give option to download games without compression, causing speed to not get limited by CPU.

[mr]

Basically what Steam does on big games is you download them compressed, and decompressing uses wayy too much CPU, and to not fully render your PC unusable Steam only uses half the CPU cores for.
Regular download without need to decompress anything barely uses any CPU (just disk obviously).

This causes download speed to be a lot less than what its supposed to be on games Steam does this on than they are supposed to be, being limited by CPU.

Because of this stupid decision by some incapable monkeys at Valve i get constantly way slower download speeds on Steam than on Origin, Blizzard, Uplay etc... while having 50-60% more CPU usage than the others slowing down my PC.

People with like 50 mbit far away from civilization with normal internet speeds can still have their compressed downloads since it is probably the more optimal way for them, just have it as an option in settings.

[Start_Running]

The compression is dependent on the devs. And if basic decompression is slowing yer PC down...I mean my 10 yearold Potato sees no impact from these things.

[mr]

Originally posted by Start_Running:

The compression is dependent on the devs. And if basic decompression is slowing yer PC down...I mean my 10 yearold Potato sees no impact from these things.

idk what u download or at what speed, but when i downloaded of GTA 5 for example my intel i7 4790k imediately goes to 50-60%+ and stays there and i get only like 50 mb/s peak, usually 30-40 mb/s.

On Origin on a also large size game i get 90-100 Mb/s and peak on 120.
on speedtest.net i get a bit over 2gbit (250mb/s). Cpu usage 5-9%

[Frazzledragøn the Trustworthy]

As stated, developers compress their files for speedier downloads.
Not a Steam thing.

[Gwarsbane]

The last time "slow decompression" happened around here it had to do with the persons anti-virus and the guy would not accept from us that what ever was happening was in their end. In the end, he finally found the issue, and actually admitted it, and it was the anti-virus.

And yes he had the same issues with it being "faster" on other platforms if I remember right.

My nearly 10 year old potato doesn't have issues downloading and installing games. And your system specs more then likely stomps all over mine with much newer and much faster parts.

[Spawn of Totoro]

Originally posted by Tabletka ot Ponosa:

On Origin on a also large size game i get 90-100 Mb/s and peak on 120.
on speedtest.net i get a bit over 2gbit (250mb/s). Cpu usage 5-9%

Can you post to your actual speed test results and not just link to the site?

[Satoru]

Originally posted by Tabletka ot Ponosa:

Basically what Steam does on big games is you download them compressed, and decompressing uses wayy too much CPU, and to not fully render your PC unusable Steam only uses half the CPU cores for.

This seems contradictory in that you claim your system becomes 'unusable' yet simultaneously claim it doesnt' use all the cores

If its not using all cores, its obviously 'usable'

Compression and recombing are all core parts of SteamPipe, which allows for not only delta patching but also for reduced bandwidth usage.

Steam downloads are capped at your CPU or disk IO. Steam isn't going to try to download more data when your disk is already capped out. It just makes everything slower if it were to do that.

[cinedine]

And some day people will learn that the numbers provided by their provider or speed test are to be taken with a big grain of salt. Download speed depends on so much more than just your theoretical capacity.

[Cathulhu]

Are you sure there is no software interfering with processing the data?
Out of curiosity, why two GPUs?

[ioudas]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Are you sure there is no software interfering with processing the data?
Out of curiosity, why two GPUs?

I didn't include this in the screenshot but process manager shows that 95% of the cpu is steam process. I get your point, could be antivirus but I don't have any installed besides windows defender.

Two GPUs because this PC is laptop with external GPU attached (through alienware graphics amplifier).

BTW steam mentioned turning the compression on in a press release last year. Of course their marketing wrapped it up nicely in "optimized downloads for mobile devices" or some marketing buzzwords like that. But after that steam update my download speed dropped from 1Gbit to ~750Mbit and CPU shot up during download. So I'm pretty sure that's it.

[my new friend]

Originally posted by ioudas:

BTW steam mentioned turning the compression on in a press release last year. Of course their marketing wrapped it up nicely in "optimized downloads for mobile devices" or some marketing buzzwords like that. But after that steam update my download speed dropped from 1Gbit to ~750Mbit and CPU shot up during download. So I'm pretty sure that's it.

Simply odd. https://imgur.com/a/UOSmU45

[ioudas]

Originally posted by my new friend:

Originally posted by ioudas:

BTW steam mentioned turning the compression on in a press release last year. Of course their marketing wrapped it up nicely in "optimized downloads for mobile devices" or some marketing buzzwords like that. But after that steam update my download speed dropped from 1Gbit to ~750Mbit and CPU shot up during download. So I'm pretty sure that's it.

Simply odd. https://imgur.com/a/UOSmU45

Interesting, can I ask what CPU you have?

[my new friend]

Originally posted by ioudas:

Originally posted by my new friend:

Simply odd. https://imgur.com/a/UOSmU45

Interesting, can I ask what CPU you have?

11700k, stock atm. I had the same results with my previous cpu, i5-7600 non-k.

[aiusepsi]

Originally posted by ioudas:

BTW steam mentioned turning the compression on in a press release last year. Of course their marketing wrapped it up nicely in "optimized downloads for mobile devices" or some marketing buzzwords like that.

They didn't turn on compression last year, Steam downloads have been compressed for at least around a decade, if not longer.

The only "press release" I can think of which is even close to what you're describing is this: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/2074411495515541375

But that doesn't say anything at all about compression.

Edit: Here[github.com] is a third-party open-source implementation of a program for downloading files from Steam. Please notice the date (2011) and that it's decompressing the files that it's downloading. "Deflate" which that code references is a compression algorithm.

[ioudas]

Thanks for the inputs. If they are true, it would mean the problem is on my end.

Very strange though, since task manager clearly shows steam eating the CPU and nothing else.
Nevertheless I'll try to think of something and troubleshoot.

[my new friend]

Originally posted by ioudas:

Thanks for the inputs. If they are true, it would mean the problem is on my end.

Very strange though, since task manager clearly shows steam eating the CPU and nothing else.
Nevertheless I'll try to think of something and troubleshoot.

It does seem odd your cpu is pegged at 100% though.
For testing purposes, I went back to stock on my cpu. Kind of fun to watch. https://imgur.com/a/SR8ppAL