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Can We Talk About What Happened to Steam Download Speeds?

nemiroff

Gold Member
Sorry to hear that. Here in Norway my Steam download over my 500/500 mbit line (Altibox) has always been consistently maxed out (I'm using wired to my PC). I did have some issues over wifi when I had a Amplify mesh router with two additional access points but once I switched to a single Asus RT-AX86U (great router) that too is now fixed.
 
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Kilau

Gold Member
Just tested my speeds and they are normal, fast. Steam is just about the only service that will utilize my full connection, Xbox and PSN don't come close.
 

Arsic

Member
What are the rest of your system specs like? Unlike many other launchers, Steam decrypts all game downloads in real-time to the point where a slower CPU or non-SSD storage will absolutely bottleneck your speeds.

It's usually easy to confirm either way by keeping task-manager open during a download and observing if anything is pegged at 85%+ usage.
Open a command prompt

Type powershell , hit enter

Copy and paste this command: netsh interface ip show global

Copy and paste the results here.

Edit: Oh, and after that first command, also do this one: Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty

Again, paste results
OI7KUiJ.png
 

Arsic

Member
Just posted those specs, but I should add, yes I realize the 1000 converts to 100MB/S. The issue with steam is I am NOT getting that in downloads. It is often 15 seconds of no download whatsoever, followed up by a small spurt of just 10mb/s to 25mb/s. On other downloads I can see it going 75-100MB and things download fast. Hell the 25 would be acceptable if it wasn't for it always cutting off every few seconds for long periods of nothing happening.

As for my PC, it is SSD. The task manager doesnt show steam using any absurd percentages either.

Edit:

Also, high end PC. 11th gen intel Core i7 11700KF at 3.60GHZ. 16 GB of ram. 3080 GPU.
 
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Arsic

Member
OK, everything looks to be default there, so no problems. Can you run that second cmdlet I mentioned? Get-NetAdapterAdvancedProperty

It says this is not a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
 

BadBurger

Is 'That Pure Potato'
It says this is not a recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.

Right-click your Start menu and look for "Windows PowerShell (Admin)", and try using that if it's present. If not, try running your cmd prompt as administrator, then issue the command powershell, then try the cmdlet again.

You know what, you don't even have to do that. You can try enabling jumbo frames to see if that works.

1. Right-click Start menu, select 'Run'
2. Type ncpa.cpl, ENTER
3. Right-click your network interface, select 'Properties'
4. Click on the 'Configure' button
14cxX7a.png


5. Click the 'Advanced' tab, and then in the 'Property' field find 'Jumbo Frames'
HErFoOl.png


6. Over in value, depending upon your NIC, you'll have various options. Test downloads using the smallest value first - so in my case it would be 4088 Bytes. If that does no good, try the next greater value.
WVtkVFh.png



If using jumbo frames helps with getting more consistent downloads, great, but then test your performance in multiplayer games if you play them. Because while this may help with downloads, it could negatively affect things like latency in games. So if that's the case you could just enable jumbo frames when you're downloading from Steam, then disable them again when you're done.

Good luck
 
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Garibaldi

Member
It's sweet on my 1Gbps connection. UK based connecting to the Manchester CDNs most of the time. Hits my limit all the time.

Xbox app on the other hand barely breaks 25MB/s. Disgrace.
 
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don't know what you're talking about. i've never had an issues getting full speeds through stream. my internet gets about 36MB/s download and Steam always hits that.

must be something wrong with your account/PC/ISP

🤷‍♂️
 
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As of this year Steam has become basically an unusable store front for me. I have 1000MB/S download speed, and no matter what I have done from the constant hours of following guides/advice online I can't get a consistent and good download speed. Sometimes it'll be 10MB/S, other times it can spike up to a nice 100MB/S for a bit, but the majority of the time it flat lines off a cliff into 0kb/sec for 15+ seconds at a time until it gives me about 5 seconds of download time again around 20MB/S.

This started becoming very noticeable when Gotham Knights came out. I have 0 issues even with EPIC and Xbox game downloads on GamePass PC. My internet speeds are good to go, my firewall settings aren't in the way, etc etc.

I've googled and many report this issue, and switching download city/servers hasn't fixed it either, or really anything you can think of.

Has anyone else encountered this recently? At this point I'm going to be forced to the EPIC game stores not because I want to, but because Steam has just become unusable. This is dial up days of speed where games take HOURS to download instead of the minutes it should. I'd settle for 30 minutes, but what's the point of paying for high speed net that works great for everything, BUT the one thing where I need it to get all the juice from it.

