Stadia downloads 7GB per hour in 1080p and 20GB in 4K

Google Stadia has already been launched, and although it is not the first to offer a video game service via streaming, it is the most serious proposal with one of the most important companies behind the service.

Google Stadia downloads a large amount of data to our PC while we play

Playing via streaming with Stadia is not very different from watching a movie or series on Netflix, and that data is transmitted to our computer, which stores it temporarily. So, an hour of streaming a 1080p game with Google Stadia downloads 7GB of data to our PC, and that value increases to 20GB per hour if we play in 4K resolution.

That means that an uninterrupted 5-hour session playing 4K with Google Stadia downloads more than 100GB of data.

VentureBeat tested Red Dead Redemption 2 running the game at 1080p and 60fps, and found that streaming the game was consuming about 119MB of data per minute. This represents about 7.14 GB per hour. Since 4K is basically 4 times the pixel density than 1080p, the accounts come out on their own. In 4K the game must consume more than 20 GB of data per hour that is downloaded to the computer.

For comparison, Netflix uses around 3GB when streaming in HD and 7GB per hour for 4K.

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If we do accounts, Red Dead Redemption 2 can take between 40 and 50 hours to overcome, and given the 7 GB of data it uses per hour, finishing the main story of the game will consume between 280 and 350 GB of data if we play in 1080p, now count how much data you download if we play in 4K.

A few years ago this could have been totally unfeasible by ADSL-based internet connections, but now that fiber optics is increasingly popular with connections of 50, 100, 200 or even 600MB / s, it is increasingly feasible to play via streaming. Of course, make sure you have a good storage capacity.

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