Question about slow hard drive speed during download

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

So i noticed that if i download a game i see my internet speed and the ssd or hdd speed. And my ssd is like 550Mb/s and hdd 150ish , but steam says it only does 30Mb / sec ? How come

(megabytes)

[crunchyfrog]

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.
#
Then on top of that your intrenet speed isn't the governing factor. As games are compressed and encrypted, it's down to I/O, RAM, CPU, hard drive, net speed and more.

Any one of those is a getting hit hard and that's your bottleneck.

[Cathulhu]

Writing data is simple. But Steam also decompresses and decrypts data, that is a lot more complex.

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.
#
Then on top of that your intrenet speed isn't the governing factor. As games are compressed and encrypted, it's down to I/O, RAM, CPU, hard drive, net speed and more.

Any one of those is a getting hit hard and that's your bottleneck.

But mb is megabyte ? And my specs are just fine


2070s 3600x 3200mhzram seagate barracuda 1tb hdd 8mb internet

[crunchyfrog]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.
#
Then on top of that your intrenet speed isn't the governing factor. As games are compressed and encrypted, it's down to I/O, RAM, CPU, hard drive, net speed and more.

Any one of those is a getting hit hard and that's your bottleneck.

But mb is megabyte ? And my specs are just fine


2070s 3600x 3200mhzram seagate barracuda 1tb hdd 8mb internet

No, mb is megabit. MB is megabyte.

And your specs are not the point.

One of them is going to be weaker than another and whichever one that is is going to cause a bottleneck. It doesn't matter if they're ALL high spec - that's not how it works.

YOu can check Windows Task Managfer and that downloads graph under Steam while you're downloading.

If you see each of those PC parts being hit heavily, there's where the slwodown happens.

Point is, it's normal.

[nullable]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.
#
Then on top of that your intrenet speed isn't the governing factor. As games are compressed and encrypted, it's down to I/O, RAM, CPU, hard drive, net speed and more.

Any one of those is a getting hit hard and that's your bottleneck.

But mb is megabyte ? And my specs are just fine

mb can be megabyte, but it's a colloqialism and can be imprecise as mb can be megabit too.

If you want to be really precise MB is megabyte, Mb is megabit.

But since humans can't be counted on to be consistent or precise at all times, if you want to be explicit you're gonna have to A. use the precise abbreviations, and B. possibly specify you know the significance of MB vs Mb.

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.

Although I would say downloads are typically presented to the user in Megabytes, it's connection speeds that are presented in megabits. So I think what Valve is doing is the usual. The problem is people "have 100mb connection, why am I only downloading at 12mb?" Because they don't know 12.5 MB = 100 Mb.

So if OP had a 250ish Megabit per second connection, then 30MB would be the result.

At any rate connection speeds in bits are the oddball value, not Valve displaying downloads in bytes. (I say that because bytes are commonly used).

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

But mb is megabyte ? And my specs are just fine


2070s 3600x 3200mhzram seagate barracuda 1tb hdd 8mb internet

No, mb is megabit. MB is megabyte.

And your specs are not the point.

One of them is going to be weaker than another and whichever one that is is going to cause a bottleneck. It doesn't matter if they're ALL high spec - that's not how it works.

YOu can check Windows Task Managfer and that downloads graph under Steam while you're downloading.

If you see each of those PC parts being hit heavily, there's where the slwodown happens.

Point is, it's normal.

Then i mean 550MB and 150MB

and steam also shows MB

how can i lose 520MB and 120MB speed with bottleneck????

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Snakub Plissken:

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

But mb is megabyte ? And my specs are just fine

mb can be megabyte, but it's a colloqialism and can be imprecise as mb can be megabit too.

If you want to be really precise MB is megabyte, Mb is megabit.

But since humans can't be counted on to be consistent or precise at all times, if you want to be explicit you're gonna have to A. use the precise abbreviations, and B. possibly specify you know the significance of MB vs Mb.

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.

Although I would say downloads are typically presented to the user in Megabytes, it's connection speeds that are presented in megabits. So I think what Valve is doing is the usual. The problem is people "have 100mb connection, why am I only downloading at 12mb?" Because they don't know 12.5 MB = 100 Mb.

So if OP had a 250ish Megabit per second connection, then 30MB would be the result.

At any rate connection speeds in bits are the oddball value, not Valve displaying downloads in bytes.

i dont mean internet speed i mean read write speed hdd ssd

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

i know Mb and MB differences so, my ssd is 550MB and i see 30MB in steam

[crunchyfrog]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

Oprindeligt skrevet af crunchyfrog:

No, mb is megabit. MB is megabyte.

And your specs are not the point.

One of them is going to be weaker than another and whichever one that is is going to cause a bottleneck. It doesn't matter if they're ALL high spec - that's not how it works.

YOu can check Windows Task Managfer and that downloads graph under Steam while you're downloading.

If you see each of those PC parts being hit heavily, there's where the slwodown happens.

Point is, it's normal.

Then i mean 550MB and 150MB

and steam also shows MB

how can i lose 520MB and 120MB speed with bottleneck????

Easy 0- because when you download a game in chunks, it downloads ENCRYPTED and COMPRESSED data.

This is why you need to allow up to THREE times the total file size, because it needs to allow space on your hard drive to stick that compressed data, and then unpack and sort it before it writes it to the final place on your hard drive.

ALL of that takes up vaulable system resources. And as so many are working, whichevver is the slowest part, that'll be the speed it goes at. Commonly it's your hard drive I/O.

So yes, this is as intended.

Of course, if you're ever running too low on hard drive space too, that can also slow things down further.

[nullable]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Must Hoont:

i dont mean internet speed i mean read write speed hdd ssd

Ah, I see I was thrown off because you mentioned your internet speed and that's usually the biggest bottleneck. But if you're just talking about disk speed....

There's a little more nuance to disk performance than "my SSD can go 550MB/sec and my HDD can go 150MB/sec." Take your HDD, optmial performance is probably 150 MB/sec. But the reality is optimal workloads are few and far between. I'd expect a mixed workload to be in the range of 20-40 MB/sec. And the worst case workloads could hit single digit MB/sec or even sub 1 MB/sec.

So are you really "losing" that performance? The workloads just might not be the kind that will hit peak speeds.

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

okay so i dont have any damaged hdd or ssd?

[nullable]

Probably not. If you've done any performance testing and everything checks out I wouldn't worry. Offhand I don't know what my disk performance in Steam is either, it's never been an issue so I've never worried.

At any rate something going slower than you expect isn't necessarily evidence of catastrophe.

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Snakub Plissken:

Probably not. If you've done any performance testing and everything checks out I wouldn't worry. Offhand I don't know what my disk performance in Steam is either, it's never been an issue so I've never worried.

At any rate something going slower than you expect isn't necessarily evidence of catastrophe.

the userbenchmark test says 114% performance hdd and ssd.

[1233123123123123]

First off, Steam reports by default in MEGABYTES per second, not the usual megabits. So you need to multiply that by 8.
#
Then on top of that your intrenet speed isn't the governing factor. As games are compressed and encrypted, it's down to I/O, RAM, CPU, hard drive, net speed and more.

Any one of those is a getting hit hard and that's your bottleneck.
its true

[Jensen Huuaaaang]

?? Why u copy paste