Steam cannot download faster than 1.5 Gbps me having 4 Gbps

[P0lT10n]

Hello everyone,

I am very curious if I do have an issue with my computer or is my ISP or steam or what is going on...

I do have (Netherlands) KPN Fiber 4 Gbps, and I can confirm I do have that speed when I use speedtest.net, I get 4 gbps up and down, but when I download a game from steam (with Netherlands region selected) I cannot get a download speed faster than 1.8 Gbps more or less.

For example, I try downloading Far Cry 6 (138 Gb download, total 176 Gb) and I download at max 175 Mb/s (megabytes per second, roughly 1.3 Gbps).

The specs are:
CPU: i9-13900KS
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi[rog.asus.com]
RAM: DDR5 Corsair VENGEANCE RGB 96GB (2x48GB)[www.corsair.com]
Ethernet card in use: Tp-link TX401 10G[www.tp-link.com]
NVMe in use: Samsung 980 PRO 2Tb PCIe 4.0 x4[www.samsung.com]

I am using the cable that KPN gave me (CAT-6A) and I am using Windows 11 Pro. The control panel shows that the card link speed is 10/10 (Gbps) (the KPN's modem is called Box 14 and it has a 10Gbps LAN port and I am using that one on my machine).

I did try other regions like Germany (all of them), Luxemburg, France, and Belgium to no avail, some download speed or even a little bit less.

Did this happen to you too? What else can I try? Do you have a link about a similar discussion that should fix this or guide me to a possible solution?

Thank you so much

---

Quick update: I did try the motherboards Ethernet port (2.5 Gbps) and I do download from steam at 2.3, 2.4 (that is what windows is reporting, steam max peak reached 225 Mb/s), so I think it is windows maybe?

I do see, for the added network card (TP-Link) that link speed is 1400 (Mbps) on the networking section where you can see all your network cards, but when I open more details, it shows 10/10 (Gbps), so I am very confused...

The motherboard network card says 2500 (Mbps) on the same section, and when detailed view is opened, I do also see 2500/2500 (Mbps)...

[Pscht]

This is the first-worldest of all first world problems.

[P0lT10n]

Originally posted by Pscht:

This is the first-worldest of all first world problems.

I know, sorry, not trying to brag or anything like that, I just want to know what is the issue as I am paying for 4 Gbps and steam cannot keep up (and I am not sure what else to try downloading to test it out)

[metamec]

It doesn't surprise me tbh. If the overwhelming majority of users aren't utilising connections faster than 2Gbps then Valve is probably not going to pay content delivery networks more to support higher speeds.

Bear in mind that I'm speculating. I don't know the answer.

[P0lT10n]

Originally posted by metamec:

It doesn't surprise me tbh. If the overwhelming majority of users aren't utilising connections faster than 2Gbps then Valve is probably not going to pay content delivery networks more to support higher speeds.

Bear in mind that I'm speculating. I don't know the answer.

I did just trying something I found on the internet (changing some stuff about the NIC config) and it went from 1.5 Gbps to 2.8 Gbps.

I did change:
* Jumbo Packet: from disabled to 9014 Bytes
* Receive Buffer: can't remember original value to 4096
* Transmit Buffer: can't remember original value to 8186 (max value)

[P0lT10n]

I think I fixed the issue, changing the Jumbo Packet to the max value (16348 Bytes) now shields 3.3 Gbps and the CPU is at 100% at 70C, I will still check more stuff before marking this as resolved, but it is a total brain killer me having to tinker on the NIC's windows configuration to solve this....