Download speed on steam?

[rpalmz46]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone may know the reason for my steam downloads being iffy. They seem to start downloading not at my max speed though and then they keep downloading but periodically it just stops completely and says 0bytes currently being downloaded and then will restart. The only thing I can think of the reason being for this is my HDD because it is not very good. When it does stop downloading it will say 10-20mb/s disk usage. The thing that confuses me if I start a origin download or a ubisoft download it goes at max speed 15 megabytes per second. I am very confused why steam hates me. Anyone know the reason for this possibly.?

[SammoFS]

3 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone may know the reason for my steam downloads being iffy. They seem to start downloading not at my max speed though and then they keep downloading but periodically it just stops completely and says 0bytes currently being downloaded and then will restart. The only thing I can think of the reason being for this is my HDD because it is not very good. When it does stop downloading it will say 10-20mb/s disk usage. The thing that confuses me if I start a origin download or a ubisoft download it goes at max speed 15 megabytes per second. I am very confused why steam hates me. Anyone know the reason for this possibly.?

Steam does this A LOT. It's happened to me several times although I don't know any reason for this.

[rpalmz46]

1 minute ago, Rika Shiguma said:

Steam does this A LOT. It's happened to me several times although I don't know any reason for this.

It is very annoying tbh like my games will download a 40gb game on origin faster then a 10gb game on steam. Figured for such a popular company valve could employ better download speeds or more consistent at least.

[RadiatingLight]

1 minute ago, rpalmz46 said:

It is very annoying tbh like my games will download a 40gb game on origin faster then a 10gb game on steam. Figured for such a popular company valve could employ better download speeds or more consistent at least.

for me, it downloads fine. (i have a 200Mbps connection, so faster than yours)

[rpalmz46]

1 minute ago, RadiatingLight said:

for me, it downloads fine. (i have a 200Mbps connection, so faster than yours)

Well I'm happy you have no issues but I always seem to when it comes to steam unless I have just recently wiped my PC then my downloads are fine for a while.

[Misanthrope]

It always maxes out my 20mbps line going at 2.4 mB downloads.

[MekaStrix]

8 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone may know the reason for my steam downloads being iffy. They seem to start downloading not at my max speed though and then they keep downloading but periodically it just stops completely and says 0bytes currently being downloaded and then will restart. The only thing I can think of the reason being for this is my HDD because it is not very good. When it does stop downloading it will say 10-20mb/s disk usage. The thing that confuses me if I start a origin download or a ubisoft download it goes at max speed 15 megabytes per second. I am very confused why steam hates me. Anyone know the reason for this possibly.?

Checked disk activity mine does this when I download to my standard hard drive if I download to my ssd it doesnt do it it might be the drive just a thought

[rpalmz46]

1 minute ago, MekaStrix said:

Checked disk activity mine does this when I download to my standard hard drive if I download to my ssd it doesnt do it it might be the drive just a thought

That was generally my thought at first but then I questioned why it only does it on steam unless steam downloads games in a different way then other clients.

[MekaStrix]

3 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

That was generally my thought at first but then I questioned why it only does it on steam unless steam downloads games in a different way then other clients.

Yeah same for me only steam does it. But then again I can't watch youtube and download from steam at the same time and thats using a 230mb/s connection something about steam floods my connection and slows when downloading to a hard drive, Origin and Uplay work fine and I can still watch youtube or twitch whilst downloading on origin and uplay 

[rpalmz46]

1 minute ago, MekaStrix said:

Yeah same for me only steam does it. But then again I can't watch youtube and download from steam at the same time and thats using a 230mb/s connection something about steam floods my connection and slows wheb downloading to a hard drive, Origin and Uplay work fine and I can still watch youtube or twitch whilst downloading on origin and uplay 

In no way do I think this is 100% correct but I had a suspicion that steam downloads games and writes to the disk at the same time, whereas for example Elder scrolls online clients downloads the bulk of the files and then writes to the disk.

[MekaStrix]

4 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

In no way do I think this is 100% correct but I had a suspicion that steam downloads games and writes to the disk at the same time, whereas for example Elder scrolls online clients downloads the bulk of the files and then writes to the disk.

Yeah steam downloads and writes on the fly. I dont know what it is about steam but it is really irritating waiting for the disk to catch up. Also I should have said I cant watch videos at 720p whilst downloading with steam it causes buffer. Steam is a super resource hogging application when it comes to network and disk activity 

[rpalmz46]

1 minute ago, MekaStrix said:

Yeah stream download and wrote on the fly. I dont know what it is about steam but it is really irritating waiting for the disk to catch up. Also I should have said I cant watch videos at 720p whilst downloading with steam it causes buffer. Steam is a super resource hogging application when it comes to network and disk activity 

Yeah like I am currently doing nothing on my PC downloading Ark and its gotten 3% in 1 hour because it will start downloading but even when it does its only going at like 1-5 mbs and that only lasts for a max of like 1 minute its extremely aggravating. 

