Downloads stoppng and starting.

[Introverted Kitty]

Hey everyone.

My game downloads keep stopping and starting, going from 50mb speed to 0mb and back up etc. It's doing it so often that what should be a 20 minutes download is taking 2 hours.

It has only started recently and I don't have the issues when downloading stuff on or other apps or PS5 etc.

I have tried deleting the cache but no joy.

Any tips? Weird thing is, I think it is only happening on my regular hard drive and not my ssd. But other apps are downloading to it fine.

Any tips would be massively appreciated.

EDIT: It also seems to take ages installing the data after the download has finished.

[crunchyfrog]

Steam works very differently to other services even on PC and a lot of people wrongly make the assumption that if it's fine on PS it should be fine here.

It doesn't work like that. Steam downloads games both encrypted AND compressed.Now, all games are different in how they handle downloads, but generally speaking this is why they stop and start. Payday 2 and Ark are notorious examples for this.

How it works is simple - Steam downloads a chunk, it then has to decrypt and uncompress this, meaning it gets sorted and then written to it';s final destination on disck before starting in the next chunk. If you check your downloads screen and look at the graph you should ssee that disk activity and CPU activity are still going at it. THat is normal.

However, you can get problems if you also fall for another fallacy. As Steam games are encrypted and compressed, Steam requires you to have your install dfrive no fuller than 90% used. On top of this, any games you donwload, you should always allow up to THREE times the total download space for all that sorting and stuff to carry on.

So, if you have a 1TB drive, and you've used 850GB that's 85% used and you're fine, you have 50GB to play with. But, if you are wanting to download another 50GB game, you won't have enough space because you'd need to allow up to 150GB. You see?

When you start getting overfull on your drive(s) you will see Steam stopping downloads, or try to download on other drives and other weirdness.

[Iceira]

OP provide info on laptop or deskto and total disk size and whats free.

because CF sort off already point it out, but some games goes past 50gb dl ( fallout 4 with dlc is 93gb alone and that still with no mods added. so free space simple dont cover it in %
anythng lesser then 250gb free with a 50gb dl can actual be a issue + try to have free space so disk performance dont get hurt.

and how do we expaln DL that goes way past 100gb then store page forgot to mention DLC or calc them in as game requirement.

[Introverted Kitty]

Origineel geplaatst door crunchyfrog:

Steam works very differently to other services even on PC and a lot of people wrongly make the assumption that if it's fine on PS it should be fine here.

It doesn't work like that. Steam downloads games both encrypted AND compressed.Now, all games are different in how they handle downloads, but generally speaking this is why they stop and start. Payday 2 and Ark are notorious examples for this.

How it works is simple - Steam downloads a chunk, it then has to decrypt and uncompress this, meaning it gets sorted and then written to it';s final destination on disck before starting in the next chunk. If you check your downloads screen and look at the graph you should ssee that disk activity and CPU activity are still going at it. THat is normal.

However, you can get problems if you also fall for another fallacy. As Steam games are encrypted and compressed, Steam requires you to have your install dfrive no fuller than 90% used. On top of this, any games you donwload, you should always allow up to THREE times the total download space for all that sorting and stuff to carry on.

So, if you have a 1TB drive, and you've used 850GB that's 85% used and you're fine, you have 50GB to play with. But, if you are wanting to download another 50GB game, you won't have enough space because you'd need to allow up to 150GB. You see?

When you start getting overfull on your drive(s) you will see Steam stopping downloads, or try to download on other drives and other weirdness.

Thank you guys - I have a 2TB hard drive with 618GB free. It never really gets below that because I uninstall games as soon as I stop playing them.

Not sure what other specs would be helpful, but i have desktop with 2080 super, 16gb ram, i7.

My internet download speed is 500mb so I tend to get around 50-60 dl speed on steam. Just let me know other specs you need and I can post them.

I got new internet a month or 2 ago, what I found odd is that I downloaded Cyberpunk at the time to test the speed and it downloaded in 20 minutes with no stopping, now it stops constantly and nothing has really changed - if anything I probably had less hard drive space then because I recently had a clear out.

Also other games I uninstalled and re installed take longer than usual. Maybe a mute point, but my friend has a similar speed and we were getting the same download speeds and one point, now his are still fast while I have this issue - although I know understand what you say about different hard drive space etc.

[Mad Scientist]

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

Thank you guys - I have a 1.25TB hard drive with 577GB free. It never really gets below that because I uninstall games as soon as I stop playing them.

If you care about sustained speeds, get an SSD - your only limitation then is download speed and CPU.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

but i have desktop with 2080 super, 16gb ram, i7.

GPU has nothing to do with it, ram is normal, "i7" is vague at best.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

My internet download speed is 500mb so I tend to get around 50-60 dl speed on steam. Just let me know other specs you need and I can post them.

