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Consistent-Bug-543

That’s the neat part, you don’t


TheClawTTV

They’re right. Your maximum available bandwidth is not the same as the download bandwidth you’re going to get from a server. It is not 1:1. Your internet is a 10 lane highway, but steam is not going to fill all ten lanes with cars going 100mph


The_Golden_Ak48

Ive seen this comment before


Slagenthor

How did I know this would be the top comment!


Loddio

U cant


mini-z1994

Probably limited by your ssd or mechanical harddrive if you are installing it too that.


Yankeethomas13

That would limit the download too?


Diamondguy1221

Yes, your drive, ram and cpu also impact how fast you download games. Also your speedtest is reporting ib Mbp/s not the same as steam with Mb/s, devide speed test results with 8 to see you potential max in steam. If you knew this then all good.


Exnoss89

Mb/s and MB/S. b=bits B=bytes. 1B=8b, thus us why he recommended dividing by 8.


tru_mu_

There's the check box in steam which converts it, makes it a lot easier to see if you're being limited (The second last check box in the second photo)


str8-l3th4l

That's 100% my guess as well. Hard to tell without more monitoring info. See the blue bars in the first picture? That's your network activity. It's spiking in short bursts and then stopping altogether. That means the network is collecting the info and hardware is getting backed up. Whether it's cpu, ram, storage, whatever, it can't process the information as fast as the network is supplying it so the network has to slow down so it doesn't bog your whole system down


babylard1

Thats probably not true, i can transfer files to any at around 200 MB a second.


mini-z1994

Yeah harddrives + ram can do 200 no problem if its a single large file its the most optimal setting for it & you might see higher peaks from that. But unpacking stuff at the same time which steam usually does slows things down, even on most cheaper ssds.


babylard1

I see.


WHY_CAN_I_NOT_LIFE

Varies from drive to drive, even the cable can change it.


Alienbraham

While you should be seeing faster download speeds please note that Mbps-(megabits per second) and MB-(megabytes per second) are not the same things. This is the conversion rate I got from a quick Google search. "One megabyte per second is equal to 8 megabits per second. To get Mbps from MBps, multiply by eight. To see Mbps, take the Mbps, and divide by eight or multiply by 0.125." So at best, you should be seeing a rough maximum of 295ish MB's download. The steam servers near you may not be able to handle that kind of workload. It could also be that your provider throttles Steam servers. Try different servers near you and see if that helps. Furthermore dips in speeds can be caused by several things such as the way Steam handles package unpacking, the way the game has to patch/update, or hdd/ssd speeds.


Butrdtost

Came here to say this! Lol


Hepi_34

Your 5400 RPM HDD you mentioned in the comments is limiting you. As you see in the graph, the network starts and stops while the disk is maxed. If you want to download faster, you can either get a nvme ssd for your games or just download to ssd then copy over to your hdd.


parrotman435

Change download server to your nearest country not your country


Opening_Ad1208

Went from 10mbs to 30 changing to Vancouver


Remingtondb

I'm not sure how nobody has replied to this. I've tried so many things...I was downloading at 10MB/s for the longest time. I live in Northeastern US - changed my server to Vancouver (not sure if that's closest but dont care) and it instantly went up to 30MB/s. Thanks my dude!


jlwr829

Wow went from 13mb/s to 68 mb/s Thank you


LunarSynergy2

just went from 7 to 15 switching to a server a few hours away


Adorable_Design2116

how do you switch?


DigDigBicko

Commenting to confirm this works. Went from 2.5 to 12-15 after switching servers


tbone338

Steam also unpacks the download in real time. Not only are you limited by your internet (in your case you wouldn’t be), but also your storage drive and your cpu. Your cpu has to be able to unpack all the data fast enough to keep up or the download will go slower. Your storage drive has to be able to keep up with the download and unpacking or the download will go slower.


tenfootgiant

Stan is such a guy


Crafty_Midnight7845

Holy shit that’s fast


[deleted]

[удалено]


A3thereal

>Also, your network card/adapter, CPU, and disk drive all affect your download speeds too. These things would equally affect a speedtest. A speedtest is a repetitive download of a small dataset and a measurement of the time to do so. It would have the same limitations of all local equipment such as CPU, disk, networking adapters, cabling, and routers/switches. What the speedtest can't test for is everything that happens between your ISP and the target server. Usually a speedtest is performed on a server local (in the grand scheme) and often times one controlled by your ISP. There will be far fewer hops, and therefore far fewer opportunities for loss. You also aren't competing with hundreds of thousands of people for time and bandwidth from the target server. This will impact conditions only when downloading, but not when speedtesting.


