Throttled downloads.

[tewcher]

Since I have been using steam (around a year now) my downloading speeds are ALWAYS throttled. What's happening is, I'll start updating a game for example, the speed will ramp up to around 30-40mb and immediately go down to 0. It'll stay at 0 for a minute or two before it starts to ramp up again and enter an endless loop.

I have ethernet connection with 1gb/s internet, I am downloading at 90-120mb on other platforms such as Epic game launcher, EA launcher, Xbox launcher, the browser, everything works except Steam.

I have obviously googled this issue to no avail, hence why I'm here. I changed the download region, restarted/reinstalled steam, I reset my modem, so on..

Is there anything that can be causing this?

[Nx Machina]

And when it goes to 0 what is happening with disk activity?

[Supafly]

Open task manager and see what your CPU and Drives usage % is.

Steam downloads in compressed chunks and starts uncompressing, unpacking and installing a chunk once it's down. If you CPU or drive is at 100% or near 100% while that gets done they have no ability to continue downloading until after it's completed

[tewcher]

cheers! I understand its installing the game while downloading, and while that's a cool feature, is there any way to switch to a more traditional way of downloading first and then installing it? It's causing the overall waiting time to at least double.

[MancSoulja]

Originally posted by tewcher:

cheers! I understand its installing the game while downloading, and while that's a cool feature, is there any way to switch to a more traditional way of downloading first and then installing it? It's causing the overall waiting time to at least double.

Steam’s downloads are compressed, downloading the “traditional” way would mean you’d have to wait while the game downloaded, then wait while Steam unpacked the entire download, then wait while Steam installed the game. You’d also need close to 3x the install size free to install every game you download

[Supafly]

Originally posted by tewcher:

cheers! I understand its installing the game while downloading, and while that's a cool feature, is there any way to switch to a more traditional way of downloading first and then installing it? It's causing the overall waiting time to at least double.

If it's the drive causing it to slow as it's hitting 100% usage try defragging it. I'm assuming it is a HDD as an SSD really shouldn't be having an issue.

[Satoru]

Steam Download Issues and How To Fix Them 

A Guide for Steam

By: Bodomi

This unofficial guide will go over different troubleshooting steps to fix download and connection issues with Steam. 简体中文 (translated by Vixinity) | 日本語 (translated by maruhoi1) You can also view this guide via Google...

Your downloads are primarily limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk IO
3) your antivirus killing disk IO

Steam can obliterate gig connections. Your issue is local

[tewcher]

Thanks for all the replies.

I was thinking it might be my HDD, when I download on steam it writes at around 10-30mb/s
.. which in itself is weird because, if I use a different launcher, like Epic, it writes at 300mb/s and its not working at 100% either, it sits comfortably at around 40-60%. Neither is my CPU (Ryzen 5 3600)

Is this just how steam is?

[tewcher]

Solved: I downloaded a game onto my SSD. Not one throttle, I know what I need to do now. Thank guys for all the help!

[Satoru]

Originally posted by tewcher:

Solved: I downloaded a game onto my SSD. Not one throttle, I know what I need to do now. Thank guys for all the help!

I'd wager your anti-virus is killing the performance on the HDD too

[tewcher]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Originally posted by tewcher:

Solved: I downloaded a game onto my SSD. Not one throttle, I know what I need to do now. Thank guys for all the help!

I'd wager your anti-virus is killing the performance on the HDD too

I do not actually have an anti virus. The HDD in question is a 2tb Seagate version, I'll try defragging it and see if that helps, mess around with firewall too.