Speed tests = Mbps. MegaBIT per second.
Steam default = MB/s. MegaBYTE per second

~60-62 MB/s on Steam, which aligns with your "50-60 dl on Steam" perfectly.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

Maybe a mute point, but my friend has a similar speed

speed tests show a capability. Hardware is what makes every single bit of difference. Service speed does NOT guarantee reaching the speed, or sustaining the speed. Your slowest involved part is always the bottleneck. So if your CPU is hitting 100%; the download/dcrypting/decompressing/installing speeds will often suffer. Your friend is also likely not using the same exact build, and even then - there can be a variance in identical builds. If they're using any faster part, they could potentially download etc faster than you. We don't even know your CPU, or their CPU - so it's not worth bringing up, focus on your system only.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

My game downloads keep stopping and starting, going from 50mb speed to 0mb and back up etc. It's doing it so often that what should be a 20 minutes download is taking 2 hours.

Entirely normal when using HDDs instead of SSD/NVMEs. Likely CPU limitation, drive limitation etc.

[Introverted Kitty]

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

Thank you guys - I have a 1.25TB hard drive with 577GB free. It never really gets below that because I uninstall games as soon as I stop playing them.

If you care about sustained speeds, get an SSD - your only limitation then is download speed and CPU.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

but i have desktop with 2080 super, 16gb ram, i7.

GPU has nothing to do with it, ram is normal, "i7" is vague at best.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

My internet download speed is 500mb so I tend to get around 50-60 dl speed on steam. Just let me know other specs you need and I can post them.

Speed tests = Mbps. MegaBIT per second.
Steam default = MB/s. MegaBYTE per second

~60-62 MB/s on Steam, which aligns with your "50-60 dl on Steam" perfectly.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

Maybe a mute point, but my friend has a similar speed

speed tests show a capability. Hardware is what makes every single bit of difference. Service speed does NOT guarantee reaching the speed, or sustaining the speed. Your slowest involved part is always the bottleneck. So if your CPU is hitting 100%; the download/dcrypting/decompressing/installing speeds will often suffer. Your friend is also likely not using the same exact build, and even then - there can be a variance in identical builds. If they're using any faster part, they could potentially download etc faster than you. We don't even know your CPU, or their CPU - so it's not worth bringing up, focus on your system only.

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

My game downloads keep stopping and starting, going from 50mb speed to 0mb and back up etc. It's doing it so often that what should be a 20 minutes download is taking 2 hours.

Entirely normal when using HDDs instead of SSD/NVMEs. Likely CPU limitation, drive limitation etc.

i have an SSD too - just not very big, so I know the benefits.

I know my service isn't the issue as my other apps/tech work fine.

I get everything you said - but I am downloading the same games on the same hard drive (with very similar hard drive space) I was 2-3 weeks ago and getting a vastly different download experience.

[crunchyfrog]

Origineel geplaatst door Introverted Kitty:

Origineel geplaatst door Mr. Gentlebot:

If you care about sustained speeds, get an SSD - your only limitation then is download speed and CPU.


GPU has nothing to do with it, ram is normal, "i7" is vague at best.


Speed tests = Mbps. MegaBIT per second.
Steam default = MB/s. MegaBYTE per second

~60-62 MB/s on Steam, which aligns with your "50-60 dl on Steam" perfectly.


speed tests show a capability. Hardware is what makes every single bit of difference. Service speed does NOT guarantee reaching the speed, or sustaining the speed. Your slowest involved part is always the bottleneck. So if your CPU is hitting 100%; the download/dcrypting/decompressing/installing speeds will often suffer. Your friend is also likely not using the same exact build, and even then - there can be a variance in identical builds. If they're using any faster part, they could potentially download etc faster than you. We don't even know your CPU, or their CPU - so it's not worth bringing up, focus on your system only.


Entirely normal when using HDDs instead of SSD/NVMEs. Likely CPU limitation, drive limitation etc.

i have an SSD too - just not very big, so I know the benefits.

I know my service isn't the issue as my other apps/tech work fine.

I get everything you said - but I am downloading the same games on the same hard drive (with very similar hard drive space) I was 2-3 weeks ago and getting a vastly different download experience.

Well, as Mr Gentlebot rightly points out, when you convert the Steam reported speed to megabits per second, it DOES indeed tally up with the speed you should be getting. If you had more than this that first time, then it's probably some hiccup on your ISPs end or something (or you were mistaken somehow).

Mind you, it can also depend on your ISP too. It's not unknown (especially in the US_ for some ISPs to throttle Steam or Netflix as they're resource hungry popular services. They will even lie about it if you ask them too.

SO don't count that out either.

[Iceira]

How to switch Steam's download information from bytes to bits
Go to Steam > Settings > Downloads tab
On the Downloads tab check the Display download rates in bits per second box

from stesm guide. ( maybe this what user should do so show in right way or recalc value )

[sfmonkey89]

I found a solution thanks to this 11 y/o reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/24tk4k/steam_download_starting_and_stopping/

Try changing your download region. I changed mine to another US location and it's downloading at a nice consistent rate now.

[TribalSage]

Origineel geplaatst door sfmonkey89:

I found a solution thanks to this 11 y/o reddit thread. https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/24tk4k/steam_download_starting_and_stopping/

Try changing your download region. I changed mine to another US location and it's downloading at a nice consistent rate now.

You bumped a thread from 2021.

[76561199518540882]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.