Why is my Download Speed so Slow?

[Aces & Eights]

I have a fast, new Alienware PC - i7-8700k, GTX 1080Ti, 32GB DDR4 at 2666MHz, Killer 1535 ethernet - I'm connected to my cable with a 6cat ethernet cord, I have have 1GB cable service, a Cable Guy came to my house and tested my service at 300mbps and yet I am still downloading games at 2mbps to 20mbps. I am hoping someone here has had the same problem and can tell me how they fixed it or any advice would be great. In short...HELP.

[𝔇ave]

Do a speed test online. It will give you a result in mbps (megabits per second)

Divide that number by 8 and that's the mb/s (megabytes per second) you can expect.

Although steam does often not use all available bandwidth

[Aces & Eights]

did that, rated at 20 mbps but the Cable Guy's phone (using my wifi) rated at 300mbps so there's something in my pc slowing me down. I wonder if I have programs running in the background using my bandwidth and how do I find that out.

[Crashed]

Originally posted by Aces & Eights:

did that, rated at 20 mbps but the Cable Guy's phone (using my wifi) rated at 300mbps so there's something in my pc slowing me down. I wonder if I have programs running in the background using my bandwidth and how do I find that out.

Is your HDD light on when the download slows down? This may be Steam decompressing downloaded content.

[Aces & Eights]

Is there a way around that, I mean does everybody have to deal with 20mbps when downloading games from Steam?

[JimDeadlock]

If you're only getting 20mbps from speedtest.net then it's clearly not a problem with Steam, it's your ISP you should be talking to.

[Jaunitta 🌸]

Cable guy probably using a much higher bandwidth like ADSL 2 or something and he's paying for that. We get the speed we pay for. line quality and wireless quality. Check your package on your ISP. I get around 175 to 200 MB sec with fibre optics Australia but that fluctuates with Steam high traffic. Some ISP throddle speeds between certain times.

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by Aces & Eights:

Killer 1535 ethernet -

The Killer Access Manager Software suite has been a known issue with Steam for a long time. That's why driver download pages for these manufacturer's of the boards that have those devices have downloads for the "driver only" and not the manager software.

If you have the Killer Network Access Manager Suite installed, uninstall that and reboot. Then make sure you have the latest driver only installed for the Killer device.

There can be other programs that can cause this issue, too.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

[KingCactopi]

with steam and a lot of things download speeds are just slower my download speed is 30 mbps but it downloads steam apps at 7 mbps at the most

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by KingCactopi:

with steam and a lot of things download speeds are just slower my download speed is 30 mbps but it downloads steam apps at 7 mbps at the most

There can be several reasons for downloading issues, and changing regions is perfectly normal if you see slow downloads. Just as one example.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?&ref=9498-WPDF-3220

[habpaw]

Hi there! im experiencing the same issue too right now, I created a topic too:
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2747650363468658906/?tscn=1538470989

As i wrote, im having this issue only on steam. My DL speed works normally on browsering, uTorrent and even on nvidia GeForce updates! And i have really no idea but an issue from Steam region or an ISP problem.. any suggestions?

[The Giving One]

Originally posted by 4CKR4Z4M:

My DL speed works normally on browsering, uTorrent and even on nvidia GeForce updates!

Covered in one of the support pages linked literally above your post :

Originally posted by The Giving One:

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=9828-SFLZ-9289

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Clients & File Sharing Software

P2P programs have the potential to consume a large portion of your bandwidth or other system resources if not properly configured. This can prevent connections or traffic that Steam depends on, while also interfering with resources required by games. It is not recommended to have file sharing applications active while you are using Steam.

uTorrent is one such program, and a known conflict with Steam/games.

[habpaw]

Hi again, I experienced this today too and now the issue has fixed by itself. I invite you to read my discussion made by me today and read my last comment!

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/2747650363468658906/

[Crashed]

Originally posted by The Giving One:

uTorrent is one such program, and a known conflict with Steam/games.

When you say a known conflict, is it the unchecked bandwidth consumption or the bundled adware?

[habpaw]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by The Giving One:

uTorrent is one such program, and a known conflict with Steam/games.

When you say a known conflict, is it the unchecked bandwidth consumption or the bundled adware?

can you specify? i cant understand

[Crashed]

Originally posted by 4CKR4Z4M:

Originally posted by Crashed:

When you say a known conflict, is it the unchecked bandwidth consumption or the bundled adware?

can you specify? i cant understand

TGO said that uTorrent has a known conflict. If it's the bandwidth I could argue Steam has a known conflict with my web browsing because it will happily monopolize the download bandwidth and make web surfing slow.