Steam download speed capped in CachyOS?

Issues & Assistance
1

Hi, I’m stuck and I’ve been trying different things for weeks and i can’t find a solution

On windows i could reach up to 7 Gbps on download speed.

But for some reason, not matter what i do, not matter what i download i get 1.2 Gbps to 1.5 Gbps on CachyOS.

It’s like it’s capped, it spikes up to 1.1gbps and then never goes higher with a few spike to 1.5gbps.

here’s everything i check

  • Not a CPU issue htop shows no single core above 10% during downloads.

  • Not an SSD issue my Samsung 990 Pro does 2 GB/s (16 Gbps) in fio, well above my internet speed.

  • Network stack fully optimized BBR, ring buffers at 32768, TCP buffers maxed, no bufferbloat (Grade A).

  • HTTP/2 makes it worse Enabling it cuts speed in half (500 Mbps). Disabled is better but still capped.

An aria2c speed test show at least 4 Gbps on download.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

I had this issue when initially switching. I don’t know if you have tried this, but this entry in the Arch wiki solved my issue:

3

Yeah already did, with http2 enabled i get even slower speeds so i had to disable it to reach the 1.5gbps. Still far from what my internet is capable

4

Steam throttles. they have probably a billion or more users.

5

Haven’t read the part where I get 4 time the speed on windows?

6

So you have a 10G network card?

7

what do you think?

❯ iperf3 -c 10.0.0.1
Connecting to host 10.0.0.1, port 5201
[ 5] local 10.0.0.2 port 56494 connected to 10.0.0.1 port 5201
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 1.18 GBytes 10.1 Gbits/sec 0 8.84 MBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 1.17 GBytes 10.0 Gbits/sec 1 14.8 MBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 1.16 GBytes 9.98 Gbits/sec 1 21.1 MBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 1.16 GBytes 9.98 Gbits/sec 1 27.2 MBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 1.16 GBytes 10.0 Gbits/sec 1 33.3 MBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 1.17 GBytes 10.0 Gbits/sec 1 39.5 MBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 1.17 GBytes 10.0 Gbits/sec 1 45.6 MBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 1.12 GBytes 9.64 Gbits/sec 1 51.7 MBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 1.16 GBytes 10.0 Gbits/sec 1 57.8 MBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 1.16 GBytes 9.98 Gbits/sec 1 63.9 MBytes

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 11.6 GBytes 9.99 Gbits/sec 9 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 11.5 GBytes 9.90 Gbits/sec receiver

iperf Done.

8

Not much of my luck on my end with it. Compared to my Win11 image I’m getting ~40% less speed.

At first it was even worse ~80%…

This helped me:

sudo nano ~/.steam/steam/steam_dev.cfg
@nClientDownloadEnableHTTP2PlatformLinux 0
@fDownloadRateImprovementToAddAnotherConnection 1.0
@cMaxInitialDownloadSources 15

Disable power mode on my wifi adapter.

sudo mkdir /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/
sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/powersave.conf
[connection]
wifi.powersave=2

I could try to setup a cable connection with AP, but I don’t want to deal with it since, on my Win11 image I don’t have the same problem. I do like wireless option more.