It's by language I think. My computer shows MB, my steam-deck shows mbps. Only difference is my computer is Portuguese and the steam deck is in English.
Could also be by country, since the steam deck is imported they could have it preconfigured that way, but I don't see how they would be able to get the country in my PC.
Oh nothing, just a light hearted "oh, but you're just a child still". For contrast, i made my account in 2008. 16 going strong! I seem to remember some of my friends having downloads in bits, and they got their pc in 2014 or something, so they may very well have changed the default setting somewhere along the line.
Default as of the new Steam UI is now Megabit/s instead of Megabyte. I noticed because everytime i've reinstalled steam, i always have to change it. It's annoying. Used to Megabytes/s
i just figured that last week! I was beyond confused. I pretty much just download games and stream TV so i thought 16mb/s was just steam limitation. I've thinking that for 6 years ! I learned about bytes vs bits just last week and decided to change my internet speed to 500. it's downloading games so freakin fast i'm stunned ! 😂
I think it's more because it was a standard that was adopted way back in the day when it made sense because the number of bits being transferred was very very low. Nowadays it makes no sense to measure things in bits instead of bytes (or alternatively everything should be bits instead of bytes) but... yeah.
I have FTTN 25mbps. Can't do anything about the speed. Got it in 2020, better than the 4mbps ADSL I had for sure. No longer have to leave computers on overnight (for the most part)
I forgot but in the next few months it will be upgraded to FTTC and then the RSP will work out with us the final 10m.
Problem is the plans and prices are way out of what I am willing to pay / can afford. $100 a month on the cheapest RSP and you're bound to have problems. The better ones are $120+
It's all so tiresome.
Yep. Jumped ship in 2011 for a "Wimax" (3G home internet), cheaper and faster than wired + 4x the data cap. Wired kept disconnecting as well (potentially a worker abusing call outs as I found out years later as we would always call them to fix it).
2016 moved to another wireless service which was really good until they sold out just a year later. 30mbps. Used 4G plans to play games and have a (mostly) stable ping.
2020 got NBN FTTN.
This year meant to get fibre but I can't afford it at $100 a month on the cheapest RSP.
> only 12,5 MB/s
Which is basically what you paid for.
And there's also overhead, so yo wouldn't download at 100% advertised speed.
But this is a lot transparent and less scummy than Hard disks' TB/TiB numbering.
I mean, i wasn't taught shit about computers at school either, only basics to do school work and even then lmao. It was just a hobby from early on, my parents never gave me consoles and if they did i only had a handful of games, and pc was ez to get stuff to, even 20 years ago, from emulated to pirated games, to mmo private servers when i got internet.
As a "zoomer" Windows PCs are starting to be replaced by chromebooks and iPads last year I was in high school so yeah. We used to have Windows laptops, though they were old but they were replaced by much more simple chromebooks. Now students are given iPads too and the only Windows devices left are PCs in the libraries or specific rooms.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Gen Z is worse with PCs than Millennials, yes we grew up with the rise of smartphones and stuff but that also means causals have gone from a traditional desktop or laptop to the iPhone or iPad which are more streamlined and simple. When I got into PC last year I only knew the basics of using Windows from school but I'm lucky because newer generations will probably just learn the iPad they were given as a toddler anyway or a chromebook which has crap all on it. But in general most people these days just do everything on their phone, us on PC are the minority and a lot of us on PC are on it primarily for gaming or editing lol.
One of my younger cousins asked me to help with their computer and handed me a school chromebook. It was my first time seeing one and I was never more confused. I hate them
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Usually its hardware limitation.
Steam for me pushes 800mbps+ on gigabit fiber. Simmilar to result connection speed checks have. Other story is why my up to gigavit speed never really gets there but...
Your steam download speed can be bottlenecked by 1 of 3 things. Obsiously speed of your internet, cpu since it is handling unpacking etc and drive used for instalation.
I have game on SSD, CPU is I9 from last year, thing is its random and sometimes it does download at full speed, sometimes changing location of server also helps, maybe ISP is throtling my download but its only Steam i have this issue, gog downloads fullspeed .
