Caramel Oct 2, 2021 @ 12:29pm
Slow download speed
So lately, steam downloads have been very, very difficult. My internet speed is great, my computer is only a year old, but all of a sudden it's been starting to stutter downloads HEAVILY. One minute it would be around 100mb/s, then the disk usage tanks, my computer locks up, and the download speed is 0mb/s. It takes about 25 seconds to rev up again, hitting peak for not even a decent amount of time, and it's impossible to do anything while a game is installing.

This never used to happen, all the settings that are meant to throttle downloads are turned off, and I'm going from a server that's closest to my location. What's going on?

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Showing 1-15 of 16 comments
crunchyfrog Oct 2, 2021 @ 1:37pm 
There's afew reasons this can happen, and it can often get misunderstood.

Contrary to common opinion, download speeds DO NOT depend purely upon your internet here. Steam downloads work differently to other places (even for the same games). Games here are both encrypted AND compressed. So this means, your CPU and hard drive are also limiting factors (more so in fact).

There is also another thing. Because of this, you should always allow up to THREE TIMES the total file size for the thing you're downloading as it needs to unpack and sort all that stuff before writing to its final destination. Also you should never run Steam install drive to more than 90% full.

So, for example, if you have a 1 TB drive, and you've used 850GB (that's 85%) you're cool. But if you then try to download a 50GB game, thinking you're OK< you likely won't be.

And when you over use this space, the typical sorts of behaviour that occur are extreme slowdown on downloads, downliading to a different drive you asked for, or just completely stopping.

However, some games do download weirdly too. Payday2 and Ark are notorious for downloading a chunk, stopping while it sorts it all out, before starting up again, so you might want to make sure this isn't happening for your games you're referring to. You can easily check this by looking at the graphs on the downloads page - if the download speed is zero, you should still notice disk activity working.
Caramel Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:37pm 
Originally posted by crunchyfrog:
There's afew reasons this can happen, and it can often get misunderstood.

Contrary to common opinion, download speeds DO NOT depend purely upon your internet here. Steam downloads work differently to other places (even for the same games). Games here are both encrypted AND compressed. So this means, your CPU and hard drive are also limiting factors (more so in fact).

There is also another thing. Because of this, you should always allow up to THREE TIMES the total file size for the thing you're downloading as it needs to unpack and sort all that stuff before writing to its final destination. Also you should never run Steam install drive to more than 90% full.

So, for example, if you have a 1 TB drive, and you've used 850GB (that's 85%) you're cool. But if you then try to download a 50GB game, thinking you're OK< you likely won't be.

And when you over use this space, the typical sorts of behaviour that occur are extreme slowdown on downloads, downliading to a different drive you asked for, or just completely stopping.

However, some games do download weirdly too. Payday2 and Ark are notorious for downloading a chunk, stopping while it sorts it all out, before starting up again, so you might want to make sure this isn't happening for your games you're referring to. You can easily check this by looking at the graphs on the downloads page - if the download speed is zero, you should still notice disk activity working.
when I look at the graph while, specifically in this case Splitgate, is running an update, the disk usage tanks first to nothing, and then network bars completely disappear. I'll make sure that I have ample space though.
ShadowAngel Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:44pm 
Most of the time it's just the servers being overloaded because they suck. It has always been that way, in fact, it was worse some years ago during every sale with Steam going down for hours. Valve just doesn't care and doesn't want to invest the billions they make on a better infrastructure, the same they don't care about customer support or anything.
They flat out stated some years ago they are not willing to get better servers for "the few downtimes and the few problems during sale events".
Guess why so many big time Publishers left Steam and do their own thing now and rather work with Microsoft and Epic...
Satoru Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:47pm 
Originally posted by ShadowAngel:
Most of the time it's just the servers being overloaded because they suck.

https://store.steampowered.com/stats/content/

Steam was pushing 1 PETABYTE per second globally when CP2077 was released. Their CDN does not 'suck'
Last edited by Satoru; Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:47pm
Caramel Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:48pm 
Originally posted by Satoru:


Steam can obliterate 1gbps connections

your issues are

1) your disk IO
2) your CPU
3) your anti-virus
4) your ISP
Damn.. guess my issue is the drive throttling, despite my PC not being that old. At least it's a known issue, thanks.
Satoru Oct 2, 2021 @ 2:57pm 
Originally posted by Sabriel <3:
Damn.. guess my issue is the drive throttling, despite my PC not being that old. At least it's a known issue, thanks.

