Steam useage of system resources

[msd22000]

Devs,

Please make sure that when steam is not the foreground program that any tasks it is running are at the LOWEST priority level. Currently on my system Steam appears to be decoding Far Cry 4. This is playing havoc with my current game play as I am getting constant pauses while Steam works on the files. For example it took me 3 minutes to load into an online battle, by which time it was half way over, becuase Steam was hogging the HD. In another battle I got pauses of 1/2 to 2 seconds throughout the battle, again because Steam was hogging system resources.

You have a nice and convenient product. But it is not the be all and end all of my gaming experiences. Please have some consideration for peoples gaming experiences outside of Steam. Thank you.

[supertrooper225]

Steam really does not take all that much in terms of system resources. Do you think there may be something else that is causing your issue? If you are downloading something and playing something else how about you pause the download or wait for that process to be finished? Try some stuff on your own instead of just copping an attitude and blaming Steam for your issues.

[msd22000]

I have already checked that already. I am basing my comments on the following: 1) Resource manager shows Steam as using 5% CPU with no other programs running. 2) I dont have any downloads running and I do not have any program set up with auto update. 3) Far Cry 4 Now has play instead of Pre-Load displaying. and finally, the clincher, when I clicked on Play the game showed as 2/3 uncompressed with a time remaining of 15 minutes and my HD has been slammed for about 20 minutes. So I am not "copping an attitude". My complaint is based on hard evidence that Steam started the decoding process, which for your information DOES use a lot of system resources, unilaterally.

[supertrooper225]

Originally posted by msd22000:

I have already checked that already. I am basing my comments on the following: 1) Resource manager shows Steam as using 5% CPU with no other programs running. 2) I dont have any downloads running and I do not have any program set up with auto update. 3) Far Cry 4 Now has play instead of Pre-Load displaying. and finally, the clincher, when I clicked on Play the game showed as 2/3 uncompressed with a time remaining of 15 minutes and my HD has been slammed for about 20 minutes. So I am not "copping an attitude". My complaint is based on hard evidence that Steam started the decoding process, which for your information DOES use a lot of system resources, unilaterally.

5 percent is hardly system resource intensive and I doubt that is enough to cause a difference in a games performance....Maybe I am reading something wrong here or something. But I have never had any issues with Steam causing a negative affect on any gameplay. I can let it run in the background regardless of what I am doing and it causes no problems. I have an SSD though. Don't know what to tell you.... What are you trying to play? Far Cry 4? Something outside of Steam I am guessing?

[msd22000]

I don't think you are interpreting what I am saying correctly so I will restate. The problem is that Steam started decoding the Far Cry 4 files without my telling it to do so. In doing so it tied up access to my HD which affected loading and game performance in another, non-Steam game. This resulted in a 3 minute load time for one game session, and .5 - 2 second lag spikes in another where the two programs were fighting for access to the HD.

What I am asking the Steam Devs is for them to be aware that people use their systems for things other than Steam games. That Steam should run it processes at a reduced priority level when it is not the program in focus. And that Steam should NOT start resource intensive operations, like decoding game files, without asking the user.

The CPU usage is irrelevant in this case, it was simply one of the clues that lead me to realize what Steam was doing. My issue is not with Steam itself, it is with Steam performing tasks at a high priority level, or that are resource intensive, when there are other taks on the system. The end result is that Steam adversely impaced my useage of my system for about 45 minutes by running a process that I did not ask it to start, was not given the option of delaying, and could not stop.

[supertrooper225]

Ok I think I get it now. I guess I won't get what you mean by decoding game files because I don't normally preload games but you may be talking about downloading or updating? Who knows? But if it is downloading, that can be stopped at any time. Like I said, there is nothing on Steam that ever affected my game performance in any non-Steam game and I never found the app itself to be resource intensive.

If your computer has trouble with Steam in the background then simply turn it off when you go to play another game in the future. If you have some kind of big download going either stop it or allow it to finish so it won't affect your game. There are other things that you can do to avoid situations like this. Steam doesn't need to change the way it's app works based on one user.

[wuddih]

Originally posted by msd22000:

I don't think you are interpreting what I am saying correctly so I will restate. The problem is that Steam started decoding the Far Cry 4 files without my telling it to do so. In doing so it tied up access to my HD which affected loading and game performance in another, non-Steam game. This resulted in a 3 minute load time for one game session, and .5 - 2 second lag spikes in another where the two programs were fighting for access to the HD.

What I am asking the Steam Devs is for them to be aware that people use their systems for things other than Steam games. That Steam should run it processes at a reduced priority level when it is not the program in focus. And that Steam should NOT start resource intensive operations, like decoding game files, without asking the user.

The CPU usage is irrelevant in this case, it was simply one of the clues that lead me to realize what Steam was doing. My issue is not with Steam itself, it is with Steam performing tasks at a high priority level, or that are resource intensive, when there are other taks on the system. The end result is that Steam adversely impaced my useage of my system for about 45 minutes by running a process that I did not ask it to start, was not given the option of delaying, and could not stop.

there is no real viable easy solution to put filesystem activity on a low priority. my last preorder/preload is a while back, so i dont remember this clearly how much it stresses the system but it is a filebased decrypt/decompressiong process and if the a file is bigger one, it will hog the system no matter what.

so there is no real low priority solution available there, the only thing would be to prevent this entirely until you start it manually ... but then people will come and complain that it takes too long to start the game.

[Black Blade]

Originally posted by msd22000:

I don't think you are interpreting what I am saying correctly so I will restate. The problem is that Steam started decoding the Far Cry 4 files without my telling it to do so. In doing so it tied up access to my HD which affected loading and game performance in another, non-Steam game. This resulted in a 3 minute load time for one game session, and .5 - 2 second lag spikes in another where the two programs were fighting for access to the HD.

What I am asking the Steam Devs is for them to be aware that people use their systems for things other than Steam games. That Steam should run it processes at a reduced priority level when it is not the program in focus. And that Steam should NOT start resource intensive operations, like decoding game files, without asking the user.

The CPU usage is irrelevant in this case, it was simply one of the clues that lead me to realize what Steam was doing. My issue is not with Steam itself, it is with Steam performing tasks at a high priority level, or that are resource intensive, when there are other taks on the system. The end result is that Steam adversely impaced my useage of my system for about 45 minutes by running a process that I did not ask it to start, was not given the option of delaying, and could not stop.

Over all i do think you can go to Steam downloads and pause it at any time

Over all i cant agree with what you are asking on the full state
Over all one thing that i think many users like abut Steam is that its simple, it dose not message you all the time on will you like to do that or that, it just download and setup every thing with almost no touch from your side needed...

But on any case maybe these will help?
Add the game you want to play meanwhile as a non-Steam game, and go to the Steam sittings, and then downloads and set not to download while you are playing? maybe that will help you?