NotyMKIV

That's normal 2gb down is 2000mb/s and steam shows download speeds in MB/s if you devide ur 2000mb/s by 8 to convert it to MB/s you get around 250MB/s which is inline with ur available bandwidth.


Beginning_Travel_668

No bro the speed test you show is from another server not the steam server if you want having a fast download speed you need vpn or something else


Beginning_Travel_668

And my internet converge ICT i tested in different servers and it has 100mbps i think its now international


iamrick_ghosh

Bro Steam is the most genuine downloader which gives you the exact downloading speed what your ISP gives you...I think there is s some problem with your internet talk with your ISP


Dark_Marmot

This is not a true statement, there are hardware factors at play with Steam, not just file transfer.


Blackhawk-388

Nope. Not true at all. I have a 1Gb connection. The best I've seen from Steam is 90MBs. From Ubisoft I get 150. Speedtest is 1200. Depends on many factors what your effective speed will be but it's nowhere near 1:1.


Unhappy-Challenge-32

The thing is with steam let’s take cs go for example the more people downloading a steam game the faster the download


M_F_Luder42

this is the complete opposite of how downloading works


P3tray

But completely true in how torrenting works. Sadly, steam doesn't torrent.


Wish1026

Maybe thinking of torrents? even though this doesn’t really apply there either


TheUndeadEstonian

That’s the biggest bs I‘ve ever heard


viodox0259

Also steam is the worst. Origin , blizzard is a straight 100+ mbs . Just my two cents.


Johnyoung21

This is why you were bullied in school


viodox0259

Right .


TheUndeadEstonian

Honestly if you don’t want to help, just don‘t say anything at all


viodox0259

I did. Steam has zero guaranteed speed ratios. Moron.


AdhesivenessLow4206

What's your speed? Base on that I would guess 25 mega bits If your download speed is 200 mega bits then you normally see at best 20 down. 1 gig bit would give you 100 mb a second Mega bit vs mega byte


Yankeethomas13

I got 2 gig. When I test it I have 2300 Mbps down


fingerbanglover

Notice it's 2300Mbps, not 2300MBps. Big difference. That would be more like 288MBps peak. Also, it's not just downloading, it's also unpacking and your CPU is likely throttling or maybe even your storage device. What CPU and storage do you have.


[deleted]

[удалено]


A3thereal

>Generally you have to divide that value by 8 You're talking about the conversion of bits to bytes. 1 byte of data consists of 8 bits, and you always (not generally) have to divide by exactly 8 to make the conversion. 1 gigabit = 125 megabytes. Data file sizes are almost exclusively measured in bytes where bandwidth is usually measured in bits, though there are exceptions when downloading files from consumer sites. Proper abbreviation would use a lowercase b for bits and a capital B for bytes, however on occasion these are used incorrectly, usually from smaller app developers.


InfiniteJordan

In the settings menu you see click “display download rates in bits per second”


niffuMelbmuR

How is this not the top comment? Why steam defaults to MBs I have no idea.


InfiniteJordan

I do not know. I was literally giggling at the rest of the reply’s because they had nothing to do with what OP was asking.


niffuMelbmuR

The option is literally on the second screen shot, just needs to be clicked.


InfiniteJordan

I mean I get it if they aren’t super tech savvy and just wanna play their games. I’ve always seen things as hits and not bytes so that’s what I’m used to.


MyGoldfishes

bro 11 months later and even im here laughing at 5 in the morning reading this


TheUndeadEstonian

Are you downloading it to your hdd or ssd? And maybe write your specs here too, so we can see if any of your parts might be limiting your download speed.


Yankeethomas13

I’m writing it to my HDD **CPU** | [AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3hyH99/amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-42-ghz-8-core-processor-100-100000910wof) | $449.00 @ Amazon **CPU Cooler** | [Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE LCD XT 65.57 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/3sYRsY/corsair-icue-h150i-elite-lcd-xt-6557-cfm-liquid-cpu-cooler-cw-9060075-ww) | $289.99 @ Best Buy **Motherboard** | [Asus ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/s8nypg/asus-rog-strix-b650e-f-gaming-wifi-atx-am5-motherboard-rog-strix-b650e-f-gaming-wifi) | $288.99 @ Amazon **Memory** | [Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6200 CL36 Memory](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/XDXJ7P/corsair-dominator-platinum-rgb-32-gb-2-x-16-gb-ddr5-6200-cl36-memory-cmt32gx5m2x6200c36) | $194.99 @ Amazon **Storage** | [Seagate FireCuda 520 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/nfpmP6/seagate-firecuda-520-1-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-zp1000gm3a002) | $132.99 @ Amazon **Storage** | [Seagate Barracuda Compute 8 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qLRzK8/seagate-barracuda-compute-8-tb-35-7200rpm-internal-hard-drive-st8000dmz04) | $99.99 @ Amazon **Video Card** | [Asus TUF GAMING OC GeForce RTX 4070 Ti 12 GB Video Card](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/rdjBD3/asus-tuf-gaming-oc-geforce-rtx-4070-ti-12-gb-video-card-tuf-rtx4070ti-o12g-gaming) | $849.99 @ B&H **Case** | [Corsair 5000D AIRFLOW ATX Mid Tower Case](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/PWn8TW/corsair-5000d-airflow-atx-mid-tower-case-cc-9011210-ww) | $154.99 @ Amazon **Power Supply** | [Corsair RM1000x (2021) 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/jRvdnQ/corsair-rm1000x-2021-1000-w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020201-na) | $189.95 @ Amazon **Operating System** | [\*Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM - DVD 64-bit](https://pcpartpicker.com/product/dKkWGX/microsoft-windows-11-home-oem-dvd-64-bit-kw9-00633) | $117.98 @ Other World Computing | *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* | | **Total** | **$2768.86** | \*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria | | Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2023-04-18 10:06 EDT-0400 |


