Download rates on Steam?

Montala

Montala

Montala

Soldato
Joined
8 Oct 2005
Posts
2,840
Location
Herefordshire (U.K.)
This may have been discussed before, but a quick search didn't bring up any recent threads.

Thanks to BT still having not got round to installing fibre in our area I am limited to about 2.5 MB/s (on a good day!) download speed over an old 400 pair copper cable from the nearest exchange, which is about 3 miles away. Fortunately though the cabinet from which we are fed is right outside the house!

Anyway, I am currently downloading a large (5GB) game on Steam, and have noticed that the 'Peak Download Rate' quoted is 734.3 KB/s although it is continually fluctuating, and changing.

Speeds can be as low as virtually zero, but usually seem to be somewhere around the 250 - 300 KB/s levels.

What is surprisingly me though is the peak figure quoted, which I assume is only for a very short time, and is not a true representation of what is actually happening.

Is this what I should be expecting, given the circumstances?

Thanks! :)
 
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Montala said:
This may have been discussed before, but a quick search didn't bring up any recent threads.

Thanks to BT still having not got round to installing fibre in our area I am limited to about 2.5 MB/s (on a good day!) download speed over an old 400 pair copper cable from the nearest exchange, which is about 3 miles away. Fortunately though the cabinet from which we are fed is right outside the house!

Anyway, I am currently downloading a large (5GB) game on Steam, and have noticed that the 'Peak Download Rate' quoted is 734.3 KB/s although it is continually fluctuating, and changing.

Speeds can be as low as virtually zero, but usually seem to be somewhere around the 250 - 300 MB/s levels.

What is surprisingly me though is the peak figure quoted, which I assume is only for a very short time, and is not a true representation of what is actually happening.

Is this what I should be expecting, given the circumstances?

Thanks! :)
Click to expand...

Pause it and then restart it
 
You using a wired connection when downloading? If not do, no matter how good your router is, wired is better, even if you just use it while downloading.

Although to be fair if your DL speed is 2.5, 730k per sec ain't that bad. Like I said try downloading while wired or download midday on a weekday if possible.
 
Off topic, but Steam related, does anyone else find that there 'hours played' for a lot of games is obviously wrong?...I have a load of games in my library that it seems to have just made up! It seems that any game I have played for a few seconds had been rounded up to 8 or 9 hours
 
Since moving to a Sky 40MB connection which is fastest I can get in my area my steam downloads go no higher then 5.2MB/s which to be honest downloads a game 8GB average fairly quickly.

Playtime for my Steam games appears to look right to me, but i do know when I was on a slower connection, slower then the OP then Steam would lock up quite a bit, downloads were hit n miss. You can tweak the download speeds and server you connect to in settings, see if that helps.
 
Steam normally max's out my 16mb connection....(Apart from when they have there big xmas,summer,etc sales on)

Right now


My connection
 
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TwsT said:
download at 14-15MB/s here which is right for 125Mb/s connection.
Click to expand...

Virgin i take it?

Im on 120MB and rarely get about 4mb with steam but get 14-15 with ANYTHING else, Origin is amazing for using my download speed correctly!

My current speed
o16kbYJ.png


yet if i download anything else im banging away at max

6 nights ago:
3015160770.png

Tonight is a bit slow lol:
3029569426.png

3029573688.png
 
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On BT FTTC 80/20 I usually max the connection out on steam when downloading - worst I've seen just after a big release is 3MByte/s usually its ~8Mbyte/s.

EDIT: Whereas on Origin its all over the place - probably averages 3-4Mbyte/s but sometimes is less than 0.1MByte/s and other times will be spiking upto max connection speed but often stalls out completely requiring a manual restart to get data flowing again which means I can't leave it unattended for big downloads :|
 
HybridX said:
Virgin i take it?

Im on 125MB and rarely get about 4mb with steam but get 14-15 with ANYTHING else, Origin is amazing for using my download speed correctly!
Click to expand...
it depends what game your downloading on steam. afew games i only get 2-4MB/s. other games i get 14-15MB/s. of course i do mine in the mornings because i have connection/speed issues in the afternoon.

btw 4MB is 32Mbps.
 
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When performing Speed Tests I get a download speed of about 7-7.5mb/s but when I download from Steam I only ever get a maximum of about 1.2mb/s and an average of about 700-800kb/s
 
Why don't you try changing where you're downloading from? If you're downloading from London then change to Manchester for example.

On Virgin 120Mb/s here and normally get around 17MB/s downloading.



M.

Edit: To change where you're downloading from click Steam on the top menu then Settings then click the Download tab and then change the Download Region.
 
I sometimes get a sustained 13MB/s downloading from steam at quiet times, which would probably be about right as I'm on 120mb with VM - or rather I used to get that sort of speed before I capped it :)
 
Best best with Steam is to switch to the server that is closest to you. Manchester is closer to me and their speeds are around 2-3Mbps faster than the London server.
 
chaparral said:
I would love to get them download speeds....:p
Click to expand...

Oops... sorry... that should have been KB/s and NOT MB/s! :o

I have now edited my OP to correct this.

Just to confirm, I am using a hard wired, rather than a wired connection to my router, but unfortunately I just happen to live in a known problem area.
 
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