Help, Download stuck at 1.6MBps while speed test shows 40MBps.

[Loyalist]

Hi,
I'm looking for advice or tips on what is happening because I've never seen anything like this.I've recently moved and I've noticed an issue where steam will finish downloading the 1st/2nd game in queue at 38MB/s and then every subsequent game will be pinned at less than 5MB/s. The only thing I've found to fix this is clearing the download cache.

- I check speed test and it remains around 30-40MB/s
- Task manager shows very little to no activity on the network
- I only have one computer and a phone in my house
- Disk usage and CPU usage remain low the entire time
- Clearing the download cache alleviates it temporarily
-Hardwired directly into router and cable was checked and swapped

Does anyone know how to deal with this? I'm at my wits end troubleshooting it.

[Satoru]

1) speed tests only show 'theoretical' maximum speeds. On top of the fact many ISPs fake this by ensuring those test sites get max priority on their networks, but then 'actual' traffic gets QOS down into ADSL speeds.
2) are you sure you are not confusing bits for Bytes.
3) If you're patching a game, then 99% of the time spent will be on disk IO. Generally speaking all consumer level AV is utter trash and makes any patching process 10x longer
4) task manager wont show much because your link is likely 1gbps but your ISP capped so it will always look 'good' since you're not saturating the local 1gbps port
5) You need to look at performance, specifically disk utilization. 99% chance your disk is pegged at 100% utilization. Note that utilization has nothing to do with data throughput. You can have 100% disk utilization with extremely low disk writes/reads.

[Elucidator]

Could be a RAM Cache, which might be on drive (DRAM) or in windows.

Writing to RAM is the fastest out of all writing options. What I think might be happening is that RAM is being written to up till it is completely filled out. After this has gotten full, that Cache needs to be emptied first before space is made within RAM to write to.
And the Cache, as you can guess empties slowly as what it contains is actually written to disk, however writing to the RAM is still faster.

Usually DRAM on an SSD is about 2GB.
The speeds given by the manufacturer often keep track of the write-to-dram speed, rather than the write to the actual NAND cells on the SSD. Still....

I expect an SSD to be faster. I think that there may be a bug somewhere.

I recommend disabling Write Caching on the Device for your SSD; it might improve performance in your case. Further, I recommend optimizing so that the least amount of activity is needed to write to your SSD. (disabling indexing on the SSD for example)

I am not sure what Windows 11 is doing on the background, but it is possible that Windows itself is causing the slowdown. It might for example not realize your SSD is actually in use (since Steam uses odd methods to download and install games). Windows might have lowered the amount of power the SSD can use in order to save power. (Power Saving settings)
You may want to inspect your Power settings basically.
and also some hardware level features in the driver settings that are used for saving power.

[flingo]

Sounds like Steam is throttling your downloads after the first game. Try this:

- In Steam Settings > Downloads, change your download region.

- Turn off "Throttle downloads while streaming".

- Make sure Delivery Optimization is off in Windows settings (Settings > Windows Update > Advanced options > Delivery Optimization).

You're already doing the right stuff with clearing cache also try restarting Steam after big downloads.