Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed

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I'm currently downloading a game on steam. It's painfully slow, and it's probably going to take around 9 hours.

What I don't understand however is the fact that steam is download at around 410kbps, while I have a 3.4mbps download speed. When steam is downloading, the internet in my house is rendered basically useless. It took me ~2 minutes to load the Ask a Question page. So why, if steam is only downloading 410kbps is my internet suffering such a huge loss? Surely I should still have 3mbps to play with. Or - since steam insists on using all my internet - why am I not downloading a game at 3.4mbps? (Although I suspect this could be due to steam's servers. Though some people can download at much faster than this so why can't I)

  • Oct 7, 2012 - Steam is an online platform that lets you download and play over 2000. 'limited not by the Steam servers but by your ISP's connection speed. Trick you can use to speed up your downloads by using Windows' QoS Packet. Check out Christian's article to find out how to do it. All Hot Posts.
  • Steam Servers. We do not allow individual posts about the steam servers being down. Steam not hitting full download speed. Submitted 4 years ago. Part of the overall download speed is also dependent on the speed of the source server. Steam's servers might just be slower.
  • Make sure you don't have steam limiting your bandwith, go to settings > downloads > download restrictions It's not limited lkman posted. It is normal, 80Mbps always means 8MB download speed maximum in real life. And it depends on the area you configure your download locations on steam. But it just doesn't make sense.
  • Steam is not using my bandwidth I have a 105mbit download speed, which is a new thing for me. However, I am finding that steam cannot keep up with a sustained 105mbit speed, as it writes to the disk every 10seconds, downloading 200mb~ at a time.

My friend had this problem, 3 or 4 games stuck below 100% and 0kbs download, he had to send a steam ticket, they asked him to do something to his game library that renders them all uninstalled, it got the games to finish downloading though, I will ask him if he can remember the process and post tomorrow. I don't know what happened but steam is running super slow. I can play, download and install games fine but when i try going to the store page or anything to do with my user it just load forever.

Stranger yet, if I download a game through origin it downloads at 700kbps-1mbps and doesn't kill my internet half as much as steam.

Is this an issue related to steam or my internet?

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Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed On Pc

Mokubai
HarveyHarvey

2 Answers

This sounds like a problem converting between bytes and bits to me.

Steam download rates are specified in kilo/mega-bytes (MBps) per second while your internet speed is measured in mega-bits (Mbps) Capitalisation of the 'b' is important in working out whether you are working in bits or bytes and is often left out entirely when it is important to know.

If you have a 3.4 megabit (Mbps) connection then your download will be somewhere around 0.425 megabytes per second. (3.4 / 8 = bits to bytes conversion). In this case your internet is slow/lagging because Steam is fully saturating your connection.

Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed On Windows 10

This 0.425 megabytes per second would give you a rate of 25.5 megabytes per minute, 1530 megabytes per hour. Given that your download will take 9 hours this tells me your download is of the order of 13 gigabytes, which sounds normal for a modern game.

This also tells me that Origin either sucks, big time, or they have some pretty good compression going on. If their download speed is truly 1 mega-bit per second then they are failing at providing servers and network pipes that can handle the load. If it is 1 megabyte per second (sounds unlikely as your internet is fine) then Origin is doing some pretty good compression.

If you do want to stop Steam from hogging your internet connection then you can go into the options (Steam -> Settings -> Downloads) and set up a limit for the download rate. Note that the speeds listed there are in kilobytes so you'll need to multiply by 8 to get an approximate speed in mbps. For example 256KBps is roughly 2048Kbps which is around 2Mbps.

Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed 1

MokubaiMokubai

Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed On Computer

You can rate limit Steam in the preferences.
First, find your actual bandwidth using Ookla and at least one other speed testing site. Assuming this is over wireless, leave your laptop in the same place as you're currently experiencing slowness.If you get 3 Mbps from Ookla, then you should try limiting Steam to 2 Mpbs. Be aware that Mbps is 8 times MBps.

Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed Windows 7

Christopher HostageChristopher Hostage

Why Does Steam Not Use All My Download Speed On Mac

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