High CPU usage when downloading games

[tfa]

Got a new PC with Windows 11. The first 5 or 6 games I downloaded did not have this problem. It started after I followed a few optimization guides for WIndows 11 which has you disable certain services but I'm having a hard time figuring out which setting change caused it. Any ideas?

[MancSoulja]

Steam's downloads are compressed, the high CPU usage is your CPU decompressing the archives. the faster you download the higher your CPU usage will be.

Steam downloads can cripple even a high-end CPU, what you're seeing is nothing we don't all experience.

[tfa]

I've been using Steam since 2004 and today is the first time I've gotten high cpu usage while downloading.

[BIGSLIMLITTLE]

why are downloads so slow

[MancSoulja]

Originally posted by tfa:

I've been using Steam since 2004 and today is the first time I've gotten high cpu usage while downloading.

Congratulations, that doesn't change what I said.

Do you think there's an option in Steam's settings to disable downloads while playing games because Valve thought it was a fun idea?

[tfa]

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Originally posted by tfa:

I've been using Steam since 2004 and today is the first time I've gotten high cpu usage while downloading.

Congratulations, that doesn't change what I said.

Do you think there's an option in Steam's settings to disable downloads while playing games because Valve thought it was a fun idea?

I've downloaded hundreds of times with no high CPU usage over the last 20 years. Only the last 2 games I've downloaded have done this. And yeah I've always had the allow downloads while playing games setting on and the games ran normally. I'm pretty sure the option is there due to bandwidth not CPU usage.

[It's about sending a message]

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Steam's downloads are compressed, the high CPU usage is your CPU decompressing the archives. the faster you download the higher your CPU usage will be.

Steam downloads can cripple even a high-end CPU, what you're seeing is nothing we don't all experience.

Steam downloads being compressed is a myth. Steam doesn't compress the data, the games' devs do that. Compression can range from great for some 2D Unity games at like 70-90%, to 50% for some Source games like L4D2/TF2 to almost nothing with CoD, where the game's like 115GB installed and the download is 108GB. Steam doesn't and can't magically compress files.
The only thing Steam does is encrypt preloads and I don't know if regular downloads are encrypted or not, but there wouldn't be a reason to in my eyes. But what definitely isn't correct is that downloads are compressed by Steam. OP either downloaded a highly compressed game or something funky is going on.

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Originally posted by tfa:

I've been using Steam since 2004 and today is the first time I've gotten high cpu usage while downloading.

Congratulations, that doesn't change what I said.

Do you think there's an option in Steam's settings to disable downloads while playing games because Valve thought it was a fun idea?

Downloads barely affect the PC's performance. The real answer here is that you don't want a download wrecking your latency. Unless you're downloading very specific titles nothing will happen to your in-game performance. I always have downloads running while I am playing SP games and there's literally no performance impact, and I am on an ancient system.

[It's about sending a message]

Originally posted by tfa:

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Congratulations, that doesn't change what I said.

Do you think there's an option in Steam's settings to disable downloads while playing games because Valve thought it was a fun idea?

I've downloaded hundreds of times with no high CPU usage over the last 20 years. Only the last 2 games I've downloaded have done this. And yeah I've always had the allow downloads while playing games setting on and the games ran normally. I'm pretty sure the option is there due to bandwidth not CPU usage.

Would make sense to actually name the two games and also mention how big the games are installed vs the download. If they're like 5-10GB installed but the download was only like <1GB then the high CPU usage came from decompression. It's rare, but some games with high compression exist and if you have a speedy connection it may be even more pronounced. Keep in mind, as I've mentioned in my other reply, Steam doesn't actually compress files, game devs do.

[It's about sending a message]

Originally posted by BIGSLIMLITTLE:

why are downloads so slow

1. ISP throttle
2. Busy regional DL server
Can't recall what you should do for #1, but if #2 is the issue you can just change DL region via the settings and try out other regions. It's worth to go to a place where it's currently night or morning.

[tintingaroo]

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Steam's downloads are compressed, the high CPU usage is your CPU decompressing the archives. the faster you download the higher your CPU usage will be.

Steam downloads can cripple even a high-end CPU, what you're seeing is nothing we don't all experience.

Steam downloads being compressed is a myth. Steam doesn't compress the data, the games' devs do that. Compression can range from great for some 2D Unity games at like 70-90%, to 50% for some Source games like L4D2/TF2 to almost nothing with CoD, where the game's like 115GB installed and the download is 108GB. Steam doesn't and can't magically compress files.
The only thing Steam does is encrypt preloads and I don't know if regular downloads are encrypted or not, but there wouldn't be a reason to in my eyes. But what definitely isn't correct is that downloads are compressed by Steam. OP either downloaded a highly compressed game or something funky is going on.

A dev may compress their game but Steam does compress the data.

SteamPipe initially splits each file into roughly one megabyte (MB) chunks. Each chunk is then compressed and encrypted before being upload to the Steam content-delivery system. They remain compressed and encrypted until downloaded by each client, where they are decrypted and expanded and placed in the necessary file location(s).

Compression: Because Steam will compress all data for upload / storage / download, we generally don't recommend using general compression on pack files. However, if you are concerned about the on-disk size of your game, you may still want to use pack file compression. It will work OK with SteamPipe so long as the criteria listed above are met. Specifically, you should ensure that compression is per-asset as much as possible. Any compression that crosses asset boundaries will spread out changes and require clients to download more data than necessary.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading

[tfa]

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Originally posted by tfa:

I've downloaded hundreds of times with no high CPU usage over the last 20 years. Only the last 2 games I've downloaded have done this. And yeah I've always had the allow downloads while playing games setting on and the games ran normally. I'm pretty sure the option is there due to bandwidth not CPU usage.