Steam downloads are very cpu and io intensive. You should be looking at your cpu utliziation per core, as well as your disk "active time". Especially with disk, you can be 100% disk active, but be reading/writing what appears to be 'little'. This is because steam is constantly reading and writing at the same time, which means you're going to see a lot of contention on the disk. The kids of "omg look at how fast our drive is" speeds are only achieved on doing something like a sequential read on a large file. Also note that yoru anti-virus can also cause significant contention on the disk as well further making disk read/writes even slower
kitt Oct 2, 2021 @ 3:28pm 
Originally posted by Sabriel <3:
Originally posted by Satoru:


Steam can obliterate 1gbps connections

your issues are

1) your disk IO
2) your CPU
3) your anti-virus
4) your ISP
Damn.. guess my issue is the drive throttling, despite my PC not being that old. At least it's a known issue, thanks.

this guy has no clue what they are talking about, they repeat random nonsense which can be disproven easily (which I did in my case with slow downloads).

its easier to admit for fanboys that Valve has issues, its easier to just say: huehuehue your PC is bad

Just have a look at all the other complaints, it's always someones PC fault and never Valves even though EPIC and other crap Launchers are fine and so on.

All you can do is try to change the Region of the Server in the Settings



Edit:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/3044984779771339715/?ctp=2#c3044985340421983976

oh look at my PC being used 100%.. oh wait.
Last edited by kitt; Oct 2, 2021 @ 3:49pm
crunchyfrog Oct 2, 2021 @ 5:03pm 
Originally posted by ShadowAngel:
Most of the time it's just the servers being overloaded because they suck. It has always been that way, in fact, it was worse some years ago during every sale with Steam going down for hours. Valve just doesn't care and doesn't want to invest the billions they make on a better infrastructure, the same they don't care about customer support or anything.
They flat out stated some years ago they are not willing to get better servers for "the few downtimes and the few problems during sale events".
Guess why so many big time Publishers left Steam and do their own thing now and rather work with Microsoft and Epic...
|This is absolutely untrue, and not how it works at all.

There are many, many servers aroudn the whoel world.

What you are supposed to do is the "region dance". Many people get this wrong as they think it's like online gaming where you ALWAYS choose the closest server to you. In fact, not only is that untrue, it's largely the OPPOSITE.

Ping isn't relevant in a one-way download. So you can choose anywhere in the world. In fact, consider this - when it is busy, and your locale is congested, your neighbours are likely to be too.

What you should do is Google timezones and find anywhere in the world that is in the wee hours of the morning and pick any of those.

Last point - how you claim "valve don't care", well that's a fallacy. For a start you cannot assume that. But more importantly that's not how this works. They rent servers around the globe. Servers are just computers, albeit a bit tougher and built to run permanently 24-7. So, they mess up from time to time - that CANNOT be avoided. Because it's a network they are capable of identifying problem servers and automatically cutting them out until they are fixed and rejoin the network.

That's something Valve can only tackle by ringing whoever they rent the server from and waiting until they fix it.
crunchyfrog Oct 2, 2021 @ 5:05pm 
Originally posted by kitt:
Originally posted by Sabriel <3:
Damn.. guess my issue is the drive throttling, despite my PC not being that old. At least it's a known issue, thanks.

this guy has no clue what they are talking about, they repeat random nonsense which can be disproven easily (which I did in my case with slow downloads).

its easier to admit for fanboys that Valve has issues, its easier to just say: huehuehue your PC is bad

Just have a look at all the other complaints, it's always someones PC fault and never Valves even though EPIC and other crap Launchers are fine and so on.

All you can do is try to change the Region of the Server in the Settings



Edit:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/7/3044984779771339715/?ctp=2#c3044985340421983976

oh look at my PC being used 100%.. oh wait.
What a daft stra3man argument.

I'm NO fanboy in the slightest for a start, so don't even try that.

The reason we point out what we point out is because most of the time IT IS the user's issue. Namely, a mix of not understanding how steam works (as I've already described) or not understanding how their PC works or internet, or something else.

