my Internet speed is but I know it's not that fast. I think it took me like an hour to install the gta update lol

[rharri02]

Oh wow. Haha. Umm... At that potential speed (guestimating your speed around 1 megabit/s or so), you could maybe play 45-60 hours of laggy gameplay. Lol. But like the other person said, it's not good to push it considering the residual use of other devices.

[obsidian_eclipse]

For myself it works out about 70-100mb per hour, so 1gb will roughly allow 10 hours of gaming and 10gb would be 100 hours of gaming. if your playing for a few hours here and there it shouldnt be to much of problem. to use half of the 20gb allowance gives about 3 hours of gaming a day - every day.

 

a few years ago I had no physical broadband connection either, I was playing gta iv over a hawaii 3g dongle/router which was capped at 10gb a month. a day of gaming followed by a few days off isn't so bad. better than dying of deep vein thrombosis after not moving for 7 hours.

[Red Hat]

I had contacted R* asking the same thing more than an year ago.

And this was the reply I got.

 

 

 

(Ignore my typo. I was just a 12 year old "noob" back then. )

 

 

 

The link they sent me,

http://sg.pacnet.com/data-calculator.php?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=600&width=700

Edited November 9, 2014 by Kevin3014

[Soran Is On]

Use that tool to calculate. Everyone is a bit different. Once you have some hard numbers to show your parents it'll be that much easier to convince them that it's not actually using up that much. I really don't think it should use 20gb per month. If the amount of information transferred was is too large then everyone would get lag issues.

That link the previous poster gave is just an estimation. Use this http://www.softperfect.com/products/networx/

And get real numbers for gtao only. Then you'll have some evidence to throw around

Edited November 9, 2014 by stonedpimpso

[hesselgren]

i use like 200mb a night when playing gta online.

and for comparison if you watch youtube for the same time, you will use much more if you watch in best quality.

[Jolly Swagman]

I only have 8gb a month and i use it for all my internet not just GTA & I used to play online almost everyday without having any excess useage issues. You should be fine. There might be a website or something hosted by your internet provider that you can log into and check your usage partway through the month if you are worried.

[rharri02]

It's all dependent on your download/upload speeds. The faster your speed, the more likely you are to use more data. I know I use close to my max download while playing online because I can't hardly use any other device on the network while playing.

[xInfamousRYANx]

I know that 4 hours of youtube on my phone will eat my 2gb data limit. Idk ive never heard of limited home internet