Steam downloads unnaturally slow

[ball technician]

I have almost 400mb/s download on my internet and normally get about 40mb/s in steam downloads, but a lot of times my pc starts chugging and steam only downloads at around 500kb/s.

I've tried disabling windows defender, changing regions, clearing download cache (worked for 10 minutes before being slow again), limiting and unlimiting bandwidth, and I don't really have any other possible solutions.


SOLVED: My SSD had slow read/write speeds, bought a new one: Samsung 970 EVO Plus[www.amazon.com]

[Elucidator]

I am guessing your disk is being used.
The green line only shows the disk usage done by the Steam Client.

If you can't figure out what is causing this:
Can you tell me and others a bit more about your PC?

(optional, idk if this is useful for you) You could try changing your default DNS.
(optional, idk if this is useful to you) You can try changing your download location.

Can you try running the following commands in cmd?

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
netsh int ip reset
netsh winsock reset

If that didn't resolve the issue, you could also try:

 sfc /scannow

It helps at least if your PC isn't doing anything with the disk other than downloading towards it at the time you do, and if windows update isn't being naggy.
(some windows internal programs like windows update can cause issues with Steam)

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

I am guessing your disk is being used.
The green line only shows the disk usage done by the Steam Client.

If you can't figure out what is causing this:
Can you tell me and others a bit more about your PC?

(optional, idk if this is useful for you) You could try changing your default DNS.
(optional, idk if this is useful to you) You can try changing your download location.

Can you try running the following commands in cmd?

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
netsh int ip reset
netsh winsock reset

If that didn't resolve the issue, you could also try:

 sfc /scannow

It helps at least if your PC isn't doing anything with the disk other than downloading towards it at the time you do, and if windows update isn't being naggy.
(some windows internal programs like windows update can cause issues with Steam)

My PC specs are:
MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi
Ryzen 5 3600
32GB of RAM @3200Mhz
GTX 1060 6GB
TEAM MP33 1TB M.2 SSD

I did try changing my download location and it worked for a bit then went right back to ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ itself. I tried Frankfurt, Paris, Tokyo, and threw Hungary in there too just in case.

sfc /scannow didn't work, and I tried ipconfig /flushdns and netsh winsock reset and those didn't work, but I'll give the others a go.

I fully reinstalled Windows and found ~300GB of useless files to get rid of, so that might've been the problem but I'm not sure. Windows is fully updated.

Thanks for the response, I'll give an update after I run all the commands and changing DNS.

[Satoru]

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

steam can obliterate 1gbps connections

your downloads are limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk IO
3) your anti-virus killing disk IO performance
4) your ISP

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Elucidator:

I am guessing your disk is being used.
The green line only shows the disk usage done by the Steam Client.

If you can't figure out what is causing this:
Can you tell me and others a bit more about your PC?

(optional, idk if this is useful for you) You could try changing your default DNS.
(optional, idk if this is useful to you) You can try changing your download location.

Can you try running the following commands in cmd?

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
netsh int ip reset
netsh winsock reset

If that didn't resolve the issue, you could also try:

 sfc /scannow

It helps at least if your PC isn't doing anything with the disk other than downloading towards it at the time you do, and if windows update isn't being naggy.
(some windows internal programs like windows update can cause issues with Steam)

None of those worked, still stuck with 100% disk and downloads bricking my computer. Also tried changing the virtual memory configuration, didn't work.

[Ettanin]

Originally posted by mykl04:

None of those worked, still stuck with 100% disk and downloads bricking my computer. Also tried changing the virtual memory configuration, didn't work.

Do not confuse bits and bytes. 400 MBIT/s are about 40-50 MBYTE/s

Are you using a HDD or a SSD? If you are using a SSD, is it a M.2 one? Only M.2 SSDs can sustain > 100 MBit/s (~12.5 MByte/s) on Steam due to the frequency of I/O calls needed.

Steam decrypts and unpacks data and delta diffs in one go. This is especially true for updates where files are frequently rewritten and relocated due to changes in size.

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Satoru:

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

steam can obliterate 1gbps connections

your downloads are limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk IO
3) your anti-virus killing disk IO performance
4) your ISP

1) My friend with the same specs except for a better GPU has no issues with downloads, consistent 60mbps for him.
2) This may be the problem, but I don't see how. It's an M.2 SSD. Maybe it's the fact that the OS is on the same disk as where the data is being written. Nobody else with only 1 drive has such an issue though.
3) Already tried disabling Windows Defender, as I said before.
4) Spectrum is not an ISP that interferes with Steam download traffic. I also have a a regular download speed in other launchers of about 40mbps. Definitely Steam that's the issue.

