Steam is capping my download speeds

[Tactical Suicide]

Hi I'm noticing my speeds are stuck at around 3.5-4 MBps when I should be getting around 22-25 MBps (200Mbps line). Ive tried a whole bunch of suggestions online, such as clearing my download cache, changing download regions, restarting my pc, restarting steam, checking for network driver updates. Nothings worked so far. Before you say its probably an IO or CPU bottleneck, the Epic Games Launcher is giving me a very consistent 23-25MBps on any download.

Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.

[Tactical Suicide]

Originally posted by nullable:

Did you limit your download speed in the Steam settings?

Short of it is, Steam is not limiting your download speeds. I can hit 90MB/sec on a 750Mbps connection. Valve is not in control of all the variables between their server and your system. And it's a documented fact that they can fully saturate multi-gigabit connections.

If Steam was throttling your speeds, you wouldn't be able to override that anyway. You can't force them to service you faster if they're actively limiting it. But they're not, and there's lots of variables between you and them that you don't control either.

If the problem persists I'd call up my ISP. It is possible for them to throttle specific services. Or have issues that only affect limited services.

The whole Epic downloads fine, therefore it must be Steam, is just a bit oversimplified I'm afraid.

Yeah I should've reworded the title, I know its not steams fault, what I meant to say was it only seems to be steam that's having this issue. I'm not limiting the speeds in the steam settings, but its still limited at around 4MB/sec. I'll try call up my ISP tomorrow, see if they're throttling the connection. Thanks for the suggestion

[Tactical Suicide]

Originally posted by nullable:

Yeah, all I can say is there's a steady parade of users who seem to have speed issues "only" on Steam (that they've noticed). But everyone else can download just fine. I've never seen a definitive solution or explanation though which would be nice. So it's all just a bunch of maybes and possibilities and sorrys.

How long have you had limit performance anyway?

Its been a good few weeks, Im not downloading big updates and games very often so it hasnt been that big of an issue until now. Downloading GTA and Elden Ring on a 4MB/sec line isn't fun at all when you could have 6x that speed regularly.

[Oninaig]

You aren't alone in this. I have symmetric gigabit and I can max my speeds to any other service I use other than Steam. Steam constantly maxes out at around 60MB/s (550Mbps) whereas a month ago I was getting full gigabit.

I see people constantly pointing towards hardware but I am running on a 13900k with a WD black X 4TB drive that maxes out at around 8000MB/s read/write.

[Satoru]

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

Steam can obliterate 1gbps connections. Steam was pushing 50 terabytes per second during the CP2077 launch

your steam downloads are limited by

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

[Zer0]

Originally posted by Satoru:

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

Steam can obliterate 1gbps connections. Steam was pushing 50 terabytes per second during the CP2077 launch

your steam downloads are limited by

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

I've checked these things but should have no reason this is limited. This issue started a week ago for me and it's just Steam that seems to have download issues. I've got a i9 12900K so that won't be limiting it. I've checked in task manager and nothing is being taken up a lot. Tried disabling firewall and that isn't causing anything either. I disabled my antivirus and still nothing helped. I assume it's not Steam's fault, but due to it only being on Steam I don't quite know where else to look.

[SorteSlyngel]

go to > device management > find network card > right click settings > new tap opens click advanced > find speed and duplex > set to 1gbit.... u have to do this every time switching from auto to 1gbit steam is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with your download speeds i have 1gbit at home and everytime i download something on steam i have to go trough this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ procces and its ONLY on steam every where else works frine

[Melody]

I had the same exact problem on my 2.5 Gbps connection, I was maxing out at 100-300 Mbps. After doing the following steps, I got my Steam downloads to cap out at exact 2.4 to 2.5 Gbps.

Go to your Router's settings and find something called MTU and MRU, they should be already set at either 1500 or 1492. Change those parameters to 1478 and restart the router. If you have a setting named "Jumbo Frame", make sure to disable it.

I can't really tell you where these settings are because every and each router is different. If your router doesn't have those settings, you are doomed because you can't change the MRU in Windows (not to be confused with MTU). They need to be changed together in the PPPoE settings of your router for this trick to work.

If you are absolutely desperate for this, you can get a custom gaming router which allows you to change those parameters. For example, my ASUS TUF-AX6000 allows to change these parameters just fine.

After doing this, my problem disappeared.

PS: This issue was only affecting me on Linux, it was fine in Windows. For some reason, Windows managed to mitigate the issue, but I assume this is NOT always the case for everyone.

[Zer0]

Originally posted by Melody Digital Harmony:

I had the same exact problem on my 2.5 Gbps connection, I was maxing out at 100-300 Mbps. After doing the following steps, I got my Steam downloads to cap out at exact 2.4 to 2.5 Gbps.

Go to your Router's settings and find something called MTU and MRU, they should be already set at either 1500 or 1492. Change those parameters to 1478 and restart the router. If you have a setting named "Jumbo Frame", make sure to disable it.

I can't really tell you where these settings are because every and each router is different. If your router doesn't have those settings, you are doomed because you can't change the MRU in Windows (not to be confused with MTU). They need to be changed together in the PPPoE settings of your router for this trick to work.

If you are absolutely desperate for this, you can get a custom gaming router which allows you to change those parameters. For example, my ASUS TUF-AX6000 allows to change these parameters just fine.

After doing this, my problem disappeared.

PS: This issue was only affecting me on Linux, it was fine in Windows. For some reason, Windows managed to mitigate the issue, but I assume this is NOT always the case for everyone.

What eventually worked for me was the simplest thing ever. It was hard capped at 4MB/s. Restarted my modem, back to 100MB/s. Seems dumb, but worth a shot.

[Melody]

Originally posted by Zer0:

Originally posted by Melody Digital Harmony:

I had the same exact problem on my 2.5 Gbps connection, I was maxing out at 100-300 Mbps. After doing the following steps, I got my Steam downloads to cap out at exact 2.4 to 2.5 Gbps.

Go to your Router's settings and find something called MTU and MRU, they should be already set at either 1500 or 1492. Change those parameters to 1478 and restart the router. If you have a setting named "Jumbo Frame", make sure to disable it.

I can't really tell you where these settings are because every and each router is different. If your router doesn't have those settings, you are doomed because you can't change the MRU in Windows (not to be confused with MTU). They need to be changed together in the PPPoE settings of your router for this trick to work.

If you are absolutely desperate for this, you can get a custom gaming router which allows you to change those parameters. For example, my ASUS TUF-AX6000 allows to change these parameters just fine.

After doing this, my problem disappeared.

PS: This issue was only affecting me on Linux, it was fine in Windows. For some reason, Windows managed to mitigate the issue, but I assume this is NOT always the case for everyone.

What eventually worked for me was the simplest thing ever. It was hard capped at 4MB/s. Restarted my modem, back to 100MB/s. Seems dumb, but worth a shot.

In my case, the MTU and MRU negotiated during my PPPoE connection were simply wrong and dropping packets, which is what was causing the slowdown.

[Tikuros]

Originally posted by SorteSlyngel:

go to > device management > find network card > right click settings > new tap opens click advanced > find speed and duplex > set to 1gbit.... u have to do this every time switching from auto to 1gbit steam is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ with your download speeds i have 1gbit at home and everytime i download something on steam i have to go trough this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ procces and its ONLY on steam every where else works frine

You!!! You are a legend!!! That actually worked! I could hug you, mate, thank you sooo much!

[Steven]

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