By offering such normal troubleshooting that DOES NOT mean "hur hur fanboy -problem's your end". That's extremely dishonest to say so.

The point of trouble shooting is you tackle the most prevalent known issues and solutions and work from there.

Please stop spreading misinformation.
Mad Scientist Oct 2, 2021 @ 5:29pm 
Originally posted by kitt:
this guy has no clue what they are talking about, they repeat random nonsense which can be disproven easily (which I did in my case with slow downloads).
Majority of the time it's selecting a different server or otherwise the users system can't handle part of the load, so it's mostly true almost always, that the issue is not on Steams side.

Originally posted by kitt:
its easier to admit for fanboys that Valve has issues, its easier to just say: huehuehue your PC is bad
It's also easy to admit when you have a chip on your shoulder that influences such responses.

Originally posted by kitt:
Just have a look at all the other complaints, it's always someones PC fault and never Valves even though EPIC and other crap Launchers are fine and so on.
They don't encrypt/compress packages - something if you were aware of, heavily influences the use of the CPU, let alone the whole process as it's designed to reduce the amount downloaded in total. That for some people, can be a fairly good thing since some have limitations on their connection each month.

I can saturate my connection and sustain a download when using an SSD/NVME, and a newer HDD. With an older HDD, the process is slower and goes from disk usage, then to CPU, without achieving full download speed since the older HDD has stronger limitations being moreover meant for long term storage than speed.

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:
I'm NO fanboy in the slightest for a start, so don't even try that.
Having seen and interacted with you before, I can confirm this.

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:
INamely, a mix of not understanding how steam works (as I've already described) or not understanding how their PC works or internet, or something else.
Usually both. "But epic" - but epic doesn't do the encryption/compression etc, being something that has to be pointed out as most are definitely unaware.

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:
By offering such normal troubleshooting that DOES NOT mean "hur hur fanboy -problem's your end". That's extremely dishonest to say so.
Not to mention, we give actual feedback as what to look for which may explain the entire scenario, while telling users how to check it, and what may also cause issues. Other people flinging around things wrongfully, is definitely not even attempting to help troubleshoot, and could cause confusion to the users.
Caramel Oct 2, 2021 @ 6:15pm 
Tbh everything being said here is passing way over my head, all I know is games take forever to install and it freezes my computer up pretty bad, and.. I'm pretty sure my PC isn't that ancient to have these problems, but it's workable.
Mad Scientist Oct 2, 2021 @ 6:17pm 
Originally posted by Sabriel <3:
Tbh everything being said here is passing way over my head, all I know is games take forever to install and it freezes my computer up pretty bad, and.. I'm pretty sure my PC isn't that ancient to have these problems, but it's workable.
A screenshot of the download showing us what you're talking about will likely show us what we think is happening.

Mentioning the CPU and drive you're downloading to can also help, as well as if you open Task Manager and look at the CPU while your system is freezing, which is likely at 100% if it's freezing like that.
Last edited by Mad Scientist; Oct 2, 2021 @ 6:17pm
Caramel Oct 2, 2021 @ 6:25pm 
Originally posted by Mr. Gentlebot:
Originally posted by Sabriel <3:
Tbh everything being said here is passing way over my head, all I know is games take forever to install and it freezes my computer up pretty bad, and.. I'm pretty sure my PC isn't that ancient to have these problems, but it's workable.
A screenshot of the download showing us what you're talking about will likely show us what we think is happening.

Mentioning the CPU and drive you're downloading to can also help, as well as if you open Task Manager and look at the CPU while your system is freezing, which is likely at 100% if it's freezing like that.
Testing an installation.. it's not doing anything to my CPU or memory or anything, but occasionally when looking at task manager, disk usage hits 100% but no slowdown happens.

The download seems to be progressing at a decent pace, tbh the issue might've been when Steam was doing its special file unpacking methods?

I have no idea, the moment I finally try to ask around for why Steam is being iffy with downloads, it doesn't do the problem anymore. Damn.
✪ _13daviddd Oct 2, 2021 @ 6:51pm 
hhag
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Date Posted: Oct 2, 2021 @ 12:29pm
Posts: 16