Different download speeds on different computers

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Kojiro 6 Aug, 2024 @ 4:34pm

I have a laptop and PC on the same network, both running wifi 6, supported by my router. I've tested both sitting right next to each other. We have a FTP connection that gets speedtests over 100MB/s.

When downloading from Steam, for some reason my PC will not go above 13MB/s while my laptop will happily hit 84MB/s. The laptop will even do this through the wifi extender while my PC won't go higher even when wired directly into the router.

There is no download throttling set in Steam, firewall is open, no VPN and no other antivirus installed.

The only difference between the two machines is that the PC runs Windows 10 while the laptop is on 11. But I really don't think the OS should be defining Steam downloads like that.

Does anyone have any idea why my PC would be so slow comparatively?

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Abigail From Sexy Ukulele Dept. 6 Aug, 2024 @ 5:04pm

Do you have a lot of disk activity? What type of storage does the desktop have?

Placenta Salad 6 Aug, 2024 @ 6:09pm

It's a bit weird that your download speeds are still slower when connected via ethernet.

Is Windows Auto-Tuning disabled? That's a feature of Windows 10 that can limit download speeds.

In a command prompt, ran as administrator, type "netsh interface tcp show global" to see if it reports as disabled on the second line that says something along the lines of "receive Window Auto-Tuning Level," and if it does, then type "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal" and then retest your download speeds.

Kojiro 6 Aug, 2024 @ 7:41pm

Originally posted by Abigail From Sexy Shrimp Dept.:
Do you have a lot of disk activity? What type of storage does the desktop have?

The storage on the PC and laptop is all NVME and this is while the computer is doing nothing else but browsing the web. Disk activity is almost exactly the download, just a smidge over.

Originally posted by Placenta Salad:
It's a bit weird that your download speeds are still slower when connected via ethernet.

Is Windows Auto-Tuning disabled? That's a feature of Windows 10 that can limit download speeds.

In a command prompt, ran as administrator, type "netsh interface tcp show global" to see if it reports as disabled on the second line that says something along the lines of "receive Window Auto-Tuning Level," and if it does, then type "netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal" and then retest your download speeds.

It's not slower but it's not faster either. Seems to lock in at 13MB/s regardless of connection. But I wanted to try every combination to see if I could isolate something.

I tried as you suggested, it already had the level set to 'normal' so I don't know what it did (other than say 'ok' to me lol). Didn't seem to make any difference though.

Either way, thanks for the suggestion.

Yujah 6 Aug, 2024 @ 8:51pm

It's probably the Steam + Windows Write Caching + certain NVMe drives one. F.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/t0q6d0/steam_write_speed_to_ssd_very_slow_1020_mbs_how/

https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/how_to_enable_or_disable_disk_write_caching.html

Kojiro 7 Aug, 2024 @ 6:51pm

Originally posted by Yujah:
It's probably the Steam + Windows Write Caching + certain NVMe drives one. F.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/t0q6d0/steam_write_speed_to_ssd_very_slow_1020_mbs_how/

https://www.majorgeeks.com/content/page/how_to_enable_or_disable_disk_write_caching.html

Well I gave it a try but no dice. Thank you though.

Yujah 7 Aug, 2024 @ 7:24pm

Mmm. Just in case: if you have multiple drives note someone saying in that thread that they needed to disable write caching on all before it helped.

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Date Posted: 6 Aug, 2024 @ 4:34pm

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