Steam DL vs Origin/EA DL

[Wolfsun]

I have a 1000 Gbs Internet connection. Using Speedtest.net I normally get around 930 Mbs.

Using Origin and downloading EA games I very, very rarely get a download speed less than 700 Mbs.

Using STEAM I very rarely get over 160 Mbs. Once just once I had a download that hit 560 Mbs peak but averaged 280 on that one. A one time thing.

Why?

Yes, I've cleared the DL cache. I regularly do it and always before a big steam DL.

I download to my SSD which an M2.SSD NVME type and has a transfer speed as measured by DiskMark of 3.8 GBs and yes that's Giga Bytes (amazed me but it;s real).

Based on just those two things I've got to conclude the relatively slow DL speed is a function of STEAM.

The only thing that I've done that made even the slightest difference was turning off QOS on my router and PC ethernet. That got me an average of 25 to 35 MBs for about a month then boom - all of a sudden DL speeds jumped back down to 18 to 20 MBS. Felt like steam started throttling me (my steam dl speeds on the Download settings tab are unlimited - i.e checkboxes for limit bandwidth are unchecked and the boxes where the limit is placed are empty).

What gives?

And please - don't bother telling me there's lots of threads on this topic - I've read read quite a few of them and none helped.

Who knows maybe someone out there has something new to suggest.

Here's hoping.

[nullable]

Neither Valve or you control all the variables. For example, nothing is stopping your ISP from limiting traffic to Steam but not to Origin.

And it's not as if Steam and Origin run off the same servers, or services either.

Some people are able to download from Steam at 900MB/sec+. Some people have issues despite their speed tests or performance on other services. Valve certainly isn't throttling your speeds. And they're not responsible for every aspect of your experience.

At any rate while we can understand your conclusion. From your perspective, Steam is your only unaccounted variable and you've ruled out everything* else. But your conclusions aren't as bulletproof as you currently believe.


*Not actually everything.

[Crashed]

It's totally possible for Steam to become CPU bound when it decompresses downloaded chunks. Is your download rate fluctuating between maxing out your line and stalling?

Also, your SSD's write speed is only rated for sequential; during decompress Steam will be doing random R/W on the drive.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Wolfsun:

I have a 1000 Gbs Internet connection. Using Speedtest.net I normally get around 930 Mbs.

Using Origin and downloading EA games I very, very rarely get a download speed less than 700 Mbs.

Using STEAM I very rarely get over 160 Mbs. Once just once I had a download that hit 560 Mbs peak but averaged 280 on that one. A one time thing.

Why?

Your ISP or some leg on the hop may be throttling.
It's not uncommon t limit the data rate coming from certain very widely used sites to maintain throughput.


The fact that your speeds improved when you turned of QOS lends some credence to this. Your ROuter settings only really impact you and your ISP.
Also have you checked to see if QOS is still off on your router?

[Wolfsun]

1. Some provider/waypoint from steam to me throttling the data rate is a realistic point and a good one. STEAM is freakin' huge. The amount of data going thru daily thru the internet world wide from steam may very well reach the peta byte range and for sure must reach the 100's of terra byte range. Of course that total load would be divided up amongst the 1000's of destinations but it's for sume some of the branch hubs would be getting enough to put a crimp in their ability to move the total data going thru them. That could eat the bandwidth available to even a major network node. Can't blame a provider for throttling steam traffic (though getting one to admit it would IMO be damned near impossible without a court order). Excellent point to all who brought it up. Thanks - love it when I learn something new.

2. Steam getting CPU bound when decompressing a file. Maybe on a low core cpu. But - i've got an 11th gen intel CPU i9- 11900 with 8 real cores and 8 virtual cores coupled to 64GB of system ram. With task manage open and selected to the performance tab I can see total core usage at any time. Every now and then on my system I might see it go to 20% or so with a game running or heavy network load. The only thing that will kick it up to 60% to 70% is when I've got a full system virus scan with all the bells and whistles on running. With a modern CPU I'm sure there are some processes that could load one up to 100% but decompressing a zip file or its ilk ain't one of 'em. I've never ever seen my CPU go to 100% and using MSI Afterburner one can see the max and min of CPU usage since last system start quite easily.

Some people are able to download from Steam at 900MB/sec

WOW!!!!! I wanna meet those people who can download speed of almost 1 Billion BYTES/second.

I think what the poster meant was 900Mbs (that's bits, B=Bytes, big, big difference).

Anyway - thanks for the responses. I believe that 1 is the answer to my question.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Wolfsun:

1. Some provider/waypoint from steam to me throttling the data rate is a realistic point and a good one. STEAM is freakin' huge. The amount of data going thru daily thru the internet world wide from steam may very well reach the peta byte range and for sure must reach the 100's of terra byte range. Of course that total load would be divided up amongst the 1000's of destinations but it's for sume some of the branch hubs would be getting enough to put a crimp in their ability to move the total data going thru them. That could eat the bandwidth available to even a major network node. Can't blame a provider for throttling steam traffic (though getting one to admit it would IMO be damned near impossible without a court order). Excellent point to all who brought it up. Thanks - love it when I learn something new.

