Slow downloads (this only happens to me on Steam)

[RaydenSpawn166]

I have a PC with the following:
GPU: Zotac Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super Twin Dual Edge Fan 12GB GDDR6X PCIE 4.0 Graphics Card,
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X Raphael AM5 4.5GHz 8-Core Boxed Processor - Heatsink Not Included,
CPU Cooler: DeepCool AK620 CPU Air Cooler,
RAM: G.Skill Flare X5 Series 32GB (2 x 16) DDR5-6000 PC5-48000 CL32 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F56000J3238F16GX2-FX5 - Black
Storage: WD Black SN770 2TB SSD 112L TLC NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 4.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive & TEAMGROUP QX 4TB 3D NAND QLC 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal Solid State SSD (Read/Write Speed up to 560/500 MB/s) 1000TBW Compatible with Laptop & PC Desktop T253X7004T0C101
MOBO: MSI PRO WIFI Motherboard AMD B650 AM5 PRO B650
OS: Windows 11
PSU: Corsair RM750e 750 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Fully Modular Power Supply - ATX 3.0 Compatible

I connect to the internet with an Ethernet cable and everything else downloads pretty quickly, but even after uninstalling and reinstalling, trying other regions, running as admin command prompt to do the following:
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew


I live with my parents who use Xfinity and they pay for 1.2gbps download speeds, https://imgur.com/a/QL3mtBZ for proof that I get nearly 1gbps download speeds on my own PC, and for some reason I only get on steam downloads 50-200 mbps no matter what download region I try. Anyone know what I can do that I haven't already tried to get faster speeds? I play games that require at least 10-30 gigabytes per update is why I'm kind of getting annoyed with how slow it is in comparison to what I should be getting.

[phosTR]

I was having problems with low download speeds till i decided to set a limit to the download speed in SETTINGS. I set to 60MB/s and now i do download at steady 60MB/s. When i had UNLIMITED it was all over the place and i had various moments where it stopped.
I have a 700megabit internet (technically i'm supposed to have a donwload speed of 87MB/s).
Also, try to clear the cache too.

[RaydenSpawn166]

phosTR původně napsal:

I was having problems with low download speeds till i decided to set a limit to the download speed in SETTINGS. I set to 60MB/s and now i do download at steady 60MB/s. When i had UNLIMITED it was all over the place and i had various moments where it stopped.
I have a 700megabit internet (technically i'm supposed to have a donwload speed of 87MB/s).
Also, try to clear the cache too.

I tried to set it to a download speed limit and it keeps setting itself to unlimited. I also did clear download cache and that seems to not help either.

[Elucidator]

PCs like these make me feel poor lol.
But anyway.

Disable bitlocker drive encryption. That should increase your SSD's speed by 60~ish percent, because I do not see a dedicated TPM 2.0 processor in your setup, so I am guessing you're using AMD's fTPM implementation.

That implementation has stutters by the way, so you may want to disable it altogether, although Windows 11 may go haywire about it when you do, and it will still not disable bitlocker encruption so-- it will continue to encrypt / decrypt your SSDs, and yes, bitlocker is doing this by default on Windows 11.

Tune Windows Defender to check less often, instead of every file change.
Turn off Sysmain
Turn of Indexing of files on your SSD
Make sure microsoft isn't limiting your speed: check your TCP settings and such, and also newer settings about this such as: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-data-limit-031dcc15-fa0f-ad39-8e60-634500585630
Disable NetworkThrottlingIndex
I guess some of these things are going to need a guide now that I think about it.

To disable NetworkThrottlingIndex, open up Regedit, and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
Here, create a new dword key called "NetworkThrottlingIndex" and set its value to ffffffff.
Make another dword key called "SystemResponsiveness" and set this to 00000000.
I recommend those at least, but here's some more tweaks you can do:
https://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