[MekaStrix]

1 minute ago, rpalmz46 said:

Yeah like I am currently doing nothing on my PC downloading Ark and its gotten 3% in 1 hour because it will start downloading but even when it does its only going at like 1-5 mbs and that only lasts for a max of like 1 minute its extremely aggravating. 

Funny that you mention ARK thats one of the worst for me as well the download line will just fall and then start again then falls after a few seconds and does this on repeat till the game had finally downloaded 

[rpalmz46]

6 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

Funny that you mention ARK thats one of the worst for me as well the download line will just fall and then start again then falls after a few seconds and does this on repeat till the game had finally downloaded 

Had to reinstall it today because my game kept getting fatal errors, things have just went downhill lol

[kirashi]

25 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

They seem to start downloading not at my max speed though and then they keep downloading but periodically it just stops completely and says 0bytes currently being downloaded and then will restart. Anyone know the reason for this possibly.?

Yes, the reason for this is the way certain games are distributed via Steam, and will be greatly affected by the drive you're downloading games to. Some games need to be "unpacked" from their smaller compressed archive format used on Steam's servers. The act and speed of unpacking them is offloaded to the users' PC, which will be faster or slower based on the performance of the drive used to install them. Not all games use this compressed method of distribution, so some will literally just download their files straight to disk already unpacked.

 

My favorite example of this is with the Payday 2 game files. According to the Steam Store, the recommended disk size is 45GB, and the minimum is 31GB, yet the files take up 37GB on my system. Thing is, whenever I perform a completely clean reinstall of Payday 2 on my system (because I keep breaking it with mods), Steam only downloads about 26GB, so I know the game uses the newer archive format for distribution. The Steam client spends a good 20-45 minutes of it's time with high disk usages and ZERO network activity, because it's unpacking the game from the archive files it downloads.

[MekaStrix]

1 minute ago, rpalmz46 said:

Had to reinstall it today because my game kept getting fatal errors, things have just went downhill lol

Yeah I had to re-download mine my friends want me to join their server so got to start before they level too far ahead of me lol. Havent played it in a while had too much overwatch to play  

[rpalmz46]

2 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

Yeah I had to re-download mine my friends want me to join their server so got to start before they level too far ahead of me lol. Havent played it in a while had too much overwatch to play  

Haha I know that feeling.

[MekaStrix]

2 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Yes, the reason for this is the way certain games are distributed via Steam, and will be greatly affected by the drive you're downloading games to. Some games need to be "unpacked" from their smaller compressed archive format used on Steam's servers. The act and speed of unpacking them is offloaded to the users' PC, which will be faster or slower based on the performance of the drive used to install them. Not all games use this compressed method of distribution, so some will literally just download their files straight to disk already unpacked.

 

My favorite example of this is with the Payday 2 game files. According to the Steam Store, the recommended disk size is 45GB, and the minimum is 31GB, yet the files take up 37GB on my system. Thing is, whenever I perform a completely clean reinstall of Payday 2 on my system (because I keep breaking it with mods), Steam only downloads about 26GB, so I know the game uses the newer archive format for distribution. The Steam client spends a good 20-45 minutes of it's time with high disk usages and ZERO network activity, because it's unpacking the game from the archive files it downloads.

So the greater speeds of ssds help because the files can be unpacked far faster than that of a standard hard drive yeah?

[rpalmz46]

3 minutes ago, kirashi said:

Yes, the reason for this is the way certain games are distributed via Steam, and will be greatly affected by the drive you're downloading games to. Some games need to be "unpacked" from their smaller compressed archive format used on Steam's servers. The act and speed of unpacking them is offloaded to the users' PC, which will be faster or slower based on the performance of the drive used to install them. Not all games use this compressed method of distribution, so some will literally just download their files straight to disk already unpacked.

 

My favorite example of this is with the Payday 2 game files. According to the Steam Store, the recommended disk size is 45GB, and the minimum is 31GB, yet the files take up 37GB on my system. Thing is, whenever I perform a completely clean reinstall of Payday 2 on my system (because I keep breaking it with mods), Steam only downloads about 26GB, so I know the game uses the newer archive format for distribution. The Steam client spends a good 20-45 minutes of it's time with high disk usages and ZERO network activity, because it's unpacking the game from the archive files it downloads.

So it is true then, wonder why they can't make all games download with newer archive format distribution as you say.

[kirashi]

8 minutes ago, MekaStrix said:

So the greater speeds of ssds help because the files can be unpacked far faster than that of a standard hard drive yeah?

Absolutely. It's the same concept as copying large files between drives - SSDs are inherently faster.

8 minutes ago, rpalmz46 said:

So it is true then, wonder why they can't make all games download with newer archive format distribution as you say.

As far as I'm aware, it's actually up to the game developers to decide how to package their games. I'm sure there are certain standards that need to be followed, but in terms of choosing distribution formats it's up to the developers themselves. There's probably bandwidth costs to consider or some kind of bandwidth limit each month.

 

Smaller games like AudioSurf, Lego titles, and older Call of Duty games don't use nearly as much bandwidth on Steam's distribution servers as something like newer CoD games, Payday 2, or Cities: Skylines might use, so it wouldn't make sense for developers to go through the extra steps required to package smaller games.