Downloading causes CPU to use 100% Why?

[JamesJB]

Hope this is the right place for this...


Hi over the last year or more I have noticed that steam uses 100% CPU or very close to it when downloading a game,why?

I thought it might be the Antivirus program but no steam uses the CPU at 100%.

Origin,GOG,Blizzard,Epic,Ubisoft barely uses that much CPU when downloading a game.

This wouldn't bother me so much but when Steam is useing 100% of the CPU my fans go up like a Jet Engine,kinda freaks me out.

So does anyone else have this problem?

Oh one other thing when I use Steam on Ubuntu Linux the CPU is barely used when downloading games,my fans don't rev up like a Jet Engine.

Please help.

[Satoru]

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

Steam downloads are highly compressed

Also if you're patching a game, steam downloads for patches are delta patches. Meaning that the process is

1) Download the delta file
2) Read the existing file
3) calculate all the changes and blocks that need to be chenged
4) write out the newly patched files

This is all very cpu and disk IO intensive depending on the game, how the data is structured, your CPU speed, your disk IO, your anti-virus throttling all of that due to contention, etc

[Ettanin]

Steam sends data in encrypted and compressed form, hence the high CPU usage. It first needs to decrypt the chunk of data and then to decompress it before it will finally be written down.

It gets more complex on patching because it's not complete game data, but diff data. Which means after decryption and decompression, the target file has to be relocated, then its data altered by the diff definition.

[JamesJB]

Originally posted by Satoru:

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

Steam downloads are highly compressed

Also if you're patching a game, steam downloads for patches are delta patches. Meaning that the process is

1) Download the delta file
2) Read the existing file
3) calculate all the changes and blocks that need to be chenged
4) write out the newly patched files

This is all very cpu and disk IO intensive depending on the game, how the data is structured, your CPU speed, your disk IO, your anti-virus throttling all of that due to contention, etc

Its strange though this CPU stuff never happened like 2 years or so ago before Windows 11. Maybe stuff with Steam changed over time,Possible?

Again this doesn't happen when i'm useing Linux.

[LoveAndPeace]

windows is more aggressive on security and thus is more aggressive on a cpu.

[JamesJB]

Originally posted by LegionKIN:

windows is more aggressive on security and thus is more aggressive on a cpu.

Oh ok.

[Satoru]

Originally posted by JamesJB:

Its strange though this CPU stuff never happened like 2 years or so ago before Windows 11. Maybe stuff with Steam changed over time,Possible?

Again this doesn't happen when i'm useing Linux.

The patching mechanism on steam is consistent across platform

It also dpendson the games you play. It looks like you've recently gotten into many online multiplayer type games. These games tend to update frequently and a game like Valheim a patch will update a significant chunk of game data.

[mimizukari]

Do you have a wealth of background processes running, and is Task Mgr actually saying that Steam is using all that CPU just by itself?

[Washell]

From 9m17s it covers steam, bandwidth, and cpu limitations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk1eKPRLaJA&t=557s

[JamesJB]

Originally posted by deneb altair vega:

Do you have a wealth of background processes running, and is Task Mgr actually saying that Steam is using all that CPU just by itself?

Yes pretty much,I mean Steam useing 100% CPU.

I just checked somthing,I turned my Antivirus off for the heck of it when downloading a game from steam and the CPU usage went from like 100% to around 50% to 70% the fans still rev up a little but not as loud now.

[JamesJB]

Originally posted by Satoru:

Originally posted by JamesJB:

Its strange though this CPU stuff never happened like 2 years or so ago before Windows 11. Maybe stuff with Steam changed over time,Possible?

Again this doesn't happen when i'm useing Linux.

The patching mechanism on steam is consistent across platform

It also dpendson the games you play. It looks like you've recently gotten into many online multiplayer type games. These games tend to update frequently and a game like Valheim a patch will update a significant chunk of game data.

Hmm curious how can ya tell that I'm getting in to online games lately? I looked and a lot are offline games.

[Nx Machina]

Originally posted by JamesJB:

Yes pretty much,I mean Steam useing 100% CPU.

I just checked somthing,I turned my Antivirus off for the heck of it when downloading a game from steam and the CPU usage went from like 100% to around 50% to 60% the fans still rev up a little but not as loud now.

Seems you found the cause - your antivirus.

Instead of turning it off exclude Steam from been scanned.

[JamesJB]

Originally posted by Nx Machina:

Originally posted by JamesJB:

Yes pretty much,I mean Steam useing 100% CPU.

I just checked somthing,I turned my Antivirus off for the heck of it when downloading a game from steam and the CPU usage went from like 100% to around 50% to 60% the fans still rev up a little but not as loud now.

Seems you found the cause - your antivirus.

Instead of turning it off exclude Steam from been scanned.

Will do :)