Next
In device manager, go to the properties page of your ethernet network adaptor. In the power management tab, disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
(skip if these options don't exist in your case)
In the advanced tab (same window), examine the setting for "Adaptive Inter Frame Spacing", set it to disabled.
set Enable PME to disabled.
set Energy Efficient Ethernet to Off
set Flow Control to disabled
set Gigabit Master Slave mode to Auto Detect
set interrupt moderation to disabled (will increase CPU load slightly, but like, your PC won't notice I think)
set Interrupt moderation rates to High
set IPv4 Checksum Offload to Off
set Jumbo Packet to disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) to Disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) to Disabled as well (yes, I am exaggerating this optimization attempt)
set Legacy Switch Compatibility Mode to disabled
set Link Speed Battery Saver to disabled
set Log Link State Event to disabled (if it isn't already)
set Maximum number of RSS queues to 8
set Packet Priority and VLAN to Packet Priority and VLAN disabled
set Protocol ARP offload to disabled
set Protocol NS offload to disabled. (a lot of these features are new stuff that wasn't even present on older network devices, but feel free to look up what these do.)
set PTP Hardware timestamp to disabled
set Receive Buffer to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set Receive Side Scaling to Enabled
set Reduce Speed on Power Down to disabled
set RSS load Balancing Profile to Closest Processor
set Software Timestamp to disabled
set Speed and Duplex to 1Gbps full Duplex (you have 1Gbps speed after all)
(feel free to set it to 1.2Gbps if possible)
set System Idle Power Saver to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Transmit Buffers to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Ultra Low Power mode to disabled
set Wait for Link to disabled

I'll give a quick explanation of what you just did:
PME stands for Power Management Event. (says enough) much like a lot of these, they're about power saving so lower performance.
Offload stuff .. basically hands processing tasks from the network chip to the CPU, so it lowers your CPU usage. It might not matter too much, but its still a bit excessive in the modern day and age.
Flow Control is an interesting one. TCP has a build in flow control, but the Flow Control setting tries to overwrite this, which can cause a slowdown.
The moderation options group packets together before sending them or processing them, which does slow stuff down. The rest should be self explanatory, if not, google the remains I guess.
Any buffer or discriptor option should be set to the highest possible. (which is likely 2048) for maximum efficiency. Offload options is just nonsense, just like power saving and green power settings. xd
RSS stands for Receive Side Scaling, it's a technique that enables the ability for multiple processors to process packets (instead of 1). So the RSS settings are based on your CPU count here with a preference of your main CPU.

Try a different DNS server (1.1.1.1 belongs to cloudflare, steam is also on cloudflare, it might speed up your downloads over steam)

[RaydenSpawn166]

Elucidator původně napsal:

PCs like these make me feel poor lol.
But anyway.

Disable bitlocker drive encryption. That should increase your SSD's speed by 60~ish percent, because I do not see a dedicated TPM 2.0 processor in your setup, so I am guessing you're using AMD's fTPM implementation.

That implementation has stutters by the way, so you may want to disable it altogether, although Windows 11 may go haywire about it when you do, and it will still not disable bitlocker encruption so-- it will continue to encrypt / decrypt your SSDs, and yes, bitlocker is doing this by default on Windows 11.

Tune Windows Defender to check less often, instead of every file change.
Turn off Sysmain
Turn of Indexing of files on your SSD
Make sure microsoft isn't limiting your speed: check your TCP settings and such, and also newer settings about this such as: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-data-limit-031dcc15-fa0f-ad39-8e60-634500585630
Disable NetworkThrottlingIndex
I guess some of these things are going to need a guide now that I think about it.

To disable NetworkThrottlingIndex, open up Regedit, and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
Here, create a new dword key called "NetworkThrottlingIndex" and set its value to ffffffff.
Make another dword key called "SystemResponsiveness" and set this to 00000000.
I recommend those at least, but here's some more tweaks you can do:
https://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

Next
In device manager, go to the properties page of your ethernet network adaptor. In the power management tab, disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
(skip if these options don't exist in your case)
In the advanced tab (same window), examine the setting for "Adaptive Inter Frame Spacing", set it to disabled.
set Enable PME to disabled.
set Energy Efficient Ethernet to Off
set Flow Control to disabled
set Gigabit Master Slave mode to Auto Detect
set interrupt moderation to disabled (will increase CPU load slightly, but like, your PC won't notice I think)
set Interrupt moderation rates to High
set IPv4 Checksum Offload to Off
set Jumbo Packet to disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) to Disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) to Disabled as well (yes, I am exaggerating this optimization attempt)
set Legacy Switch Compatibility Mode to disabled
set Link Speed Battery Saver to disabled
set Log Link State Event to disabled (if it isn't already)
set Maximum number of RSS queues to 8
set Packet Priority and VLAN to Packet Priority and VLAN disabled
set Protocol ARP offload to disabled
set Protocol NS offload to disabled. (a lot of these features are new stuff that wasn't even present on older network devices, but feel free to look up what these do.)
set PTP Hardware timestamp to disabled
set Receive Buffer to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set Receive Side Scaling to Enabled
set Reduce Speed on Power Down to disabled
set RSS load Balancing Profile to Closest Processor
set Software Timestamp to disabled
set Speed and Duplex to 1Gbps full Duplex (you have 1Gbps speed after all)
(feel free to set it to 1.2Gbps if possible)
set System Idle Power Saver to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Transmit Buffers to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Ultra Low Power mode to disabled
set Wait for Link to disabled

