Playing PC games online.  

Do some tests, run some tracert's, go to www.broadbandreports.com and run their speed tests. Bandwidth is not the issue most of the time, it is the latency (lag). I have run tests when I was at a dorm connection (OC3), branch office (T3), branch of the branch office (T1), my 'rents house (fiber to the door), and I have had DSL and cable personally. In terms of playability, I have noticed that connection type and bandwidth over 256kbit affect gaming inconsequentially, unless hosting a server or a truly beefy game. During a tracert to some servers, note any packetloss or longer delays at certain hops, these will directly affect game play. Some games, this is minor and a little warping will occur, others and the game is unplayable.

I am very lucky, on DSL I was 1/2 a block to the telco, I had no lag and no packetloss. On cable, I am all alone on my node (maybe there are 2 others on it) and I recieve near full bandwidth offered. I don't go over 50ms lag until I leave the state and then I still hover near 90-100ms in the end route if it is in the US.

[edit]Oh, I am currently on cable 3.5 mbit down/1 mbit up, if I lived 5 miles east I could have 10mbit down![/edit]

Unless your broadband is just plain crummy, I really just don't think it matters that much for online gaming. A good player will play well with either DSL or cable.

That being said, I think it is worth a few extra bucks a month for cable, because it is dramatically faster for large downloads, such as game demos.

A combination of both. As long as you are getting a good FPS all you have to worry about is your connection. 50 or below will make you competitive enough with the other players. I've seen people with 40ms pings jump around like they were on dial-up. Turns out it was because of their aging hardware.

And adding to what Chris said, in my experience the people with cable always get nice low pings in the 50s or below. I've heard people with FIOS are getting solid single digit pings.

Pretty much the smaller the ping, the bigger the wang.

I've been playing online FPS's now for over 5 years, as part of an online gaming team, and a good deal of cable users on our team have had ping and packet loss issues. There've been many times where players cannot play between certain hours, or have serious PL that makes their connection unusable for gaming purposes.

I admin'd an online gaming league for a bit, and because of cable packet loss and unstable ping issues, rules denoted that servers run off of cable connections were not usable for matches.

Then again, my good friend has had cable for years and has never had an issue. ;) You'll do well with either cable or dsl, imo. A low ping will mean nothing if you have high PL (packet loss), so check your connections and hops when you join a server. A good program for that is TraceRoute.

-JR