~260Mbps download on Speedtest, Slow Steam downloads

[TheAngryCowz]

I have tested my internet connection on multiple different sites (ookla, direct link, handful of top google searches) and I am consistently getting around 260Mbps(megabit). A few months ago, I was getting approximately 32MB(megabyte) which makes sense, and was actually pretty darn good. I would get consistent download speeds across multiple platforms (*Steam, Epic, Origin, Battlenet, Wargaming) for the entire duration of the download.

Lately, my speed has been dropping. First to 27MB-ish, and now I am stuttering in between 0, ~500Kbs, 2-6MB, and every once in while I'll spike back up to the old 27MB-32MB range for a few seconds.

A few months ago, I downloaded around 24GB in around 5 minutes.
Now, I have downloaded 50GB in about 4 hours, or 25GB in 2 hours, a significant increase.
This is with a hard connection, Ethernet cable from my modem to my PC, and WiFi turned off.
Steam is the only program running, and I am the only PC using the internet at this time. A desktop is turned on, not running anything, and same with one laptop, on but not running anything.

My ISP says that it is not them, that I am having server issues. I find that odd, considering I am having the same issue on multiple platforms(see * above) over the same period of time.
Could this be a hardware issue?
Could this be an ISP issue?
Or am I a moron and the servers are actually my problem?

Please help,

The Resident Caveman

[SysmiX]

There is a bug in the current steam patch system that causes extremely slow game updates. There are many forum threads about this but no official response or solution. The data writing is very unoptimized right now for game patches. I guess steam uses a very simple disk access strategy that does not take into account the hard drive or SSD characteristics. The result is that we loose many free hours intended for playing, just waiting for game patches.

The only work around I have found so far is to reinstall the game, rather than letting the very slow patch to apply. I believe steam is using this bugged patch system to reduce the download size for their servers, at the expense of more disk usage on our computers. So reinstalling the game, instead of waiting for the slow patch is a good way to force them to fix this issue by putting more demand on their servers. This issue is already being reported by users for many years, so maybe even this won't be enough...

[TheAngryCowz]

How long has this bug been affecting download? And is it only patches?

The reason I ask about the time frame is that it has been a gradual reduction in download speed over several months.

I run into the reduced download on all platforms listed, Steam, Epic, Origin, Battlenet, and Wargaming (Wargaming has always been a bit of a potato, but I have still noticed reduced performance) and the issue I am running into today is actually a fresh install of 3 games, Shadow of War, CoD Black Ops, and the Spyro Trilogy.

And in reference to the disk usage, my download and disk operation match on the Steam graph on the download screen.
A reduction in download speed is reflected by a reduction in disk activity. An increase in download speed, an increase in disk activity.

If it was putting more strain on my PC, and less on the server, wouldn't I see a drop in the download rate and either a spike or holding steady on the disk activity?

The graph I am referencing is on the Download window of Steam. It uses blue bars to show download speed and time, and a green line to track disk usage and time.
With some minor discrepancies, both sets of data match.
If this is true, wouldn't my PC be writing it to the disk at about the same speed I am downloading?

[SysmiX]

Your are right. This issue should not affect fresh installs much... Maybe you can try changing the "Download Region" in Settings->Downloads screen. But if it is affecting other platforms, it looks like an ISP issue.

[Mad Scientist]

Speed Tests do not equate to real world loads

Speed tests are entirely synthetic meant to see the speed of the network.

Steam dowoads are compressed/encrypted, which act entirely different from those other platforms. It utilizes disk and cpu, not just internet speed. Your current server you're downloading from, any service in between that could throttle steam downloads, your drive speed, or cpu can increase download time to complete.

Then patching does small, downloads but updates across existing files which again uses disk speed.

Where you download from doesn't matter, how fast you download from it does.

Patching is extremely quick for me even on 10-25gbs of game files, so the issue is not at all steam nor some "bug in patching", though only a very small handful like ARK generally have issues with downloads and patching, which is not steams fault.