I'll give a quick explanation of what you just did:
PME stands for Power Management Event. (says enough) much like a lot of these, they're about power saving so lower performance.
Offload stuff .. basically hands processing tasks from the network chip to the CPU, so it lowers your CPU usage. It might not matter too much, but its still a bit excessive in the modern day and age.
Flow Control is an interesting one. TCP has a build in flow control, but the Flow Control setting tries to overwrite this, which can cause a slowdown.
The moderation options group packets together before sending them or processing them, which does slow stuff down. The rest should be self explanatory, if not, google the remains I guess.
Any buffer or discriptor option should be set to the highest possible. (which is likely 2048) for maximum efficiency. Offload options is just nonsense, just like power saving and green power settings. xd
RSS stands for Receive Side Scaling, it's a technique that enables the ability for multiple processors to process packets (instead of 1). So the RSS settings are based on your CPU count here with a preference of your main CPU.

Try a different DNS server (1.1.1.1 belongs to cloudflare, steam is also on cloudflare, it might speed up your downloads over steam)

I'm trying to find the page with my Ethernet network adaptor, but cannot seem to find it, do you know what it should be named? Also, where do I find the ability to turn off indexing for my SSDs?

[Elucidator]

RaydenSpawn166 původně napsal:

I'm trying to find the page with my Ethernet network adaptor, but cannot seem to find it, do you know what it should be named? Also, where do I find the ability to turn off indexing for my SSDs?

According to the information I found about your Motherboard
(here: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B650-P-WIFI/Specification )
its a "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN"

So, under Device Manager:
(here's a guide)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-device-manager-a7f2db46-faaf-24f0-8b7b-9e4a6032fc8c
There should be a section (+) with your Network Adapters listed.
and below this you can find the hardware device.

[RaydenSpawn166]

Elucidator původně napsal:

RaydenSpawn166 původně napsal:

I'm trying to find the page with my Ethernet network adaptor, but cannot seem to find it, do you know what it should be named? Also, where do I find the ability to turn off indexing for my SSDs?

According to the information I found about your Motherboard
(here: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/PRO-B650-P-WIFI/Specification )
its a "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN"

So, under Device Manager:
(here's a guide)
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-device-manager-a7f2db46-faaf-24f0-8b7b-9e4a6032fc8c
There should be a section (+) with your Network Adapters listed.
and below this you can find the hardware device.

I don't see "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN" I see "Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller" but that's the closest thing to "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN" under "Network adapters" I see.

Also, like I asked in my previous message, where do I find the ability to turn off indexing for my SSDs?

[N3tRunn3r]

Steam
Settings
In Game
"Delete Web Browser Data"


Steam
Settings
Downloads
"Clear Cache"


Steam
Settings
Downloads
change "Download Region" -> Nearest reliable Server/Region


Shutdown Router
Bring it back online after 2 minutes of waiting . . .

[Yujah]

I believe you with your HW are one that needs to try what happens when you disable Windows' write caching on your (library-, at least) drive.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/enable-disable-disk-write-caching-windows-7-8

[Elucidator]

RaydenSpawn166 původně napsal:

I don't see "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN" I see "Realtek Gaming 2.5GbE Family Controller" but that's the closest thing to "Realtek® 8125BG 2.5G LAN" under "Network adapters" I see.

That should be it.
If you want the full name of the NIC, it's:

Realtek's New Generation Gaming Network Total Solution 2.5GbE Gaming NIC with ‘Dragon Feature’ + Wi-Fi 6 & Intelligent Switch (RTL8125BG)

So 8125B Gaming is its version number. 2,5Gigabit Ethernet is its speed.
(It is the same device basically. MSI just named it differently on their website.)
You can check the version number in the driver's properties somewhere if you want to be sure, but it looks like the right one.

Also that "Dragon Feature" attempts to see what happens on the network and then prioritize packets that look like they're related to gaming. This feature could slow down internet download speed so... you may want to turn this off depending on things.

You can also set a lot of options using RealTek's software; you should be able to download this from MSI's homepage.

