Steam is slow when patching a game

[MasterZalm]

Its also slow when installing as well.

No, its not my internet, I usually download games very quickly. I'm talking I had a game with a 2gb update that downloaded in less than 20min. But it required patching the entire game. all 130+ gb of it. It was saying it was going to take over 37hrs.

And for whatever reason, Steam refuses to give me more than 7MB/s write speed on an SSD that tested well over 200MB/s write speed. I decided to run a test on a game I own on another platform, the exact same game. I fully downloaded and installed a game on my Xbox platform(not the console) in less than 20min, and afterwards, Steam took over 3 hours for the exact same game.

I have seen SOME games get upwards of 150MB/s disk speed, but not all games do this. And I cannot replicate it either. Patching a game for me has become a nightmare since so many games require the whole game to be patched to be updated, and it makes it impossible to play sometimes.

I set steam to be realtime priority in task manager, and it still, at most, only ever uses 35% disk.

[MasterZalm]

I literally tested this a few months ago with two different games both on Epic Store and Steam, and then Standalone launcher.

File Size, 40gb
Epic- Install time totaled at 1hr 17m
Standalone Launcher- Install time totaled at 1h 28m
Steam- Install time totaled 4h 1m

Its steam. Its not my system, its not my hardware, its Steam. Steam is the only problem I have

[Dranak]

Originally posted by MasterZalm:

I literally tested this a few months ago with two different games both on Epic Store and Steam, and then Standalone launcher.

File Size, 40gb
Epic- Install time totaled at 1hr 17m
Standalone Launcher- Install time totaled at 1h 28m
Steam- Install time totaled 4h 1m

Its steam. Its not my system, its not my hardware, its Steam. Steam is the only problem I have

its here you have a issue , no pc even 20 years ago is 4 hours to update a game.
you can try game devs and steam support.

do not have a laptop pwr cord or battery issue and low disk space issue.

gl with it.

[Lokie]

If its based on PC performance/specs and internet speeds are the reasons then this is not true at all! in my situation.

I have a STEAM DECK and a PC thats clearly leagues ahead of the deck in terms of performance.
It looks like Steam prioritizes their traffic, and its super frustrating.

Ryzen 5 5900x, 2080, 1tb pcie4 with 3200mhz ddr4 etc.....

I can download 100gb games on the steam deck and patch them in mere 20mins or less. This is using a 300gigabit internet. I can hit at least 250+mb speeds easily on the deck every single time. However on my PC, it hits a worthless 100mb if I get lucky on that same game. And its a direct wired connected vs the steam's wireless.

When just patching an updated game, its even more worse. The deck just wipes the floor in terms of patching and download speeds.

I DARE YOU try it on the STEAM DECK.

[shiel]

Originally posted by Lango#Black:

If its based on PC performance/specs and internet speeds are the reasons then this is not true at all! in my situation.

I have a STEAM DECK and a PC thats clearly leagues ahead of the deck in terms of performance.
It looks like Steam prioritizes their traffic, and its super frustrating.

Ryzen 5 5900x, 2080, 1tb pcie4 with 3200mhz ddr4 etc.....

I can download 100gb games on the steam deck and patch them in mere 20mins or less. This is using a 300gigabit internet. I can hit at least 250+mb speeds easily on the deck every single time. However on my PC, it hits a worthless 100mb if I get lucky on that same game. And its a direct wired connected vs the steam's wireless.

When just patching an updated game, its even more worse. The deck just wipes the floor in terms of patching and download speeds.

I DARE YOU try it on the STEAM DECK.

Funny, because I've found the exact opposite in my experience. The Steam Deck is extremely slow to download and install games/updates compared to my PC. I have to put it right next to the router to get anything above 20MB/s download speeds even though my PC, on the other end of my house, on wifi can get over 100MB/s and obviously quite a bit more with an ethernet cord.

[Dranak]

Does this not sounds like wifi issue at steam deck, sense so many other steam deck user do not complain over consol unit.

steam deck has own steam support and forum.

[TheHeartlessAlchemist]

I don't know if you fixed your problem but it could be your SSD device. I'm getting the same issue now too. My download speed was perfect which still is, upload speed as well, but when it comes to patching the game, is the process it takes longer. It was never like this. My PC specs are in my bio if yall want to see them. My HDD started having slow issues when it comes to patching. My M.2 is perfectly fine. I've read it had to do with cache for your hardware. And supposedly you'll have to disable the cache for the hard drive you want. So by going into your Device Manager, expanding Disk Drives, and right clicking and choosing properties (disk drive you want) and going into Policies tab and disabling Cache. If that doesn't work, delete cache on steam in the settings and download. It didn't work for me or I'm not disabling the right box. You also use the WD dashboard and going to performance if you have a WD. Something like that.