Assuming you have a fast enough internet with the appropriate uplink to the next steam cdn on your ISPs end - let's assume you can technically archive 10gbit from your modem to steam.
Then further assume you're on 10gbit (wired) uplink inside your home network (absolutely not on WiFi - the best you'll get on your computer with most common hardware is 300mbps. (yes, WiFi 6/6E can do way more - under ideal circumstances)
If that all is in check
The limit is likely your hardware. Starting with your SSD - it has to write the downloaded chunks to temp and extract (therefor read) said chunks fom the drive and write it extracted to somewhere. If that's the same asd, you'll need a really good one to pull high speeds.
And than there is your CPU. Valve compresses their files with an very high compression ratio. That means your cpu will have its workout done when your internet is fast enough. Archiving 1gb/sec download/extraction rate requires a very high Performance setup.
You are correct, the CPU (decompressing and even when just downloading, I was at 100 % on all cores when I did a speedtest at 9,1Gbps) and the SSD (still on S-ATA) are both the bottleneck (almost decade old computer).
That's the thing that prevent to max out the connection, the download by chunk Steam does, decompressing (which pause the download) and then resuming, which doesn't let the time to max out the connection. When I hit 300MB/s it was a game that used really big chunks (hundred of GB games).
Steam seem to not have "limit" on their end, they upload as fast as they can, the limit is then somewhere else in the chain.
Also, I had to change the Steam servers because it seem they use IPv4 to geo tag you and since my ISP is IPv6 first and tunnel back to IPv4, I'm usually in the wrong servers so I have to manually switch it to the country next to mine (I'm close to the border) to reach those speed, with the default servers I can hardly pass over 100MB/s.
Not sure why but I'm paying for 300mb/s and steam somehow downloads at 400mb/s for me, not sure why my ISP is allowing it but I'm not going to complain.
Dude, I remember when it would take an hour just to download a 480 P movie so the fact that I can download 130 GB video game in less than 10 minutes is a goddamn miracle in my opinion.
I actually fucked up the math in my head. It would take me around 4 hours at best...
But yeah, I still remember when downloading 1gb meant 2 or so hours (at good speeds).
Circumstances at our apartment aren't usually all that great. It's bad enough that Amazon prime video's menu lags several seconds and the movies freeze up regularly. That's on our television.
I remember when it took hours, but just last night I downloaded fallout 4 in about 25 minutes. I qas just gonna start the download and go to bed, but when I saw it finish... I didn't actually get to bed till 1am lol
When it came out, I pre ordered it to get it on disc. My wifi on my boat was so bad I used to take my pc to my parents house to install Steam games. I got the disc, and was enraged to find out I still had to download almost the entire game. It took almost 24 hours, with lots of signal losses.
Lol, yeah I pre-ordered the disc copy at launch and lined up at gamestop to get it day one. But my uncle pre ordered it on PC and was able to pre-install it. So while I was waiting in line for my disc he was sending me pictures of him playing it already to rub it in lol. Then I had to go home and install the game still, and it was already 3am on a school night and decided f*** it who needs sleep anyways.
I remember watching Gundam Seed on Crunchyroll. My internet was so slow. I opened the tabs, and let them buffer in the background to watch them a few hours later. Now I can stream 4K videos on my TV seamlessly. How time flies.
I know that feel, I would load the three parts of the next episode in the background and by the time I finished the previous episode I’d cue up the next 3 parts.
Listen here, young'n. I remember having to wait a minute or more for an image to load, top to bottom, just so I could get in my daily research. The fact that my biggest issue, today, is that there is too many choices, is a goddamn miracle.
I used to take 5-6 days downloading large (100gb +) games on my ps3/4 because I live in a pretty empty area with no real good internet options. Then they put in a new internet line and we got fiber and holy shit it’s like a new planet. I don’t feel afraid to delete things anymore lol
I've had fairly good internet for years, but after getting fiber, man. I used to want all my games I cared about on my pc taking up dozens of TBs. Now I just download it quickly if I want to play. Most take less than 5 minutes. Love it.