[Ettanin]

What's your CPU?

[ball technician]

Originally posted by 76561198020143168:

Originally posted by mykl04:

None of those worked, still stuck with 100% disk and downloads bricking my computer. Also tried changing the virtual memory configuration, didn't work.

Do not confuse bits and bytes. 400 MBIT/s are about 40-60 MBYTE/s

Are you using a HDD or a SSD? If you are using a SSD, is it a M.2 one? Only M.2 SSDs can sustain > 100 MBit/s (~12.5 MByte/s) on Steam due to the frequency of I/O calls needed.

Steam decrypts and unpacks data and delta diffs in one go. This is especially true for updates where files are frequently rewritten and relocated due to changes in size.

My specs are posted above. I'm using a M.2 SSD that should easily handle big downloads, and my friend that has the same SSD as me has no such issues with downloads. Definitely not my ISP either, as I can download at a high speed on other launchers.

The download page just starts downloading at a regular speed but pauses for 5-10 minutes at 0 MB/s. I'm thinking maybe it's the SSD itself, it was a cheap TEAM brand after all. I want to keep buying a new SSD as a last resort, though.

I'll try to post a screenshot of the Steam download graph if it doesn't get removed.

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Ettanin:

What's your CPU?

Specs posted above.

[Ettanin]

do you have access to a different ISP? do you use the same ISP as your friend?

I recommend reading this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200205014018/https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en

Some ISPs are outright evil if it comes to peering. The customers suffer.

while it's obsolete for Hetzner, it's still a reality for a multitude of hosters.

[Ettanin]

I use E.ON Highspeed and got a gigabit fiber connection which is used to it's full extent when downloading games. Steam works fine for me. Some ISPs throttle Steam on large downloads to keep their network stable for others or to make Steam and other services pay a surcharge for higher speeds.

This kind of business model is called Double Paid Traffic.

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Ettanin:

do you have access to a different ISP? do you use the same ISP as your friend?

I recommend reading this: https://web.archive.org/web/20200205014018/https://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Double_Paid_Traffic/en

Some ISPs are outright evil if it comes to peering. The customers suffer.

while it's obsolete for Hetzner, it's still a reality for a multitude of hosters.

Yep, most of the people i know including myself have Spectrum, and no, I don’t have access to a different ISP.

I doubt it’s TWC being evil, since I only have issues with Steam and nothing else like i’ve said before.

My issue is irrespective of time as well, as I’ve had slow downloads at all hours of the day.

I do get 100% disk for all downloads, though. Might need a new SSD, that seems to be the common denominator…

[ball technician]

Originally posted by Ettanin:

I use E.ON Highspeed and got a gigabit fiber connection which is used to it's full extent when downloading games. Steam works fine for me. Some ISPs throttle Steam on large downloads to keep their network stable for others or to make Steam and other services pay a surcharge for higher speeds.

This kind of business model is called Double Paid Traffic.

My parents pay for the internet and I’m the only one in the house having this issue, so it’s not necessarily an option for me to switch to fiberoptic. I’ll keep it in mind, though.

[Ettanin]

Originally posted by mykl04:

I do get 100% disk for all downloads, though. Might need a new SSD, that seems to be the common denominator…

Your SSD is quite slow with 1.8 GByte/s read and 1.5 GByte/s write sequential for its kind.[www.teamgroupinc.com]

You got one 64 Gbit/s (8 GByte/s) and one 32 Gbit/s (4 GByte/s) M.2 interface on your mainboard[www.msi.com], so any of the recent SSDs should work fine if you use the faster slot.

I also recommend looking for random access speed data because Steam downloads are in fact not sequential in nature.

[BaGua]

Originally posted by mykl04:

I have almost 400mb/s download on my internet and normally get about 40mb/s in steam downloads, but a lot of times my pc starts chugging and steam only downloads at around 500kb/s.

I've tried disabling windows defender, changing regions, clearing download cache (worked for 10 minutes before being slow again), limiting and unlimiting bandwidth, and I don't really have any other possible solutions.

screenshot of the issue:
{LINK REMOVED}https://snipboard.io/bfdY1O.jpg

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