TLDR: Gabe Newell is a bitch.
Holy shit you're telling me that I'm not the only person this happens to? I didn't realize that. I also have 1GB internet and the same thing happens to me.

But when I download things on my PS5 I can download a 60+ GB game in like 10 - 15 minutes!
 
I get what you're saying OP but...steam is still better DL speed wise compared to both Xbox live and Epic games store.
I'm on 1 Gbps connection and :
- xbox live on XSX : tops at 200 Mbps (25MB/s) , the XSX's wi-fi card/network adapter must be pretty shit (im on wi-fi) but there MUST be some throttling on MS's part.And no, i dont have any games suspended or running in the background.
- xbox live/gamepass app on WIN11 PC with Wi-fi 6 card : tops at 400Mbps (50MB/s)
- Epic game store on WIN11 PC with Wi-fi 6 card : tops at 400Mbps (50MB/s)
- Steam on WIN11 PC with Wi-fi 6 card : tops at 700Mbps (about 87-90MB/s)

Now, excluding the XSX with its older/shitty wifi-5 network adapter, i should be getting more or less the same speeds on my WIN11 PC and yet...Steam is still the faster service for me.

Cheers
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Fix your wi-fi maybe, I have my PC at the edge of the good signal area (two floor coverage) and it needs a bit of wiggling to go from KB/s to MB/s. Never had any issues with Steam that weren't on my end and usually get faster speed than a speed test from my ISP's own servers via browser.
 
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LiquidMetal14

hide your water-based mammals
I've hardly ever had problems. The one thing I know for sure is if it's like a bigger download over 10~gb I always saturate my speeds but for smaller downloads that are only a few gigabytes or less it doesn't get to the peak. No issues here.
 
I always max out my internet connection download games. But sometimes it'll drop to like 5Mbps down. To fix this i change the download server to another server close by and that fixes the issue.
 

Kuranghi

Member
Steam has been getting slower for a while now, can't download at anywhere near my line speed, probably ideally about 500mbps.

PSN on PS5 is ultra fast for me, I have 1150 down but its "only" gigabit ethernet wired so ~980 is about the max you can download at and I sometimes get near that max cable speed.
 
OK I did notice something about steam, it normally hits roughly the max speed of my connection, but it also shows hard disk activity. So a download of say couple of Gig will download then stop and the unpacking stage will happen when it shows the disk activity which can be slower than the download.
 

Yumi

Member
Not sure it’s just a Steam issue. There’s a lot of variables. I usually set it and forget it anyways. Rarely do I expect to play a game I start downloading on the same day. Just cause your provider says you can get “up to” whatever speed doesn’t mean you’re gonna get it. Rarely do I get up to that speed no matter where I’m downloading from, Steam, Xbox, etc.
 

lordrand11

Member
You know that ISP's measure there speed in Megabytes and Steam uses megabits right? There are 8 bytes per bit so 100MB download from steam would be 800mb from your ISP. Awkawrd 🤪
Less awkward and more like Backwards! Your ISP measures in Mbits and Steam's download is measured in megabytes. Other than that your conversions are wholly accurate
 

Danknugz

Member
As of this year Steam has become basically an unusable store front for me. I have 1000MB/S download speed, and no matter what I have done from the constant hours of following guides/advice online I can't get a consistent and good download speed. Sometimes it'll be 10MB/S, other times it can spike up to a nice 100MB/S for a bit, but the majority of the time it flat lines off a cliff into 0kb/sec for 15+ seconds at a time until it gives me about 5 seconds of download time again around 20MB/S.

This started becoming very noticeable when Gotham Knights came out. I have 0 issues even with EPIC and Xbox game downloads on GamePass PC. My internet speeds are good to go, my firewall settings aren't in the way, etc etc.

I've googled and many report this issue, and switching download city/servers hasn't fixed it either, or really anything you can think of.

Has anyone else encountered this recently? At this point I'm going to be forced to the EPIC game stores not because I want to, but because Steam has just become unusable. This is dial up days of speed where games take HOURS to download instead of the minutes it should. I'd settle for 30 minutes, but what's the point of paying for high speed net that works great for everything, BUT the one thing where I need it to get all the juice from it.

TLDR: Gabe Newell is a bitch.
reminder that an upper case B when referring to bandwidth means megabytes not bits.
 

TintoConCasera

I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
I bet getting a PS5 will fix your problems, OP.
 
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