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Steam Slow Download Solution

June 27, 2010 | 1 Minute Read

I just bought Civ IV on Steam, because there’s some kind of sale. I started downloading it and it was giving me a measly ~200 KB/S download speed. This kind of sucked because I wanted to play pretty soon, and it would take a few hours at that rate.

I looked in the preferences for downloads, and noticed that I was connected to their Chicago datacenter. I tried switching it to Detroit and I still got some lame speeds. Then I switched to Phoenix, Arizona. And voila:

My hypothesis was that the datacenters were dying from the load of the Steam summer sale. So I tried picking a datacenter in a less sparsely populated area (Phoenix probably isn’t serving that much load compared to Chicago or New York), even though it was further away. I think my hypothesis stands. So if you’re experiencing slow downloads, try picking a datacenter that’s further away. Just wait until my download is finished first. 🙂

Comments

  • Mike

    I’ve tried it your way and there’s no doubt that it worked for you but unfortunately the same cannot be said for me. I can pause this download and start a torrent downloading the same game and within minutes I’m rolling at 1.2 Mb/s.

  • dan

    yeah didn’t work for me either. ive tried every state in australia lol, maxing out at 150 kb/s. which is terrible

  • SOMEONE

    My max is 40kb/s so stop crying lol

    • Trev

      I’m averaging around 30-50kb/s for the last 4 days, left this game going over night and all day while I was at work and it’s still going. Maybe I can play tomorrow after work

      • Troop

        Mine is also same it creeps me out when i fall in a sleep coz i know the game wont be downloaded when i get up in the next morning

  • Ronnie

    Thanks! That did work somewhat for me. For the others that commented, make sure you restart Steam after you change servers to see if it will work for you. I am also guessing that you may have to try several different ones to get the best results. And even than who knows. I will say it still didn’t max out my connection constantly. I was at around 200KB/s and now I am around 250 – 300KB/s. My max is at around 300KB/s so I am not sure if it would have went higher if I had a better connection on my end. Still its not great but it did help. Thanks

  • lairyboy

    Great tip. I just changed mine to New York from Manchester because the Americans are still in bed and got a 15X speed improvement.

  • bob

    Stop clogging the servers for people who actually live near Phoenix you tard!

  • bob

    nvm this is from 2010

  • mark

    I usually get 1-1.2MB/s when downloading, bought shogun 2 today, last day of sale so probably just overloaded servers, tried a few datacentres and so far nothing above what i was getting from my nearest server.

  • Jim

    This actually worked pretty good.

  • stroomrock

    You´re the king. Worked perfectly for me. Was downloading at a rate of 39kb/s – now it´s “flying” at 1,3 mb/s.

  • kvonkan

    It works. downloading MW3. went from 100kb/s to 3mb/s. nice. ty for help

  • Lee

    i was DL from atlanta and switching to phoenix almost doubled my speed. thanks!

  • Koen

    You legend, thanks alot!

  • spookcode

    Thanks for the tip, I’m in Australia, tried multiple Australian servers and couldn’t get above 80kb/sec, switched to Washington and now I download at 450kb/sec (Line max in my area) Nice work!

  • Matt

    Dude, you are a legend! Been re-downloading some old games i really wanted to play, but some of them were going abnormally slow. I wasnt even aware you could select your server of choice. Thanks a bunch bud

  • Swot

    Wow, this really does help a lot! Great find!

  • me

    iv been trying to download skyrim for half a month and were only 45% or somthing :/

  • me

    we are down at 2.3KB/sec min we once got 50KB/sec most of the time were at about 18kb/sec

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