this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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[–] kieron115@startrek.website 12 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Steam gets around this problem by doing the decompressing on the fly as you download. Go check out your CPU usage next time you install a game.

Edit: I think this is also why it defaults to not downloading while you game. Steam doesn't want you to have a bad experience from the decompression.

[–] Timbits@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

More like check your hdd. Steam goes like this for me download, download, download, pause downloading to extract and smash my hdd, download, download, downloand.

[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I think it ends up waiting for slower storage if your cpu or HDD are too slow. I experience that with slower sdcards on the Deck.

But on a decent NVMe with a balanced CPU the download and disk are full bore and the CPU usage goes really high.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

Ahh yeah this could be. My system isn't by any means crazy but it is modern. A tuned 5600x (draws about 115W at full load) and an nvme 3.0 ssd. I'm being bottlenecked by internet bandwidth at the moment.

collapsed inline media

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Is this why steam is so insanely slow to download games.

[–] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

It can be, spinning iron has pretty bad throughput.

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 1 points 2 hours ago

Could be a variety of things but yes. It also depends on the game and how compressible it's assets are.