why does steam download speed not match my actual tested download speed?

[tyler4897]

i'm in the Seattle area, and just downloaded an ark update. It was 6.6 GB and took roughly 20 minutes. My tested download speed is 250 megabits per second. 6.6 GB divided by 250 megabits would be 52,000 megabits. Divided by 250 megabits per second would be 211.2 seconds. Why did steam take 20 minutes when it should have taken almost 4 minutes... I am hooked up to an ethernet on the best region for me.

[Satoru]

steam can obliterate your connection

But yoru download speed is more limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk speed

[Teksura]

Your personal ISP cap on download speed is not necessarily the actual speed you get when downloading from anywhere. When you test that speed using tools provided, it isn't going to include the speed of everything else along the path from you to what you're hoping to access.


Furthermore, those tests will not care about saving large amounts of data. Your hardware can potentially limit this as well by way of it only being able to process the data and write it so fast.

[Supafly]

Try different download regions

Steam downloads compressed files and unpack and installs them as each chunk is down. Depending on your Drive it could struggle to write the download while it's unpacking and installing parts. If that is the case the download will be slowed until the unpack and install is completed then it'll start downloading faster.

[daidaidai]

yes

[ElvisDeadly]

Originally posted by Satoru:

steam can obliterate your connection

But yoru download speed is more limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk speed

^ this

It isn't just downloading
It is installing the game
That is affected by more things than just download speed alone

[Banda]

Originally posted by tyler4897:

i'm in the Seattle area, and just downloaded an ark update. It was 6.6 GB and took roughly 20 minutes. My tested download speed is 250 megabits per second. 6.6 GB divided by 250 megabits would be 52,000 megabits. Divided by 250 megabits per second would be 211.2 seconds. Why did steam take 20 minutes when it should have taken almost 4 minutes... I am hooked up to an ethernet on the best region for me.

Steam downloads are VERY inconsistent atm
I get rarely more then 20 - 50% from my download speed what all in all more of a inconvenience is then a problem it sucks but what can you do.

The biggest problem that steam has is the update routine some games like ark and poe and more suffer from it greatly i did read a steam mod post once where they explained how the update works

1. it downloads and stores the update

2. the files that have to be updated get duplicated

3. The duplicated files get patched (the reason was so that the main files dont corrupt bcs of power outages, bluescreens etc and or other things that can happen to a pc with a update in progress)

4. The new patched files then get pushed back into the game folder (and probably checked if they are correct)

So you see that the download can be finished in like 5 Minutes but the moving of files overriting and moving back takes a lot more time in most games up to 5x the download time.

I realy want a button to just patch games without secure patching because the patching takes more time then to downloaden some games whole again.

[RHYNI]

gagaga