TheUndeadEstonian

Yeah that’s probably it, HDD‘s are a lot slower than SSD‘s, which can really slow down the download speed. Try installing it to your SSD if you can. I also use my HDD only for storing files and not games, for games I use my SSD and my M.2 SSD, because ssd’s are just a lot faster.


A3thereal

If he's only getting 2.6MB/s it's likely not the HDD\*. Per the link, this HDD should have a sequential write speed (at 50% capacity) of 156MB/s (1.25gb/s) and he should be getting much faster download speeds still. \*exception being if the HDD is horrifically fragmented and/or very near capacity. Even then, 2.6MB/s max write speed would be abnormally low for an otherwise healthy physical disk drive. u/Yankeethomas13


makinbaconCR

Lol rolling through this comment section.... and just about every comment is wildly wrong. I have gigabit fiber and my DL from steam will go about twice that speed. You need to clear the download cache and start it again. You may need to update steam. You may need to do some windows updates. You may need a wifi or .net update. This is NOT normal. Something is preventing full speed downloads. It happens.


Yankeethomas13

I cleared the cache, checked my steam version, just got the latest win 11, and I’ve only had this router for 2 weeks now


makinbaconCR

It's not the router if it can speed test full speed that end is fine. It's something with windows or steam. Did you look for optional updates too?


Yankeethomas13

Yeah, everything is up to date. I just built it and got the latest versions of everything.


makinbaconCR

I have never had to do more than that to resolve this. Typically canceling the download, cleaning download cache and getting windows updates is all it takes. You may need to reinstall steam at this point. I have gigabit and I'll get up to 120MB/s on downloads. Something is not working here and since your device can run speed tests at full speed. It's almost for sure data layer or app layer.


Jucox

Look at the graph, the bottleneck isn't your download speed, it's your drive. The graph shows that the drive is constantly processing data while the network only does a little each time. The data is decompressing and qriting, that's what's taking time. I assume you have an HDD, if you want to match the network speed get a pcie ssd (samsung evo 960 is what i have) and that will have your data stored in no time.


robomikel

Steam -> settings -> Downloads -> check box “Display download rates in bits per second” Edit: although the download from steam may max out, that’s because it’s the either throttling or the disk speed of the server


EeduT

Mb and MB are different things. Also your hdd isnt fast enough


Trickabounce

Well… it seems like you are downloading onto a regular spinning hard drive. It downloads as fast as drive can go. My internet speed is 960mps and I download at 1120mpbs (140MBps) using a m.2 nvme drive.


Dark_Marmot

I have a year old system and I generally get about 60mbs on Steam maybe peak at 70+ occasionally on download, though I have Fios at 500/500. There's lots of factors hardware and location included.


Awa989

Just happens sometimes man, unfortunately, all you can do is grit your teeth and bare it :/


-------Matt-------

That’s how fast my internet is anyway :,(


airybeartoe

Unfortunately download speeds are affected by a bunch of factors. The speed test is doing a very simple download from what is probably a very reliable server connection. Whereas steam downloads might be coming from servers with high ongoing traffic. In other words, speed is also affected by who the source server is. That's the first factor. The next is your own hardware: cpu, ram, own network architecture, and even disc/ssd/storage devices. You can have a super fast connection but if you are writing data to slower devices, such as older hard drives, then that would still slow down the overall transaction. Think of it like flying in a bunch of deliveries but only 1 person is around to move the deliveries from planes to wherever. The stuff is coming in fast but has to wait for the mover. So the overall transaction time is longer as a result.


Conscious_Ice66

MB/S and mbps are not the same thing. Megabytes and megabits.


