So...was there an upgrade to Steam's servers or something?

[Red Hawk]

For as long as I've had Steam, the highest download speeds I've gotten for Steam were between 3 and 4 GB/s. At best, right at 4. I just grabbed Undertale on a Steam weekend deal, downloaded it...and noticed it was downloading at around 7 MB/s. Curious to make sure this wasn't just some odd reporting because of how small a game (data-wise) Undertale is, I selected a game I didn't have currently installed, Neverwinter Nights 2, for download.

It's still hovering between 6 and 7 MB/s as I type. Peak download speed was 7.5. Scratch that, it just reached 8.2.

Nothing recently changed on my end with regards to ISP, wireless router and adapter, so I'm wondering if this is Valve doubling the available download bandwidth on their end that they allocate to each user. Anyone else notice this?

 

[Newbian]

I have had no issues maxing out my connection so it sounds like your isp issues more then anything.

 

[MarkLuvsCS]

Steam has been able to max my connection for a while, so I presume it's been your isp as a bottleneck in the past. I've upgraded a few times over the years and it always max out. Recently I had issues on a standard HDD slowing the download due to disk. Switched to SSD and now regularly hit 18-20MB/s on the download with disk usage around 30-40MB/s.

 

[zinfamous]

Steam has been able to max my connection for a while, so I presume it's been your isp as a bottleneck in the past. I've upgraded a few times over the years and it always max out. Recently I had issues on a standard HDD slowing the download due to disk. Switched to SSD and now regularly hit 18-20MB/s on the download with disk usage around 30-40MB/s.

This is my experience as well, but I don't think I get dl speeds that fast. I think I have always been Comcast bottlenecked even on my 80mb dl speeds, but getting something like 8-12mb on SSD install vs 900kb~2mb installing on HDD is crazy.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Check the steam settings for downloads, there's lots of options there including what region you connect to, this decides what servers you connect to and can effect speeds. It should auto detect but I'm guessing in some circumstances it may recommend badly or change its recommendation based on them adding new data centers.

Either way steam outside of holiday deals has always run at line speed for me which is currently 200mbit, about 24-25MB/sec which is quite fast. What is more it's not burst, it can sustain that for prolonged periods such as large downloads like GTAV clocking in at about 60Gb. So Props to Valve and Virgin Media my ISP, extremely fast services by both.

Also check disk usage when downloading, disks that are dying or are damaged can have bad sectors, areas on the disk that are slower to read/write and that can bottleneck downloads, there's loads of disk tools that can give you a "health check", might be worth trying.

 

[jlee]

Steam will usually max my connection. So far that's held true at 100Mbps, 150Mbps, and 300Mbps.

 

[Sho'Nuff]

For as long as I've had Steam, the highest download speeds I've gotten for Steam were between 3 and 4 GB/s. At best, right at 4. I just grabbed Undertale on a Steam weekend deal, downloaded it...and noticed it was downloading at around 7 MB/s. Curious to make sure this wasn't just some odd reporting because of how small a game (data-wise) Undertale is, I selected a game I didn't have currently installed, Neverwinter Nights 2, for download.

It's still hovering between 6 and 7 MB/s as I type. Peak download speed was 7.5. Scratch that, it just reached 8.2.

Nothing recently changed on my end with regards to ISP, wireless router and adapter, so I'm wondering if this is Valve doubling the available download bandwidth on their end that they allocate to each user. Anyone else notice this?

Nah - most likely its your ISP. I've been downloading stuff from steam at 24 megabytes/second for years now.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Steam will usually max my connection. So far that's held true at 100Mbps, 150Mbps, and 300Mbps.

Same here, and I was downloading a game on a gigabit connection once and it was near max on that as well which was pretty surprising.

 

[aigomorla]

Steam is uber fast at downloading unless its a AAA release date.
Even then now with preloads, it has lighten the load on release date.

I guess that's the only benefit in preorders, as you get to preload the game, and not have to face the bottlenecked bandwith on launch date.

But also with cloud based save games, it leaves me very little reason to keep the games on my SSD after i played it, because i can just redownload it at blazing fast speeds though steam again.

 

[cmdrdredd]

But also with cloud based save games, it leaves me very little reason to keep the games on my SSD after i played it, because i can just redownload it at blazing fast speeds though steam again.

If you don't have a cap sure. I have to pay extra to remove the cap and if I didn't my overages would cost more than the fee they charge me for unlimited usage.

 

[aigomorla]

If you don't have a cap sure. I have to pay extra to remove the cap and if I didn't my overages would cost more than the fee they charge me for unlimited usage.

that is a very good point.

I dont have a cap. The regional zone in which i live in would burn the Time Warner HQ if they put a Cap on our data. :biggrin:

Infact the City itself has sue'd them a couple of times for lousy CS and Poor business practices.

 

[Ranulf]

No problems here with maxing out a 150 Mbps cable line. It was probably OP's ISP or a bad connection to the steam servers.

 

[nerp]

I wonder if some of these amazing speeds are due to local caching of all this stuff within the ISP. You have to imagine the same big games are downloaded again and again and again, so how much of this is Steam's amazing server infrastructure, and how much of it is caching? Not that it really matters, just curious.

 

[lupi]

I'll need to check next time but my experience has been similar to OP for d/l speed while I can do speedtest all day and hit almost 70.

 

[cmdrdredd]

I wonder if some of these amazing speeds are due to local caching of all this stuff within the ISP. You have to imagine the same big games are downloaded again and again and again, so how much of this is Steam's amazing server infrastructure, and how much of it is caching? Not that it really matters, just curious.

Steam uses a CDN network so you are rarely downloading from across the country. At least in the US anyway.

 

[lupi]

downloading one of the lego games now, 7.9 peak averaging 6.5.

More than previously but not near what yall are seeing.

 

[Newbian]

Sounds like your isp is throttling you somewhere.

 

[Sabrewings]

I've always been able to max out my connection. Around 10MB/s (80mbps).

 

[JTsyo]

the highest download speeds I've gotten for Steam were between 3 and 4 GB/s

I was thinking "Holy crap that's fast." But now I realize it was a just a typo.

 

[Golgatha]

I have Google Fiber and I've seen downloads in the 50-60 MB/s (yes, big "B") range. Steam has big pipes.

 

[Tweak155]

As with previous posters, Steam DL speed has increased proportionally with my ISP speed increases over the years. Looks like you got a free bump... happens all the time.

 

[Ketchup]

I was thinking "Holy crap that's fast." But now I realize it was a just a typo.

Same, lol.

 

[Ranulf]

Steam uses a CDN network so you are rarely downloading from across the country. At least in the US anyway.

Yup. Comcast used to be one for Steam in Seattle. In Steam it even said "Seattle-Comcast" for server download options.

 

[Elixer]

For what it is worth, for me, Origin is fastest then steam then uplay for server speeds.