RaydenSpawn166 původně napsal:

Also, like I asked in my previous message, where do I find the ability to turn off indexing for my SSDs?

My Computer
Right Click the C: drive
Properties
There should be a box with a checkmark on the first page. I bet you know what to do.


In case you wonder, Sysmain is a "service" (a background task). You can see it running with task manager, but you can regulate and turn it off in "services.msc"

Making sure the TCP settings are not setup in a way that limits your speed is a bit too difficult to explain. I don't expect any 'limits' to be set by anything, but it is possible. Steam for example has its own download speed limit option. Yeah--

Also to set a custom DNS, you need to go through this:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-tcp-ip-settings-bd0a07af-15f5-cd6a-363f-ca2b6f391ace


Edit:
Also:
https://www.elevenforum.com/t/check-bitlocker-drive-encryption-status-of-drive-in-windows-11.7057/

https://www.elevenforum.com/t/turn-on-or-off-device-encryption-in-windows-11.1424/#Two

[RaydenSpawn166]

Elucidator původně napsal:

PCs like these make me feel poor lol.
But anyway.

Disable bitlocker drive encryption. That should increase your SSD's speed by 60~ish percent, because I do not see a dedicated TPM 2.0 processor in your setup, so I am guessing you're using AMD's fTPM implementation.

That implementation has stutters by the way, so you may want to disable it altogether, although Windows 11 may go haywire about it when you do, and it will still not disable bitlocker encruption so-- it will continue to encrypt / decrypt your SSDs, and yes, bitlocker is doing this by default on Windows 11.

Tune Windows Defender to check less often, instead of every file change.
Turn off Sysmain
Turn of Indexing of files on your SSD
Make sure microsoft isn't limiting your speed: check your TCP settings and such, and also newer settings about this such as: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/set-your-data-limit-031dcc15-fa0f-ad39-8e60-634500585630
Disable NetworkThrottlingIndex
I guess some of these things are going to need a guide now that I think about it.

To disable NetworkThrottlingIndex, open up Regedit, and go to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile
Here, create a new dword key called "NetworkThrottlingIndex" and set its value to ffffffff.
Make another dword key called "SystemResponsiveness" and set this to 00000000.
I recommend those at least, but here's some more tweaks you can do:
https://www.speedguide.net/articles/gaming-tweaks-5812

Next
In device manager, go to the properties page of your ethernet network adaptor. In the power management tab, disable "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"
(skip if these options don't exist in your case)
In the advanced tab (same window), examine the setting for "Adaptive Inter Frame Spacing", set it to disabled.
set Enable PME to disabled.
set Energy Efficient Ethernet to Off
set Flow Control to disabled
set Gigabit Master Slave mode to Auto Detect
set interrupt moderation to disabled (will increase CPU load slightly, but like, your PC won't notice I think)
set Interrupt moderation rates to High
set IPv4 Checksum Offload to Off
set Jumbo Packet to disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv4) to Disabled
set Large Send Offload v2 (IPv6) to Disabled as well (yes, I am exaggerating this optimization attempt)
set Legacy Switch Compatibility Mode to disabled
set Link Speed Battery Saver to disabled
set Log Link State Event to disabled (if it isn't already)
set Maximum number of RSS queues to 8
set Packet Priority and VLAN to Packet Priority and VLAN disabled
set Protocol ARP offload to disabled
set Protocol NS offload to disabled. (a lot of these features are new stuff that wasn't even present on older network devices, but feel free to look up what these do.)
set PTP Hardware timestamp to disabled
set Receive Buffer to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set Receive Side Scaling to Enabled
set Reduce Speed on Power Down to disabled
set RSS load Balancing Profile to Closest Processor
set Software Timestamp to disabled
set Speed and Duplex to 1Gbps full Duplex (you have 1Gbps speed after all)
(feel free to set it to 1.2Gbps if possible)
set System Idle Power Saver to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set TCP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Transmit Buffers to 2048 (Set it to the highest if possible, otherwise 2048)
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv4) to disabled
set UDP Checksum Offload (IPv6) to disabled
set Ultra Low Power mode to disabled
set Wait for Link to disabled

I'll give a quick explanation of what you just did:
PME stands for Power Management Event. (says enough) much like a lot of these, they're about power saving so lower performance.
Offload stuff .. basically hands processing tasks from the network chip to the CPU, so it lowers your CPU usage. It might not matter too much, but its still a bit excessive in the modern day and age.
Flow Control is an interesting one. TCP has a build in flow control, but the Flow Control setting tries to overwrite this, which can cause a slowdown.
The moderation options group packets together before sending them or processing them, which does slow stuff down. The rest should be self explanatory, if not, google the remains I guess.
Any buffer or discriptor option should be set to the highest possible. (which is likely 2048) for maximum efficiency. Offload options is just nonsense, just like power saving and green power settings. xd
RSS stands for Receive Side Scaling, it's a technique that enables the ability for multiple processors to process packets (instead of 1). So the RSS settings are based on your CPU count here with a preference of your main CPU.