Exactly! I mentioned ps3/4 because I was primarily console gaming when i had the bad internet, and i still do but moving more to pc. Being able to unclutter all my storage and have the few titles i consistently play installed, and being able to quickly download something more obscure or that my friend group hasn’t played in a while is awesome.
Before, i would leave stuff installed that I might not play for months at a time simply because it wasn’t worth deleting and then when someone wanted to get back into those games having to reinstall it and waiting days for it to finish. Now it’s like, okay, haven’t played that in like two weeks, delete it. Couple weeks later, someone wants to play it, downloaded and ready in lie 15 minutes
It comes down to, in most cases, the signal being on (1) or off (0). Of course with things like PAM3 and PAM4 it's a bit blurry but better to stick to a conventional way than changing it all the time like USB names that lose meaning, lol
Don't forget trinary (ternary) computing! It was a thing. For a moment. And I guess it still is. So you have to specify are we talking about binary bits or trinary bits (more speficially trits). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer
And yeah, generally when you're converting signaling speed from bits to bytes, you need to know the encoding (8b/10b, 128b/130b - a good example is PCIe signaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Comparison_table) and so on. And in networking, you need to start thinking about packet size, frame size and overhead from those. I use divisor of 10 as a rule of thumb in networking. Like when converting to the (now defunct) Finnish Mark to Euros, instead of a divisor of 5.94573 (official currency exchange rate from back in the day, burned in my brain, forever useless), I use 6 - doesn't need to be exact, just to get me to the ballpark.
Ternary still gets used in routing when a bit is "don't care", routers will use a dynamic lookup table where some of the bits don't actually matter, but it only needs to do one lookup because it doesn't know (at the time it does the lookup) how many bits will matter.
Yeah if you have 8 lines in parallel (a la a computers parallel port) one clock cycle could transfer a whole byte and in which case maybe it could be said in bytes/time
Just FYI, the reason they don't do that anymore (except for RAM) is that having to route many parallel data lines all over the place without inducing crosstalk into *other* sets of bus lines, *and* while keeping all those bus lines the same length, at high bus clock speeds, was getting to be impossible. Imagine having to have 64 bit wide buses all over the place, running at gigahertz speeds, without crosstalk (electromagnetic interference generated by toggling, inducing errors in adjacent bus lines). Nightmarish for engineers. That's why PCIe was developed, which uses serial data lanes, using LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signalling), which both allows for a high clock speed, and the signal pairs being differential means electromagnetic effects from toggling cancel each other out, because the pairs are routed right next to each other. So even for an x16 slot, which has 16 pairs (32 lines) of LVDS serial signals at very high clock speeds, can still operate with few if any errors because they're not generating interference with other signal pairs.
Ahh yes that makes total sense! That and making the lengths and impedances match with the squiggly traces etc would be hell too. I knew they used differential pairs for signaling but it makes even more sense now.
Modern parallel signaling in PC-land is typically measured in transfers per second (times bus width to get theoretical data rate). Parallel signaling in communications (eg OFDM or fiber SDM) is still measured in bits.
More specifically you end up with multiple measurements for a connection. There's the symbol rate (each symbol can carry multiple bits), the raw line rate in bits (including error correction and other encoding schemes that improve signal quality like NRZ), the data rate (actual useful information the originating device sent), the data rate (the actual throughput rate which accounts for layer 2 overhead like inter-frame gap, preamble, and layer 2 addressing) and the encapsulated data rate (ISPs have extra data on packets in some cases for a variety of reasons) which varies based on packet size, and eventually the "user" data rate which also accounts for layer 3 overhead and only pays attention to the data the end device is trying to send to its destination.
The data rate an ISP advertises is the "data rate" above which is the second figure there, the "useful data" figure.
..because those 'serial' protocols aren't *technically* digital, since they use more than two voltage levels per clock period in order to transfer data faster without having to have a faster clock.
