Steam downloading question

[Goon]

Hello, so ive noticed something weird about downloading stuff on steam. when i download on steam with on of my drives its downloading way slower then my download speed.

I tested downloading something on the same drive, but on Origin. This time the download speed was at what it should be.

So is there anyway to fix this at all?

Thank you, i can provide anymore information if need

[SexyBoBo]

What you are seeing is Origin list the speed in Mb/s and Steam is listing it in MB/s.

There are two popular ways to talk about download speed or bandwidth.

• Megabits per second usually noted at Mb/s with a lower case b
  
• MegaBytes per second noted as MB/s with a capital B.

In computer terms a Byte is 8 bits. So any time you talk about Megabits per second itwill always be 8 times larger them MegaBytes

When talking about bandwidth the people you get your internet from (your ISP) will always list speeds in Megabits per second as the number is 8 times larger then MegaBytes per second and looks better in advertisements. On the computer though the speed is almost always shown as MegaBytes per second as that is the more useful number since file sizes are always show in Bytes not bits. A useful example if your downloading a 100MB file and you have a 1MB/s connection it will take 100 seconds to download that is easy to understand by users. If you have a 100MB file and a 1Mb/s connection it will take 800 second to download that's just confusing.

If for example your ISP says your internet is 8Mb/s and your downloading a 100MB file.
Origin will show your download speed as 8Mb/s and it will take 100 seconds to download.
Steam will show your download speed as 1MB/s and it will take 100 seconds to download.

An additional example to help understand this. In the USA they use Miles Per Hour when talking about speed driving down the road in the rest of the world they use Kilometers Per Hour. Whats happening is one group is talking about going 100 KPH and the other group is talking about going 62.1 MPH. They are going the same speed they are just measuring it differently.

Similarly storage manufactures refer to a MegaByte as 1000 KiloBytes When computers calculate them as 1024 KiloBytes. Which is why when you buy a 1TB Hard Drive and put it into your computer it will show as 931GB.

TL;DR
Origin and Steam are using a different scale for measuring speed. The file will take the same length of time no mater who you download from so there is nothing broken and nothing to fix.

[Goon]

Thank you for the fantastic explanation.