[Satoru]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1082209554

There is no 'bug' in the steam installer or patching mechanism

You are simply disk IO or cpu limited

steam can saturate gig connections

Your local hardware being unable to keep up with the process is the problem

[SysmiX]

There are lots of reports of this issue online. Maybe it is a bug in the game itself, not in steam (Not sure who handle game patches, but I think it is steam). There are reports like this for many other games though. You can argue it's not a bug, since if you wait for the patch to apply, it works. But at very least it is very poorly written software.
I have a I5 10400 and a NVMe SSD tested to 1400 MB/s. My connection is 600Mbit/s and I got around 640Mbit/s on speed tests at the moment I was updating the game. The download is normally very fast, then it stops and steam keeps writing data to the NVMe SSD at less than 5 MB/s. The game I was updating is SCUM. All SCUM patches present this same behavior. My friend has a very similar hardware and does not have the issue. There is no compression, encryption that justifies this wild speed variation on similar hardware. If it was the case, reinstalling the game instead of patching would not be much faster as it actually is.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por SysmiX:

There are lots of reports of this issue online. Maybe it is a bug in the game itself, not in steam (Not sure who handle game patches, but I think it is steam). There are reports like this for many other games though. You can argue it's not a bug, since if you wait for the patch to apply, it works. But at very least it is very poorly written software.
I have a I5 10400 and a NVMe SSD tested to 1400 MB/s. My connection is 600Mbit/s and I got around 640Mbit/s on speed tests at the moment I was updating the game. The download is normally very fast, then it stops and steam keeps writing data to the NVMe SSD at less than 5 MB/s. The game I was updating is SCUM. All SCUM patches present this same behavior. My friend has a very similar hardware and does not have the issue. There is no compression, encryption that justifies this wild speed variation on similar hardware. If it was the case, reinstalling the game instead of patching would not be much faster as it actually is.

No, loads of reports does not mean anything other than lots of people are having the issue. It says NOTHING about the validity.

The fact is that we have concrete evidence on these forums of how it works, and those that frequently report these issues either are misunderstanding how their RAM, CPU, I/O etc are just as important as their net connection, or don't understnad another aspect.

[Satoru]

Again there is no “bug” patches are deployed and installed as intended. Again you are disk IO and CPU limited. Steam can obliterate gig connections

[TheAngryCowz]

Publicado originalmente por Satoru:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1082209554

There is no 'bug' in the steam installer or patching mechanism

You are simply disk IO or cpu limited

steam can saturate gig connections

Your local hardware being unable to keep up with the process is the problem

If it was my CPU limiting the download, would that explain the gradual reduction in speed? 3 months ago I had a consistent download rate on all services of just over 34MB, and am now reduced to an inconsitent 2-10MB (Will bounce around, 0MB, ~500kb, 2-10MB, spikes up to 30 for less than a second)
I am running an i7-4770

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por TheAngryCowz:

Publicado originalmente por Satoru:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1082209554

There is no 'bug' in the steam installer or patching mechanism

You are simply disk IO or cpu limited

steam can saturate gig connections

Your local hardware being unable to keep up with the process is the problem

If it was my CPU limiting the download, would that explain the gradual reduction in speed? 3 months ago I had a consistent download rate on all services of just over 34MB, and am now reduced to an inconsitent 2-10MB (Will bounce around, 0MB, ~500kb, 2-10MB, spikes up to 30 for less than a second)
I am running an i7-4770

Yup, as we've explained. It can be ANY of those things we listed.

Which is why you check yiour Task Manager to see which it is.

[SysmiX]

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

No, loads of reports does not mean anything other than lots of people are having the issue. It says NOTHING about the validity.

The fact is that we have concrete evidence on these forums of how it works, and those that frequently report these issues either are misunderstanding how their RAM, CPU, I/O etc are just as important as their net connection, or don't understnad another aspect.

I`m a software developer, I can assure you it's not me who cannot understand the limitation at play here. There is no hardware component, or connection issue, that would explain the patch behavior. Less than 10MB/s on this machine is pretty clearly a software issue. Again, there are a lot of reports of slow steam patches around, just as a lot of "it works for me" replies. This is a clear sign of bad written software. I can actually run defrag on my backup HDD faster than Steam installs a patch on a very fast PCIe SSD. Since other people can install the patches normally on similar hardware, the issue is most likely a mismatch of block sizes (poorly chosen) or buffering issues during the patch installation. This kind of software issue is overly expensive on SSDs due to the nature of the flash memory used in them. And even worse than the wasted time, this bad patch implementation is likely to be causing an excessive number of writes on the SSD, reducing its life.

So I must really be clear about this: Until this bug is fixed, reinstalling the game is the fastest and safest way to update games that present this very slow patching problem.