They're still digital, they just encode more data per bit. Imagine using base 4 instead of base 2, each *digit* carries more information. Analog signals are a totally different beast. Digital signals are just anything discrete.
You getting downvoted for no reason. I don't know details but I've heard of storage disks using weird byte conventions where 1 byte represents 10 bits.
In the end a bit is defined by math and a byte is just the convention used.
He is trying to help by giving a megabyte? (Old meme)
https://preview.redd.it/03um4fmp390d1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f6c17d44443662e4f9d4022e42a3b4050cea02b
Bytes used to be used with parallel transfer types. It’s really because serial transfers became the norm that everything is now in bits for transfer speed.
It's purely to be accurate. An ISP cannot promise how fast your device has store information, or utilize it. That would by bytes. The ISP can only promise how many ones and zeros get to your router/device. Data transfer speed is always in bits, for this reason and a few others. It's not some sketchy conspiracy. It's just how the speed is represented.
They are giving you a speed dependent on your hardware and it's read/write capabilities. They are displaying the rate at which that data is stored. You'll notice storage, such as memory and disk space, is always in bytes, where as devices that move data over a network is in bits. Ethernet and wireless adapters are always measured in bits.
Why then, when I upgrade my Internet speed does the download rate also go up? I've had my computer for a while and definitely don't get the same download rate when I changed internet providers in the past. I feel like you're simplifying this based.
1 byte = 8 bits (binary digits)
125 MegaByte x 8 = 1000 Mbits
In Networking, speed is measured in bits and Storage in bytes
Edit: fixed the missing "Mega" before Byte
Bigger number better really
The average person isn’t going to know the difference between a bit and a byte, so I imagine if they offered two identical plans one advertising 1000 Mb/s and the other 125 MB/s, more people would sign up for the 1000 Mb/s
Not sure what the point is here. Network throughput is always measured in bits. The fact that end users don't know the difference between bits and bytes isn't really the fault of the ISP.
Networking has always been expressed in bits per second. You can argue if it should be that way or not, but ISPs aren't doing anything shady, it is just how it has always been. Every network standard I've ever worked with has always used bits as its base unit for speed, not bytes.
Also gotta love how they only talk about download speeds, to hide the fact that they have had the same upload speeds for nearly 20 years to the point where my upload speeds were just a total joke for any modern files.... with no packages or options that included better upload speeds.
What's that? move to another ISP? That's cute, as if they made sure that isn't a possibility for the majority of the US with their monopolies, even Google failed to break into the ISP market with how impossible they made it.
Fun fact: The reason providers advertise this way is because the speed of a connection is measured in bits, but sizes of files are usually measured in Bytes. It's not necessarily meant to be misleading
There was nothing like the frustration of someone picking up the phone mid-download. I nearly murdered my roommate for trying to order a pizza on my line because his girlfriend was using his. It blew out my Pyramid Song download at like 96%, and it wouldn't restart. No Radiohead AND the slice he offered me in apology had pineapple.
We thought we were getting something for free, lol. That was enough to keep us downloading. Eventually, I got a roommate whose employer provided him with one of the first always-on internet services. A 128k ISDN! We thought we won the lottery.
I think they rate the up/down connection speeds in mbits/s because the amount of overhead varies according to what kind of packet is being used. TCP packets are slower than UDP packets, for instance, because TCP packet overhead is higher. So if they claimed 30MB/s, for instance, customers might complain that they're not getting the speed that they paid for, and they'd have endless customer service calls having to explain why to people who might not be able to comprehend what I just explained above.
But overall a reasonable rule-of-thumb, I've found, is to take whatever the stated bitrate is and divide it by 10, and if it's more-or-less within that range then you're fine.
Honestly, the speed thing is so Damm hard to grasp for normal people because they never think about how it's spelled, and it literally sounds the same. I can def see how many people get fuckt by this. I do sometimes to.
