100% Disk usage But SO DAMN SLOW

[Merlin]

I've been trying to download a game from Steam, but it's so damn slow!

In Task Manager, Steam is using 100% disk, yet on the Steam download page, it's only showing 2MB/s. Meanwhile, I tried downloading a game from the Epic Games Store, and I was able to download 40GB in just 5 minutes—my internet was running at 100+MB/s, and disk usage was also 100+MB/s.

To double-check, I tested other game launchers, and guess what? Only Steam has this problem for me.

[nullable]

Steam functions differently than other game launchers. And some disks, often low end SSDs, don't seem to perform that well with Steam, at least out of the box. Sometimes there's a setting that can be adjusted. But that would take you stating the disk models to figure out what the root cause is, as you're probably not the first user with that disk to use Steam.

[Merlin]

Originally posted by nullable:

Steam functions differently than other game launchers. And some disks, often low end SSDs, don't seem to perform that well with Steam, at least out of the box. Sometimes there's a setting that can be adjusted. But that would take you stating the disk models to figure out what the root cause is, as you're probably not the first user with that disk to use Steam.

currently i'm using LEGEND 710 PCIe NVMe SSD 512GB

[Tristin]

Looks like low-end SSD.
Browse slow Steam game install, and you'll easily find the reason. Steam file unpackaging is what you are dealing with.
Get better SSD.

[nullable]

AS for your SSD, some people aren't very impressed with the performance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuild/comments/xm5sxn/adata_legend_710_1tb_ssd_system_pausing_apps_slow/



You might try to disable Windows Write Caching and see if that changes the performance at all. If it doesn't, then re-enable it. You may need to disable it on all drives.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/t0q6d0/steam_write_speed_to_ssd_very_slow_1020_mbs_how/

[Satoru]

Steam updates

1) download a small delta patch
2) read all the files needed to be updated
3) calculates how to recreate the file
4) writes out the file
5) moves the file back to the install directory

These processes are all

1) Cpu intensive
2) disk IO intensive

This process is the worst case scenario for any drive. You will never get the 'theoretical' throughput. Look at the 4k rand and that's what you'll get under this heavy workload

Your steam downloads and patching processes are limited by

1) your cpu
2) your disk io
3) your anti-virus destroying disk IO

The number one culprit is #3.

[Merlin]

Originally posted by nullable:

AS for your SSD, some people aren't very impressed with the performance.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PcBuild/comments/xm5sxn/adata_legend_710_1tb_ssd_system_pausing_apps_slow/



You might try to disable Windows Write Caching and see if that changes the performance at all. If it doesn't, then re-enable it. You may need to disable it on all drives.
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/t0q6d0/steam_write_speed_to_ssd_very_slow_1020_mbs_how/

YOOO! I think this solved my problem!!!

At first, I had Windows Write Caching disabled, but after enabling it, things improved dramatically.
With it disabled, my disk usage was around 2MB/s, but after enabling it, it shot up to 120+MB/s!

THANK YOU, DUDE!

[nullable]

Well that's interesting because the thread and many of the posters there seemed to benefit from disabling it. But you enabled it and that helped? Interesting.

I wonder if in the reddit thread's case they're using SSDs that don't don't support HMB, where the LEGEND 710 does. HMB (host memory buffer) being a feature where the SSD will use system memory for write caching which improves the performance of DRAMless or low cache SSDs (or any SSD any time the the drive's cache is exhausted).

At any rate whatever works I suppose. If that hadn't worked, Satoru's suggesting about the AV would be high up on the troubleshooting hit list too.