Steam download ramping up slowly and not hitting anywhere close to my max download speed.

[Boombi]

Hello, as the title says whenever I download or update a game on steam it ramps up extremely slowly, it starts at 4-9 MBps and then increases by ~half a megabyte per second every 2 second or something and doesn't ever come past 20 ish MBps, (22.9 MBps was the maximum I saw, the download speed curve was dead flat for 30 minutes straight.). 22.9 MBps is not completely slow by any means but I should be getting around 100+MBps. I have 1000Mbps from my provider, with all my devices on my network and also perhaps the grade of the ethernet cables I'm using to connect from my rooter to my PC I only ever see 850Mbps, but that should still get me around 105-107MBps.

I checked for everything my computer could be doing wrong, I checked wether my disks were maxing out not only on writing speed but also on number of writing command but that doesn't seem to be the case, no matter which drive I pick, the download curve acts exactly the same, they're both NVMEs but gen 4 and gen 3 so they'd probably act differently. My CPU isn't maxing out either decompressing files, I have no apps taking network at the same time, steam download isn't capped, (I tried capping it to something like 50MBps to see if it would unlock it or something but it didn't. I uninstalled steam and even reinstalled it on another drive. The only thing I didn't reinstall are the steam librairies, perhaps they could be the culprit but I doubt it and don't really want to delete them only to have to redownload them at "low speed" if it doesn't work, and I might also loose keybinds, settings and other stuff which might not be saved in the steam cloud.

I checked and downloaded a game on Epic Games Launcher to see if it would download correctly and it ramped up extremely fast in around 10 seconds I was hitting 106MBps (848Mbps).

I fumbled a bit with the firewall trying to turn it off, didn't change anything, I changed steam's download region and emptied the download cache but it didn't change anything... I'm looking for other stuff on forums but not one solution seems to be working, I would greatly appreciate it if any of you have other ideas I could try before I uninstall my game folders and reinstall steam once more. Thank you!

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Boombi said:

Hello, as the title says whenever I download or update a game on steam it ramps up extremely slowly, it starts at 4-9 MBps and then increases by ~half a megabyte per second every 2 second or something and doesn't ever come past 20 ish MBps, (22.9 MBps was the maximum I saw, the download speed curve was dead flat for 30 minutes straight.). 22.9 MBps is not completely slow by any means but I should be getting around 100+MBps. I have 1000Mbps from my provider, with all my devices on my network and also perhaps the grade of the ethernet cables I'm using to connect from my rooter to my PC I only ever see 850Mbps, but that should still get me around 105-107MBps.

I checked for everything my computer could be doing wrong, I checked wether my disks were maxing out not only on writing speed but also on number of writing command but that doesn't seem to be the case, no matter which drive I pick, the download curve acts exactly the same, they're both NVMEs but gen 4 and gen 3 so they'd probably act differently. My CPU isn't maxing out either decompressing files, I have no apps taking network at the same time, steam download isn't capped, (I tried capping it to something like 50MBps to see if it would unlock it or something but it didn't. I uninstalled steam and even reinstalled it on another drive. The only thing I didn't reinstall are the steam librairies, perhaps they could be the culprit but I doubt it and don't really want to delete them only to have to redownload them at "low speed" if it doesn't work, and I might also loose keybinds, settings and other stuff which might not be saved in the steam cloud.

I checked and downloaded a game on Epic Games Launcher to see if it would download correctly and it ramped up extremely fast in around 10 seconds I was hitting 106MBps (848Mbps).

I fumbled a bit with the firewall trying to turn it off, didn't change anything, I changed steam's download region and emptied the download cache but it didn't change anything... I'm looking for other stuff on forums but not one solution seems to be working, I would greatly appreciate it if any of you have other ideas I could try before I uninstall my game folders and reinstall steam once more. Thank you!

Have you followed their guide?

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5AC5-8056-E88F-F3FF

 

Specifically:

Quote

Steam uses content servers that are located all over the world. Steam attempts to select the best content server based on your location. If Steam downloads are going slower than expected, please double check your current download region:

1. Start Steam
2. Go to Steam > Settings > Downloads tab
3. Under Download region, select the region that you are in or that is closest to you.
4. You can also try various regions near your location to see if a better connection is available.

 

[Boombi]

10 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Have you followed their guide?

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5AC5-8056-E88F-F3FF

 

Specifically:

 

I haven't, I'll check if there's anything I haven't done and come back to you. But the specific thing you've quoted I did try, I set it to like 5 different regions, some very close to me others on a different continent and the download curve is the same for all.

[Boombi]

34 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Have you followed their guide?

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5AC5-8056-E88F-F3FF

 

Specifically:

 

So I checked everything on their guide but I can't spot anything I haven't tried yet.

[Alex Atkin UK]

30 minutes ago, Boombi said:

So I checked everything on their guide but I can't spot anything I haven't tried yet.

I wonder if you're being CPU bottlenecked?  Steam use compression on their downloads which is quite intensive.

[TatamiMatt]

39 minutes ago, Boombi said:

So I checked everything on their guide but I can't spot anything I haven't tried yet.

Whats your system specs?

[Boombi]

5 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I wonder if you're being CPU bottlenecked?  Steam use compression on their downloads which is quite intensive.

 

2 hours ago, Boombi said:

My CPU isn't maxing out either decompressing files

No, doesn't seem like it, some threads are hitting close to 60% usage at times but no higher than that during the download.

[TatamiMatt]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I wonder if you're being CPU bottlenecked?  Steam use compression on their downloads which is quite intensive.

That was my thought too but if he is able to download through EPIC games launcher at full speed? Id get it if it was a minor difference but 5-10x the download speed seems steep

[Boombi]

Just now, TatamiMatt said:

Whats your system specs?