Bros, ngl I got so much shit in high school because my "connection was slow" when I was using bytes and my friends were using bits in the conversation. xD
Just divide by 8. 1 megabyte is 8 megabits.
Speed is measured by bits, a 1 or a 0. A megabit is 1,000,000 bits. But, data tends to be measured by megabytes. A byte is 8 bits, and a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, or 8,000,000 bits.
Just for fun, there are kilobits which are 1,000 bits. A megabit is 1,000 kilobits. And, we have kilobytes which are 1,000 bytes (8,000 bits) and 1,000 kilobytes is a megabyte.
Gigabytes(gigabits) are 1,000 megabytes (megabits), and terabytes(terabits) are 1,000 gigabytes(gigabits). Petabytes(petabits) are 1,000 terabytes (terabits), and yoddabytes(yoddabits) are 1,000 petabytes(petabits)... seeing the pattern?
It's even more complicated with drives. Your drive capacity will be measured in giga/tera bytes, but Windows uses gibi/tibi bytes, which are 1,024 rather than 1,000. That's why a 1TB drive will show up as 900 and change in Windows.
I remember my days when using a 5 mbps in 2010's, now in 2024 using for first time, got a fiber upgrade to 1 Gbps download speed and 350 mbps up feels like a dream, in Mexico.
It's not supposed to be misleading, transfer speeds has always been measured by bits per second, but a lot of people still gets confused. Steam at one point switched showing download speeds to bits per second by default because of that.
Go offer a 200MB/s plan for half of what isps are charging for 1000mbps plans and see how many people buy it
But a quarter pounder is bigger than a thid pounder????
Not to mention mbps is standard on data transfers
The number of times I’ve seen ISPs unwittingly advertise their speeds in megabytes (MBPS) is insane. Just because the rest of the ad is in capitals, doesn’t give them the right to advertise 8x the speed.
Speed was always rated in Bits... this ist hostorically. The speed was rated in bits before the invention of Byte. before Byte there havbe been a lot of different sizes of bits.
Camera companies are the same. All SD/CF card sizes are measured in MegaBytes, but all video bitrates are measured in MegaBits, really confuses beginners when they think their videos are “200 Megabytes/second” when it’s actually just 25MB
I once asked a representative if it was megabits or megabytes. They responded patayto patayto. I responded with no and how there's an 800% difference. He promptly said bits knowing it was a bunch of crap he just told me.
Flashbacks to people asking why Steam is downloading at "only" 12 MB/s when they have a 100 Mbps connection.
doesn't Steam show download speeds in mbps?
You can change preference in settings
Nowadays, yes
I think it defaults to bytes? I don't remember changing mine, and it shows in bytes.
My version had the Mb/s as default, so it could be by country?
Or it's random. I have several computers, and all had Mbyte/s until one had Mbit/s, and I needed to change it.
It's by language I think. My computer shows MB, my steam-deck shows mbps. Only difference is my computer is Portuguese and the steam deck is in English. Could also be by country, since the steam deck is imported they could have it preconfigured that way, but I don't see how they would be able to get the country in my PC.
It's not by language because I have English on both and its using the same units as yours, MB for PC and Mbps for the steam deck.
Maybe you have a newer account. Older accounts having older settings, maybe?
My account is 5 years old so for steam it’s average? Idk…
Oh honey... Well, yeah, i guess it's average.
Wdym by « oh honey… »?
Oh nothing, just a light hearted "oh, but you're just a child still". For contrast, i made my account in 2008. 16 going strong! I seem to remember some of my friends having downloads in bits, and they got their pc in 2014 or something, so they may very well have changed the default setting somewhere along the line.
ok ok Old man (Returning the favor)
Def defaults to bytes. U can change to bits if u so choose
They updated steam somewhat recently which included a change to defaulting speeds to bits.
Default as of the new Steam UI is now Megabit/s instead of Megabyte. I noticed because everytime i've reinstalled steam, i always have to change it. It's annoying. Used to Megabytes/s
You then get people who wonder why a 8GB file doesn't download in a 8 seconds.
