Slow downloads in "bursts"

[zaglamir]

Having a problem with download speeds. It starts out well and good for about 10 seconds, topping out in the 100MB/s region, which matches my expected speed. Then I drop to 0 kb/s for multiple seconds while my disk trails off to 0. Then it downloads another 1/2 second at 100MB/s and then sits for a few seconds.

I thought this was related to unpacking - however, my CPU is sitting at <1% usage and this is writing to an SSD. I don't have this trouble with any other game services. I've already tried switching Download Regions, reinstalling steam, and updating to the new Steam Client. No changes to the issue.

For something like Baldur's Gate 3, this effectively means my download takes days where I can't shut off my system.

Any suggestions?

[mustard]

same issue here. 1.3gbps connection, SSD, 400gb available on disk so there's no swapping going on, but the download goes in tiny bursts that make it take hours when it should take minutes. occurs whether downloading from steam servers or via steam LAN.

[crunchyfrog]

I think you're not quite getting how it works on Steam.

You're right in that it should download in chunks and should be unpacking. But it takes MUCH more than just your CPU. You need to look at ALL your system resources.

It basically works thus - it downloads a chunk encrypted and compressed. That then needs to unpack and sort and write to it's final resting place on disk. This means that it will stop downloading obviously, but it needs your CPU, RAM, I/O, hard drive and more.

So what to do is to look at what the graph does on the downlad page while checking Windows Task Manager. See what resources if any are getting hit the hardest as that would lead to showing which thing is bottlenecking.