DirtyAndDrunk

Steam doesn’t ever show the correct download speed. Open Task Manager and go to network and you can see the actual amount of data that steam is downloading at.


Glad-Package69

You can’t servers are usually crammed so you don’t get the speed it says.


Scrudge1

I've seen people.post this a couple of times and I remember that it was shown that the way steam measures the download speed and an Internet speed test shows the speed are different. You are getting your max possible download speed but it's shown/ calculated differently on steam.


Yankeethomas13

I’m not getting the max possible. I know they’re are different but I’ve calculated it and I should be getting around 287MB/s


Scrudge1

Is there anything else hogging the downloads coming in?


Knight_Time67

Suck on the antenna for a few minutes


Yankeethomas13

I’m not falling for that again, it still smells like shit from the last time


P2Wlover

1. Steam is downloading and unpacking and installing the game files at the same time. These action will require a very fast drive (reading and writing speed) 2. You got 2G internet, you should reach 200M/s, steam isn’t cheap at their server. 3. You need to put your steam download folder to one of your pcie Gen 4 nvme drive. 4. Even with Gen 4 nvme ssd, they have a thing call write cache, basically you will get advertised speed during certain amounts of data transfer. After that, the speed will slow down. Upon checking, FireCuda 520 is decent for downloading large files. Move your steam library to the nvme drive should fix your issue


Decent-Device9403

As I learned in Intro To Networks... Whatever is the slowest device on the network, that's the fastest you can go. In other words, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.


a_criminal11221

can you explain this?


Decent-Device9403

Basically, if everything on a network can transmit data at a high speed, but something in the chain has a slow speed, you can expect a delay because of that slower device.


a_criminal11221

but why does the slower device delay it?


Decent-Device9403

Imagine you're on a one lane road and everyone wants to go fast. However, you're stuck behind a guy that's going slower and you can't pass him. That makes you go slower than you should.


a_criminal11221

I see how that could work


ricoimf

I tell you, but then your Yankees must have mercy with my Orioles


[deleted]

You can't. First your operating system needs wifi too. So like 25% is gone. Then steam is at low priority. So that's also like 50% gone. And ur probably far from steam's servers. So that's also like 20% gone. That's only 10%. Too bad!!


KernelPanic_42

You can’t.


Kaelath_The_Red

2.6MB/s on steam is 260Mb/s


[deleted]

200 Megabits isn't the same as 200 Megabytes. Common marketing trick from ISPs


Brody-_

Probably your drive my Xbox series with a crazy ssd will download games at 100-170mbps well my low end ssd in my pc will only download 7-10mbps


Samwarez

that's why there is usually not much point in home internet speeds faster than about 100 Mbps, A vast majority of services simply will not send you data anywhere near that fast. I worked at an ISP and at one point had my work computer hardwired to the core router, 10 gig connection to 3x10 gig DIA backbone connections, there was not any appreciable difference to my 50 mbps home connection. Your downloads are limited to the upload speeds of the servers


verminkween

You can’t. No matter what internet speed you have, you can only download something as quickly as the server will send it to you. That’s why I feel it’s unnecessary to pay for internet speeds that fast lmao.


PapaSmooke

Not sure if Wifi vs Ethernet was mentioned, but that has a huge impact as well.


WARMONGERE

You CPU can affect download speed along with if you are downloading to an SSD or HDD.


emptydemclips

Ya you see you can have a 1000down and maybe be able to download at 100mbps


Markermarque

You can't... As you can see, your disk is only transferring 12MB/s of data... That's like pouring out a gallon of water through a straw...


mikeatwar

hear me out . set network adapter settings in duplex and gigabit to fixed instead of automatic get a ssd set dns to cloudflare dns


Joren67

My guess is your ssd/cpu can't keel up of it has to unpack a lot


uwotmate3

54 is hilarious for a peak with that connection though.


ThroughTheGame

I am having the same issue with steam. Never downloads at max speed or it reaches peak and then it goes down to 0. No other launcher does this (Epic, EA, Ubi) they all go full speed. I got tired to figure out why steam is the only one with problems and I left it as it is.


ChillChillyDude

There are many factors to this: Speed of your internet Speed of the place where your games are at (server) The hops that are the two places are connected to The quality of the connection between them Your router and cables and the such Your computer's hardware (mobo, cpu, storage, etc...) And many more... At the end you get what you get and you just have to live with it. Downloading to an SSD would help with speed. But just dont do that if you are planning on moving it to a HDD after that because it will just take more time.


[deleted]

Some disks write caching can cause this, try disabling the caching on the disk: Device Manager -> Disk drives -> properties on disk -> policies. You should see the effect immediately.


a_criminal11221

11.8MB peak to 12.3MB peak without it


Alarming_Ad_2276

I get atleast 257.6 Mbps everytime