All Discussions > Steam Forums > Suggestions / Ideas > Topic Details
Gargoyle Girl 23 Jul @ 5:11pm
Change how Steam shows patch downloads.
Right now, it seems to suggest you're downloading GBs of data for patches that are MBs in size. What's actually going on there? Is Steam just running through the existing files to see where the patch data goes? If that's the case, then it should show that rather than presenting things as an otherwise fine download speed on the users ISP underperforming somehow.

I get 20 MBPS on my ISP. I just downloaded a patch for a game that was maybe 7 GB. Steam showed it coming through at 5 MBPS, and it took a total of 3 hours to complete. That neither adds up nor makes sense even if it did add up. Chatting with people in discussions, it appears that Steam had some issue where the only option was to re-download the entire game including the patch in order to install it... and that's the most @$$ backward way of doing things I've ever heard of, since it takes a 7 GB patch and converts it in this case to a 47 GB patch that's half download and half already existing files being slowly merged together.

Protocols should also be put in place for games hosted here that prevent such a goofy bottleneck, and provide patches that work more efficiently with Steam if this is the end result.
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CodNome 23 Jul @ 5:26pm 
Did you manage to find out how to fix this? I'm trying to download a game with a 600 mega internet connection and it keeps fluctuating and sometimes it resets and takes hours.
#1
Gargoyle Girl 24 Jul @ 6:12am 
Originally posted by CodNome:
Did you manage to find out how to fix this? I'm trying to download a game with a 600 mega internet connection and it keeps fluctuating and sometimes it resets and takes hours.

No, sadly. As I said, I ran speedtest during the download and its detecting 20 MBPS download speed, but Steam is only getting... or giving... 5 MBPS. And watching the actual patch process, it's definitely adding the time the patch takes to be applied to the overall download time, which is deceptive.

If I could have my way, Steam would have three meters: one for the patch being downloaded, one for it being applied, and one for the overall progress. I honestly don't know why it doesn't get the patch first, then apply it; it seems to do it all together, which seems to stretch apply the patch out to insane lengths.
#2
Mad Scientist 24 Jul @ 6:16am 
Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:
Protocols should also be put in place for games hosted here that prevent such a goofy bottleneck, and provide patches that work more efficiently with Steam if this is the end result.
Devs can choose how to have patching done, some even use PAKs which require all of it at once, others use launchers which just overwrite the changed files without compression/encryption.
As for bottleneck, you can select different download regions if only hitting 5 of 20 on a current region, but the real bottleneck is;
Originally posted by Gargoyle Girl:
I get 20 MBPS on my ISP.
Steam can obliterate gigabit+ connections, let alone 20 Mbps connections, as long as the parts involved can keep up. There is also other factors such as if this is ethernet or wifi.
#3
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Date Posted: 23 Jul @ 5:11pm
Posts: 3
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