Our throttle testing started with a limit of 5 Mbps of download speed, which Sony recommends as the minimum "for an optimal gaming experience." At that bandwidth level, the service usually wouldn't even start; instead, a pre-launch connection test told us that the connection simply wasn't good enough for PlayStation Now. The same error surfaced when bumping the bandwidth limit up to 6 Mbps.
At 7 Mbps, we were able to start PlayStation Now reliablybut with a significant performance hit. The image was noticeably grainier than it had been at full bandwidth. Sometimes we were able to get a relatively smooth frame rate at this bandwidth, but most of the time the frame rate stuttered, dipping noticeably up and down near constantly. A game like Super Street Fighter IV was technically playable at this level, and inputs seemed to register just fine, but the constant stuttering usually made it a frustrating experience.
SLIDING UNDER THE DATA CAP
If you're one of the many unlucky broadband customers subject to a cap on your data usage, you may rightly wonder how streaming HD gameplay from a remote server will eat into your monthly allotment. In our tests, most games sucked down an average of 2.6 GB of downloaded data over an hour of gameplay. On a plan with a 150 GB data cap, that means you could stream about 57 hours of PlayStation Now gaming every month, provided you didn't want to do anything else with your connection...
This rate varied very little across a number of game types, from heavy action games to low-res classics to relatively sedate puzzle games. The only exception was our test of Pure Chess, which only drew 732 MB of data on an hourly basis. This might be because that game's static view of the chess board remains largely unchanged from frame to frame, which probably helps with the compressed image stream.
With just a little more bandwidth, though, the experience improved quite a bit. At a limit of 8 Mbps, the image returned to what seemed like 720p HD and boasted a solid frame rate throughout. At this bandwidth level, the only issues were occasional compression artifacts appearing as small, scrambled boxes of pixels for a few frames here and there. By the time we hit 9 Mbps of download speed, streaming once again felt like local play.