[crunchyfrog]

Publicado originalmente por SysmiX:

Publicado originalmente por crunchyfrog:

No, loads of reports does not mean anything other than lots of people are having the issue. It says NOTHING about the validity.

The fact is that we have concrete evidence on these forums of how it works, and those that frequently report these issues either are misunderstanding how their RAM, CPU, I/O etc are just as important as their net connection, or don't understnad another aspect.

I`m a software developer, I can assure you it's not me who cannot understand the limitation at play here. There is no hardware component, or connection issue, that would explain the patch behavior. Less than 10MB/s on this machine is pretty clearly a software issue. Again, there are a lot of reports of slow steam patches around, just as a lot of "it works for me" replies. This is a clear sign of bad written software. I can actually run defrag on my backup HDD faster than Steam installs a patch on a very fast PCIe SSD. Since other people can install the patches normally on similar hardware, the issue is most likely a mismatch of block sizes (poorly chosen) or buffering issues during the patch installation. This kind of software issue is overly expensive on SSDs due to the nature of the flash memory used in them. And even worse than the wasted time, this bad patch implementation is likely to be causing an excessive number of writes on the SSD, reducing its life.

So I must really be clear about this: Until this bug is fixed, reinstalling the game is the fastest and safest way to update games that present this very slow patching problem.

I'm sorry but I'm not taking an argument from authority fallacy - that ain't evidence.

I'm only telling you what ACTUALLY Is backed up by evidence - the wealth of posts on here , the data from thoe download screen and the task manager.

That IS what happens and you can see it in real time right now.

Now if you're talking about something else, I don't know.

[my new friend]

Publicado originalmente por SysmiX:

There are lots of reports of this issue online. Maybe it is a bug in the game itself, not in steam (Not sure who handle game patches, but I think it is steam). There are reports like this for many other games though. You can argue it's not a bug, since if you wait for the patch to apply, it works. But at very least it is very poorly written software.
I have a I5 10400 and a NVMe SSD tested to 1400 MB/s. My connection is 600Mbit/s and I got around 640Mbit/s on speed tests at the moment I was updating the game. The download is normally very fast, then it stops and steam keeps writing data to the NVMe SSD at less than 5 MB/s. The game I was updating is SCUM. All SCUM patches present this same behavior. My friend has a very similar hardware and does not have the issue. There is no compression, encryption that justifies this wild speed variation on similar hardware. If it was the case, reinstalling the game instead of patching would not be much faster as it actually is.

Publicado originalmente por SysmiX:

I`m a software developer, I can assure you it's not me who cannot understand the limitation at play here. There is no hardware component, or connection issue, that would explain the patch behavior. Less than 10MB/s on this machine is pretty clearly a software issue. Again, there are a lot of reports of slow steam patches around, just as a lot of "it works for me" replies. This is a clear sign of bad written software. I can actually run defrag on my backup HDD faster than Steam installs a patch on a very fast PCIe SSD. Since other people can install the patches normally on similar hardware, the issue is most likely a mismatch of block sizes (poorly chosen) or buffering issues during the patch installation. This kind of software issue is overly expensive on SSDs due to the nature of the flash memory used in them. And even worse than the wasted time, this bad patch implementation is likely to be causing an excessive number of writes on the SSD, reducing its life.

So I must really be clear about this: Until this bug is fixed, reinstalling the game is the fastest and safest way to update games that present this very slow patching problem.

Ok Mr. software developer, read this.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/513710/discussions/0/3202619734240579132/

[SysmiX]

Publicado originalmente por my new friend:

Ok Mr. software developer, read this.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/513710/discussions/0/3202619734240579132/

I know this thread, and I agree with the developer post. This delta patch explains how a 12 Mb download can translate to a 30 GB patch install. This is pretty justifiable and I would not complain about it.

The problem is that writing 30 GB of data on my machine should theoretically take less than 20 seconds. It would be perfectly fine if it took 5 minutes instead since the patch software have to intercalate reads and writes, and maybe the developers did not want to spend hours optimizing the delta patch software. But it is taking more than an hour to do so. This is very poorly written software.

[wuddih]

the problem is encrypted game files and that is something you have to ask the developer of that unreal engine game ... because they could totally not encrypt their game files and this will then no longer cause a 12MB patch download to rewrite 30gb of files on Steam

edit: also Epic agenda to fight Steam

cheers.