[Lithurge]

Originally posted by TheHeartlessAlchemist:

My M.2 is perfectly fine. I've read it had to do with cache for your hardware. And supposedly you'll have to disable the cache for the hard drive you want. So by going into your Device Manager, expanding Disk Drives, and right clicking and choosing properties (disk drive you want) and going into Policies tab and disabling Cache. If that doesn't work, delete cache on steam in the settings and download. It didn't work for me or I'm not disabling the right box. You also use the WD dashboard and going to performance if you have a WD. Something like that.

It's the write cache option you're referring to. Some people have found that disabling this fixes the speed issue for SSD's when using Steam.

[MasterZalm]

disable cache through windows did not help, and I have multiple times cleared the steam cache in settings

[daryllogan]

i'm having the same issue, and I just built this new gaming rig. I have my OS on a different SSD and my games on a seperate SSD. My gaming SSD is brand new and shouldn't be the problem. Currently i'm trying to patch my new world game and it's taking a very long time. I thought maybe it was my sata connection to my SSD but it tests fine. I'm at a loss too. It takes me hours just to do a small patch with brand new hardware. I also have a gig of fiber so it's not my internet connection. To make things worse, both Steam and New World have garbage customer service. I had this same problem on my previous computer, which shares zero parts with my new computer.

[Overdrive]

Same problem here download was only 398mb and downloaded in less than a minute but patching has taken nearly an hour and is still ongoing, slowest patching I have ever seen on any platform its insane and its no good telling folk its their pc's fault when this only happens on steam and nowhere else. Then another half an hour to verify it now that patching is finished.

[MasterZalm]

Originally posted by Overdrive:

Same problem here download was only 398mb and downloaded in less than a minute but patching has taken nearly an hour and is still ongoing, slowest patching I have ever seen on any platform its insane and its no good telling folk its their pc's fault when this only happens on steam and nowhere else. Then another half an hour to verify it now that patching is finished.

this exactly. for nearly every game I own at that. Its frustrating and I KNOW its steams fault.

[Pepe]

The following workarounds are not great, but they might help a little.

1. Assuming the patching algorithm Steam is using might require a lot of concurrent low bit reads and writes (E.g. 4K random reads/writes - which is not what your bought SSD displays on its cover as Giga-speeds marketing stunt), for now, it would be better to delete the game and install it again, thus skipping any comparisons between local files and the updates.

2. I'm not sure if Shader Pre-Cashing is pushed after each game update, but there are enough topics on the subject to suggest some updates are just Shader Cache updates that consume a lot of resources. While Shader Pre-Cashing should be a great improvement for game load times, I've seen enough issues with the implementation in Valve's games to consider disabling it. There is no problem with no Shader Pre-Caching, your GPU will compile the shaders just fine at game runtime. Steps to disable Shader Pre-Caching:
a) Go to Steam > Settings > Shader Pre-Caching.
b) Untick Enable Shader Pre-Caching.



Additionally, I wanted to talk about system limitations and the whole concurrency magic behind any operating system, but there's too much to cover and I've rewritten this part a few times before posting. Fast forward to the important bit, if you have the time and will, you can try tuning up Steam by tweaking some Steam commands and variables though its console. It seems Steam is throwing too much work to the CPU, but mostly to the storage, which is crippling its performance. The idea is to turn down "the tap" on the CPU, for the SSD to have time "to breathe". In the link bellow, a good start would be to search for anything that contains "thread" in their name:
https://gist.github.com/davispuh/6600880
As an alternative, you could just type "thread" in the Steam console and use Arrow Down key to get though all the current commands and variables that contain this noun. Another key word that could be of interest is "max", as it's clearly something that sets an upper limit to something.

How to get to the Steam client console
Option 1 (all OSs): From the web browser, access the following link

steam://open/console

Option 2 (Windows 64 bit): Run the following in the Command Prompt or PowerShell

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam.exe" steam://open/console

Option 3 (GNU/Linux): Run the following in the terminal

steam steam://open/console

Option 4 (GNU/Linux): For Steam Flatpak version, run the following in the terminal

flatpak run com.valvesoftware.Steam steam://open/console

Once you found the commands and variables that have a positive impact on Steam's updates, you'd need to save them in a steam config file.
- Windows 64 bit

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steam_dev.cfg

- GNU/Linux
a) with Steam installed with the classic system package manager

~/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg

b) with Steam installed with Flatpack

~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg

[as ☂]

I have the same issue and it has always been like that. No matter what system upgrades I make, downloading is fast but patching takes forever. I think the problem is on Steam's side and not on my system.

[Mimonsi]

Originally posted by as ☂:

I have the same issue and it has always been like that. No matter what system upgrades I make, downloading is fast but patching takes forever. I think the problem is on Steam's side and not on my system.

Same here. I have NVME ssds, but the speed is like 50 MB/s at most. It's ALWAYS faster to re-download an entire 70 GB game than patching a 2 GB update

[Bump]

This has been an issue with Steam for years and they choose to not fix it.