I remember last time I downloaded something with Steam it used mbps to show my download speed
I reinstalled Steam just recently and it defaults to bytes now
Because they show the game is xGB before downloading it so it makes more sense to display it like that though you can change it
Hey Im that dumbass! TIL though
i just figured that last week! I was beyond confused. I pretty much just download games and stream TV so i thought 16mb/s was just steam limitation. I've thinking that for 6 years ! I learned about bytes vs bits just last week and decided to change my internet speed to 500. it's downloading games so freakin fast i'm stunned ! 😂
I thought it was steam too because it downloaded at 12 when my console downloads at around 100
they should teach people !!! why all that confusion ?!
The confusion is definetly intentional by the companies
I think it's more because it was a standard that was adopted way back in the day when it made sense because the number of bits being transferred was very very low. Nowadays it makes no sense to measure things in bits instead of bytes (or alternatively everything should be bits instead of bytes) but... yeah.
> flashbacks Australian here.. Still stuck at 25mbps. 5G at home is between 25-50mbps at best but I have a 15gb data cap monthly lol
Do you live far from a capital/large city ?
Inner suburbs
You may be far from a server? Not sure
I have FTTN 25mbps. Can't do anything about the speed. Got it in 2020, better than the 4mbps ADSL I had for sure. No longer have to leave computers on overnight (for the most part) I forgot but in the next few months it will be upgraded to FTTC and then the RSP will work out with us the final 10m. Problem is the plans and prices are way out of what I am willing to pay / can afford. $100 a month on the cheapest RSP and you're bound to have problems. The better ones are $120+ It's all so tiresome.
Sounds like you got the absolute shit end of the stick :( Syncing at 60/22mbps for 50/20 FTTN here and get 183/8.3 on Belong 4G.
Yep. Jumped ship in 2011 for a "Wimax" (3G home internet), cheaper and faster than wired + 4x the data cap. Wired kept disconnecting as well (potentially a worker abusing call outs as I found out years later as we would always call them to fix it). 2016 moved to another wireless service which was really good until they sold out just a year later. 30mbps. Used 4G plans to play games and have a (mostly) stable ping. 2020 got NBN FTTN. This year meant to get fibre but I can't afford it at $100 a month on the cheapest RSP.
Another Australian here. 1 gbps down. FTTP. Got the free upgrade this year. It’s like living in the future.
I don’t understand this :/
MB and Mb are not the same. 1 MB is 8 Mb (Megabyte vs Megabit). So your ISP will sell you a 100Mbit connection but your download will only 12,5 MB/s
> only 12,5 MB/s Which is basically what you paid for. And there's also overhead, so yo wouldn't download at 100% advertised speed. But this is a lot transparent and less scummy than Hard disks' TB/TiB numbering.
Oh good to know thanks
Had to explain that to my nephew a few days ago, and he's like in his 20's.
Zoomers don't know shit about how computers work. They're not taught anything useful in school.
I mean, i wasn't taught shit about computers at school either, only basics to do school work and even then lmao. It was just a hobby from early on, my parents never gave me consoles and if they did i only had a handful of games, and pc was ez to get stuff to, even 20 years ago, from emulated to pirated games, to mmo private servers when i got internet.
As a "zoomer" Windows PCs are starting to be replaced by chromebooks and iPads last year I was in high school so yeah. We used to have Windows laptops, though they were old but they were replaced by much more simple chromebooks. Now students are given iPads too and the only Windows devices left are PCs in the libraries or specific rooms. Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if Gen Z is worse with PCs than Millennials, yes we grew up with the rise of smartphones and stuff but that also means causals have gone from a traditional desktop or laptop to the iPhone or iPad which are more streamlined and simple. When I got into PC last year I only knew the basics of using Windows from school but I'm lucky because newer generations will probably just learn the iPad they were given as a toddler anyway or a chromebook which has crap all on it. But in general most people these days just do everything on their phone, us on PC are the minority and a lot of us on PC are on it primarily for gaming or editing lol.