Try a different DNS server (1.1.1.1 belongs to cloudflare, steam is also on cloudflare, it might speed up your downloads over steam)

I was able to set most of the things in power management to the value you said to but some of them were either too low for the max or straight up don't show up. So far I seem to have gone from 30-50 mbps average to now 60-90 mbps average speeds. I'm still trying other steps anyone can suggest because I'm able to get up to 500 megabytes per second and more on so many other things, but for some reason, steam is hardstuck less than 100 megabytes per second.

[Yujah]

Dont miss that write cache reply; it's a known issue.

[RaydenSpawn166]

Yujah původně napsal:

Dont miss that write cache reply; it's a known issue.

I already disabled it do I need to do the same for my D drive? My D drive that's the 4 terabytes is the main thing I'm trying to get to be closer to what my parents pay for as that drive as games that typically get 30-60 gigabyte updates like Call of Duty games.

[Yujah]

Yes, if your D: is your (main) Steam library drive, then yes. There seems to be some odd interaction between Windows write caching and Steam behaviour.

[RaydenSpawn166]

Yujah původně napsal:

Yes, if your D: is your (main) Steam library drive, then yes. There seems to be some odd interaction between Windows write caching and Steam behaviour.

Ok, my D drive isn't my main for steam library, but I do use it for a lot of games I play same for my C drive but my C drive is for older games that are less than 50gb in size due to my C drive being my 2 terabyte and my D drive being my 4 terabyte.

[Elucidator]

RaydenSpawn166 původně napsal:

I already disabled it do I need to do the same for my D drive? My D drive that's the 4 terabytes is the main thing I'm trying to get to be closer to what my parents pay for as that drive as games that typically get 30-60 gigabyte updates like Call of Duty games.

Is Steam installed on the D:\ drive?
If it is installed on the C:\ drive, it is possible it is downloading to both C:\ and D:\ causing a slowdown. Just saying.

Also apparently my advise for you doubled your download speed. What the heck do they do to modern systems, I wonder...

Try downloading a normal file from a website and see if that reaches 1Gb download speed. Because, what I saw from the speedtest is that even a test doesn't reach the max download speed, so I wonder about a normal download. If a normal download reaches near max speed, then we have fixed more than you're realizing.

If it doesn't reach max download speed, it could be an issue with the router.

Here: a couple of test files. https://ash-speed.hetzner.com/

Keep in mind that MB is 1/8 of mbit
There are 8 megabits in 1 MegaByte, so... 1Gbit/s = 125MB/s


Edit:
Uhm... just saying, Call of Duty will slowdown the download speed.
You pay for 1.2Gbit per second, is what you stated, but the speedtest shows 900mbit/s, so you're short 300mbit/s
that is already 'odd'.
Steam's download speed increased from 50 to 90, so it nearly doubled. Perhaps that last bit of your real speed is therefore now fixed.

There is more you can try. There exists a tool called TCP Optimizer. You can let it autoconfigure your TCP settings based on ...100mbit/s or higher.
Its a bit exaggerated to use this tool, but perhaps it makes a difference.


Anyway I am not going to write textwalls with this stuff anymore for a while. So, go use search, find this post set or something. It might be helpful for some other people.
Anyway uh...

I am not expecting anymore significant speed increases if you did all that, which means, there is something going on I am not familiar of.
Something in the cables? Is your neighbor stealing your Wi-Fi and using up bandwidth or something? Check everything.

If your neighbor is stealing wifi, and they are gaming, the router may ... cause other types. specifically unfamiliar connections to slow down if it has that technology basically. It maybe because of this an encrypted download (steam connection) may be pushed back over a normal user initiated download.
Some priority settings could be causing steam downloads to slow down basically.
If it has some kind of priority features, look up how they work, because they can indeed simply cause a Speed Limit in order to ensure the other connection is OK even if it doesn't use much.

Perhaps its the TV of your mother/father watching netflix or something. Again, its important to check the router.