Well they may not be doing it to STEAM as in "We need to Throttle STeam" They likely have various tools to detect patterns in data traffic. and throttle reactively based on certain thresholds. In which case they honestly couldn't say if They throttle steam.

ANd Steam getting CPU bound isn't so far fetched. data pipelines being what they are. The point is while steam is streaming data off the drive to decompress, and writing the decompressed data, well it can't really be writing downloaded data now can it?

THen when you tage in things like your AV scanning the data as it's downloaded, scanning the data as it's being read into decompression and scanning the decompressed data as it's being written to the drive. That's about 6 threads right there alone. That's 6 of your 16 cores being occupied. And. Worse you're dealing with it in a case where each one requires another one to finish ...

And keep in mind this is happening to almost every system on the hop chain.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Wolfsun:

Some people are able to download from Steam at 900MB/sec

WOW!!!!! I wanna meet those people who can download speed of almost 1 Billion BYTES/second.

I think what the poster meant was 900Mbs (that's bits, B=Bytes, big, big difference).

Anyway - thanks for the responses. I believe that 1 is the answer to my question.

I'm afraid you not being aware of high tier internet connections is where you're confused. 10Gigabit connections do exist, and that means maxed out you'd be hitting 1150-1250 Megabytes per second (factoring real world performance). Granted they're not widely available or common, and there's no reason you'd specifically be aware that they exist if it's not even close to an option where you live and you haven't shopped around for those kinda speeds.

At any rate I know the difference between byte and bit and didn't make a mistake. You just assumed 7.2Gb (or 900MB) was an impossible number, and it's not. The fastest speed I've seen anyone pull down on Steam was in the 900's so that's what I referenced. And the connections do exist that could allow for that.

Download speeds are typically represented in bytes, connection speeds are typically advertised in bits. And hopefully my usage is explicit enough for you now.

[Wolfsun]

I stand corrected Snakub and you are correct - I had no idea that 10Gbs connections were available (I figured somewhere there'd be some monster speeds available but only to military, government and major corporations and not us plebes).

I live in a major city in the US and the best we can do is 1Gbs down and 35Mbs up ( there's just one ISP here that does up better than the 35 and its 400Mbs up and down - no 1Gbs from it).

Sometimes when I think we're gettin' short changed on the internet speeds we get here I think back to the old 300 baud phone modem days and how when we got 10Mbs how thrilled we were.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Wolfsun:

I stand corrected Snakub and you are correct - I had no idea that 10Gbs connections were available (I figured somewhere there'd be some monster speeds available but only to military, government and major corporations and not us plebes).

That used to be true but as tech improves... I mean the same was once true of 1Mbit connections when the best any of us could hope for was 28.8 Kbit

Originally posted by Wolfsun:

Sometimes when I think we're gettin' short changed on the internet speeds we get here I think back to the old 300 baud phone modem days and how when we got 10Mbs how thrilled we were.

Better than what I got but the ISP's here set their services up differently so there's no peak or offpeak. There's also no metering. Sure its not blazing buut the joke is its easy enough to just you know do something else while waiting for downloads.

[Siozen]

For two plus years, I've rarely gotten over 35 MB/s downloads from Steam via my 1Gig internet. GoG galaxy seems to top out at 45-50 MB/s, Origin/EA can hit up to 70-80, same with Ubisoft but both have had days where they refuse to go over 30. Epic maxes at 45-50 usually and Rockstar has hit 80-90 MB/s.

So for whatever reason Steam and my ISP don't work well together. Only upside is that this year so far Steam has had a few times reached 65-75 MB/s downloads for a minute or two. Never stable even on large games like Gears 5.

[LaZurdaDeOro]

sera??

[LaZurdaDeOro]

lo mismo amigooo

[Wolfsun]

To all those that say it is the ISP that is throttling STEAM I am now a believer.

I loaded up my VPN and connected to Denver. Loaded up STEAM and set the DL location to Denver and restarted STEAM. I then downloaded 6 games I have that were uninstalled. All 6 of the DL's acheived at least 350+ Mbs compared to my normal Mbs dl of max 180 Mbs (rare). Of the 6 DL's 2 achieved 500+ Mbs.

So to all of you who said my crummy dl speeds weren't STEAM but was my ISP doing the throttling - THANK YOU!

[BAD *Man]

Its really easy
the server need the capacity ... (popular games mostly dont have it )
the DNS resolver need to route the traffic (i use cloudfare)

etc... many stuff that can interfeer ... but even if you only get 200mb / s you complain on a high level :)