CPU is 5800X3D, B450 Aorus Elite V1, Drives are Samsung 980 Pro 1TB and Sabrent Rocket Q 2TB, I also have an RTX 3070ti but I don't think that's relevant, what is relevant is that my drives are plugged on M.2. PCIE Gen 3 and Gen 2 respectively when they're Gen 4 and gen 3 so their max write speed is cut a bit but my slowest one still writes at 2000MB/s ish.

[TatamiMatt]

3 minutes ago, Boombi said:

my drives are plugged on M.2. PCIE Gen 3 and Gen 2 respectively when they're Gen 4 and gen 3 so their max write speed is cut a bit but my slowest one still writes at 2000MB/s ish.

Yeah that shouldnt be an issue, not at least for the issue youre seeing.

 

Out of curiosity, do you have a PBO offset active?

[Boombi]

4 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

That was my thought too but if he is able to download through EPIC games launcher at full speed? Id get it if it was a minor difference but 5-10x the download speed seems steep

Yes and depending on the game and how the files are being written I should get a difference in writing speed from one game to another and have a download speed that varies, here it's dead flat once it reaches it's maximum.

 

[Boombi]

1 minute ago, TatamiMatt said:

Yeah that shouldnt be an issue, not at least for the issue youre seeing.

 

Out of curiosity, do you have a PBO offset active?

I'm not familiar with that term, are you talking about undervolting of my CPU? Or is it something to do with my rooter?

I have a slight undervolt of my CPU, for the rooter I wouldn't be able to tell you but I don't have any priority on my rooter that could limit my download speed, and I checked on another computer on the same network and I do hit almost 900Mbps (got a bit more than a 100MBps).

[Boombi]

For reference this is what my CPU graph looks like, the download starts at the spike.

[TatamiMatt]

5 minutes ago, Boombi said:

I'm not familiar with that term, are you talking about undervolting of my CPU? Or is it something to do with my rooter?

I have a slight undervolt of my CPU, for the rooter I wouldn't be able to tell you but I don't have any priority on my rooter that could limit my download speed, and I checked on another computer on the same network and I do hit almost 900Mbps (got a bit more than a 100MBps).

Its to do with undervolting your CPU, as X3D chips are locked the only thing you can do is lower the PBO offset, but if you have lower grade silicon and lower the offset too much you can really hamper performance

[Boombi]

Just now, TatamiMatt said:

Its to do with undervolting your CPU, as X3D chips are locked the only thing you can do is lower the PBO offset, but if you have lower grade silicon and lower it too much you can really hamper performance

Would it be possible that it's causing this only for steam? As I said I had no issue with EpicGames's downloads and I even tried origin and I did hit 100ish MBps, same for gaming after undervolting I saw no difference in performance on my games, I only did it to get my fans to stop screaming whenever my CPU temp were spiking from opening a google tab.

[TatamiMatt]

3 minutes ago, Boombi said:

Would it be possible that it's causing this only for steam? As I said I had no issue with EpicGames's downloads and I even tried origin and I did hit 100ish MBps, same for gaming after undervolting I saw no difference in performance on my games, I only did it to get my fans to stop screaming whenever my CPU temp were spiking from opening a google tab.

If EPIC's games are downloading in full with no compression then possibly, as this is much less taxing on the CPU,

 

What temps is your CPU hitting when under loads like games, downloading etc

[Boombi]

Just now, TatamiMatt said:

If EPIC's games are downloading in full with no compression then possibly, as this is much less taxing on the CPU,

 

What temps is your CPU hitting when under loads like games, downloading etc

I will check do a little of HWmonitor to see that.

[TatamiMatt]

1 minute ago, Boombi said:

I will check do a little of HWmonitor to see that.

Try Hwinfo, should give you more detailed and more accurate info

[Boombi]

So I switched to HWInfo as you asked and this is a screenshot during the download of a game on steam.

[Boombi]

And this is what the steam little graph thingy shows, it ramps up extremely slowly and then stays completely flat.

[Boombi]

And this is on Doom eternal with max graphics on 1440p with uncapped FPS.

[TatamiMatt]

It all seems fine to me

[Boombi]

30 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

It all seems fine to me

I'll try writing a ticket to the steam support, it's really my last hope, maybe something on their end... but I doubt it, it's probably a shitty windows thing preventing steam from downloading but I checked firewall, network, and windows update in case for some odd reason it thought the steam download was the same as a windows update and thus was metering it but no that's not the case. Anyways I hope to find a solution. If I find the problem I'll try and remember to come back here to tell what it was.

[Mark Kaine]

On 3/20/2024 at 12:47 PM, Boombi said:

And this is what the steam little graph thingy shows

 

yeah this looks completely normal to me, if it wasn't it would be full of spikes and slowdowns...

 

 

On 3/20/2024 at 9:30 AM, Boombi said:

22.9 MBps is not completely slow by any means but I should be getting around 100+MBps. 

 

you're actually getting more than that, your just not reading it right.

 

 

you can change steam to show Mbps btw, but the speed itself seems totally fine.

[TatamiMatt]

10 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

yeah this looks completely normal to me, if it wasn't it would be full of spikes and slowdowns...

 

 

 

you're actually getting more than that, your just not reading it right.

 

 

you can change steam to show Mbps btw, but the speed itself seems totally fine.

OP seems to know the difference between the 2 though, i think hes looking to hit around 100MBps on steam instead of 25, or 900mbps instead of 200

On 3/20/2024 at 11:13 AM, Boombi said:

I checked on another computer on the same network and I do hit almost 900Mbps (got a bit more than a 100MBps).