Steam

[#1]

Hi,
I have noticed with my steam downloads that they tend to be around 200KB/S but can sometimes peak at 1MB/S (This tends to be when you start a download).
Now i'm thinking this might be an issue with server selection, am I best selecting London as all my speed tests tend to have better speeds and ping from London or Manchester which is nearer to my physical location?
Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Is your hard drive light on the whole time or most of the time while downloading games? could be youe HD slowing things down maybe?

[#3]

My case doesn't have a HDD light to check.  I will have a look so see if there is some software I can use to check

[#4]

Personally, I've always used the Netherlands content servers and usually max out most of the time, Back when I was on Plusnet, I used to be maxed out pretty much most of the time.
HDD I/O could also be playing a factor in this - Is it an SSD or a regular drive, if it's a regular one, you should be able to hear it chuntering away whilst it's doing it's stuff.
You could always look at http://www.hdtune.com/ and see what your R/W speeds are, etc.
Generally don't have a problem with Steam though, it's usually Origin that's slow as anything.
Cheers,
Matt

[#5]

Quote from: Rolyin

My case doesn't have a HDD light to check.  I will have a look so see if there is some software I can use to check

What speed do you get from speedtest.net?
You could try to see how responsive the drive is while downloading a game and then try to open a big file and see if there is a delay like a video file.
Alternatively, if you have a USB mem stick or sd card. You could try and save the game onto providing it has a faster write speed. Test the USB stick with a simple file transfer.

[#6]

I usually get about 5-6Mbps on speed test (Although today it has dropped to 0.7 for some reason) and my HDD is a mechanical (Where my games are stored anyway) but the read and write speeds were over 150MB/s
Ill just play around trying different servers to see if it makes a difference.  Thanks for the help.

[#7]

You should be getting 700-800kb/s or there abouts with a connection speed of 5-6mbit, with my 3.5mbit I get 450-470kb/s from steam consistently.  Last game i got on steam Farcry 3 during the sales.  I downloaded it over night and it weighed in at 11.5gig, which took about 7hours, so mine was running at full speed a week ago for certain.