Would make sense to actually name the two games and also mention how big the games are installed vs the download. If they're like 5-10GB installed but the download was only like <1GB then the high CPU usage came from decompression. It's rare, but some games with high compression exist and if you have a speedy connection it may be even more pronounced. Keep in mind, as I've mentioned in my other reply, Steam doesn't actually compress files, game devs do.

It was BF 2042, AC Valhalla and now Gothic Remake demo. I've downloaded all these games in the past and never noticed high CPU usage. Gothic Remake download and install size are both 10.2 GB. Not sure where to look up download size of previously installed games.

[It's about sending a message]

Originally posted by tintingaroo:

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Steam downloads being compressed is a myth. Steam doesn't compress the data, the games' devs do that. Compression can range from great for some 2D Unity games at like 70-90%, to 50% for some Source games like L4D2/TF2 to almost nothing with CoD, where the game's like 115GB installed and the download is 108GB. Steam doesn't and can't magically compress files.
The only thing Steam does is encrypt preloads and I don't know if regular downloads are encrypted or not, but there wouldn't be a reason to in my eyes. But what definitely isn't correct is that downloads are compressed by Steam. OP either downloaded a highly compressed game or something funky is going on.

A dev may compress their game but Steam does compress the data.

SteamPipe initially splits each file into roughly one megabyte (MB) chunks. Each chunk is then compressed and encrypted before being upload to the Steam content-delivery system. They remain compressed and encrypted until downloaded by each client, where they are decrypted and expanded and placed in the necessary file location(s).

Compression: Because Steam will compress all data for upload / storage / download, we generally don't recommend using general compression on pack files. However, if you are concerned about the on-disk size of your game, you may still want to use pack file compression. It will work OK with SteamPipe so long as the criteria listed above are met. Specifically, you should ensure that compression is per-asset as much as possible. Any compression that crosses asset boundaries will spread out changes and require clients to download more data than necessary.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/sdk/uploading

Has no relation to the topic at hand, as the devs are the ones who choose the compression and not Steam. 1MB chunk -> 1MB chunk isn't compression and even if it's 0.96MB I still wouldn't call it that. Once again, Steam doesn't magically compress all games you're downloading. If a 100GB game's download is 96GB, you're downloading 96GB. The only time you're running into CPU issues is if you're on a very fast connection and/or the compression is very high. A well compressed game that's large on top of a speedy connection will cause issues.

[It's about sending a message]

Originally posted by tfa:

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Would make sense to actually name the two games and also mention how big the games are installed vs the download. If they're like 5-10GB installed but the download was only like <1GB then the high CPU usage came from decompression. It's rare, but some games with high compression exist and if you have a speedy connection it may be even more pronounced. Keep in mind, as I've mentioned in my other reply, Steam doesn't actually compress files, game devs do.

It was BF 2042, AC Valhalla and now Gothic Remake demo. I've downloaded all these games in the past and never noticed high CPU usage. Gothic Remake download and install size are both 10.2 GB. Not sure where to look up download size of previously installed games.

Download info sadly clears upon client restart. But as for Gothic, if the game had essentially no compression then that shouldn't have been an issue. Only if you had a very fast download should it cause issues for the CPU, as that's I/O-heavy once you reach gigabit net. I'd say keep an eye on it, since sometimes weird stuff like that just happens.
I currently have an issue with my Steam library's highlights sticking for seemingly no reason, after I've already hovered off the title. Could've very well just been a weird bug you had.

[MancSoulja]

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Originally posted by MancSoulja:

Steam's downloads are compressed, the high CPU usage is your CPU decompressing the archives. the faster you download the higher your CPU usage will be.

Steam downloads can cripple even a high-end CPU, what you're seeing is nothing we don't all experience.

Steam downloads being compressed is a myth. Steam doesn't compress the data, the games' devs do that. Compression can range from great for some 2D Unity games at like 70-90%, to 50% for some Source games like L4D2/TF2 to almost nothing with CoD, where the game's like 115GB installed and the download is 108GB. Steam doesn't and can't magically compress files.
The only thing Steam does is encrypt preloads and I don't know if regular downloads are encrypted or not, but there wouldn't be a reason to in my eyes. But what definitely isn't correct is that downloads are compressed by Steam. OP either downloaded a highly compressed game or something funky is going on.

Are you being serious or trolling because you can literally see the difference between the downloads size and the install size on the downloads page lol

Originally posted by It's about sending a message:

Downloads barely affect the PC's performance. The real answer here is that you don't want a download wrecking your latency. Unless you're downloading very specific titles nothing will happen to your in-game performance. I always have downloads running while I am playing SP games and there's literally no performance impact, and I am on an ancient system.

Then the option would say "pause downloads while playing online" Xbox can do that, Sony only pauses downloads when playing online, why would Steam limit access to thousands of single player games if they were worried about latency?

[tfa]

When downloading a game, the download meter and install meter are neck and neck and the game is ready to launch immediately after download is finished. I never paid much attention before but it seems like it used to take a few minutes between download finishing and the install finishing. Seems like more CPU resources are being allocated to installation than it used to be.

[egs]

You could list settings you have changed here.
Do you have Valorant (or prob. LoL) installed on your system?