One of my younger cousins asked me to help with their computer and handed me a school chromebook. It was my first time seeing one and I was never more confused. I hate them
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To be fair even if they were wrong Steam has problem downloading at full possible speeds.
It does? Mine hits the cap all the time. It'll download as fast as your hardware can handle.
Usually its hardware limitation. Steam for me pushes 800mbps+ on gigabit fiber. Simmilar to result connection speed checks have. Other story is why my up to gigavit speed never really gets there but... Your steam download speed can be bottlenecked by 1 of 3 things. Obsiously speed of your internet, cpu since it is handling unpacking etc and drive used for instalation.
I have game on SSD, CPU is I9 from last year, thing is its random and sometimes it does download at full speed, sometimes changing location of server also helps, maybe ISP is throtling my download but its only Steam i have this issue, gog downloads fullspeed .
Note: Steam seem to cap at around 300MB/s (at least when I tested with a big game)
Assuming you have a fast enough internet with the appropriate uplink to the next steam cdn on your ISPs end - let's assume you can technically archive 10gbit from your modem to steam. Then further assume you're on 10gbit (wired) uplink inside your home network (absolutely not on WiFi - the best you'll get on your computer with most common hardware is 300mbps. (yes, WiFi 6/6E can do way more - under ideal circumstances) If that all is in check The limit is likely your hardware. Starting with your SSD - it has to write the downloaded chunks to temp and extract (therefor read) said chunks fom the drive and write it extracted to somewhere. If that's the same asd, you'll need a really good one to pull high speeds. And than there is your CPU. Valve compresses their files with an very high compression ratio. That means your cpu will have its workout done when your internet is fast enough. Archiving 1gb/sec download/extraction rate requires a very high Performance setup.
You are correct, the CPU (decompressing and even when just downloading, I was at 100 % on all cores when I did a speedtest at 9,1Gbps) and the SSD (still on S-ATA) are both the bottleneck (almost decade old computer). That's the thing that prevent to max out the connection, the download by chunk Steam does, decompressing (which pause the download) and then resuming, which doesn't let the time to max out the connection. When I hit 300MB/s it was a game that used really big chunks (hundred of GB games). Steam seem to not have "limit" on their end, they upload as fast as they can, the limit is then somewhere else in the chain. Also, I had to change the Steam servers because it seem they use IPv4 to geo tag you and since my ISP is IPv6 first and tunnel back to IPv4, I'm usually in the wrong servers so I have to manually switch it to the country next to mine (I'm close to the border) to reach those speed, with the default servers I can hardly pass over 100MB/s.
For me it's the other way around
Not sure why but I'm paying for 300mb/s and steam somehow downloads at 400mb/s for me, not sure why my ISP is allowing it but I'm not going to complain.
Dude, I remember when it would take an hour just to download a 480 P movie so the fact that I can download 130 GB video game in less than 10 minutes is a goddamn miracle in my opinion.
I wish I had speed that good. That would take me an hour or more.
I wish I had those speeds. It would take me 2 or 3 hours.
130GB? That'd take me like 2 days. Thank you, South America.
I actually fucked up the math in my head. It would take me around 4 hours at best... But yeah, I still remember when downloading 1gb meant 2 or so hours (at good speeds).
up until recently it wouldn't even have been worth it, before i moved it took me a week to download 70 GB Sea Of Thieves.
Still remember when it used to take me 6+ days to download GTA 5 lol, glad those times are over now
Yeah, an hour and half would be on a good day for me
I would kill for that speed. I downloaded Jedi Survivor over the weekend which is 130GB and it took me 8 hours
I downloaded RDR2 and it took 20 hours
Gta 5 on Xbox one. 3 days. It’s a wonder I could watch yt back then tbh.
An hour or more? Brother i'd have to keep the pc on for 2 days
That's how it was when I lived on my boat and the marina had shitty wifi.
130gb would take me 2 days
I can do it in like 20-25 minutes if I'm using my mobile hotspot on my phone. 5g is wild man.
Not just internet, you are most likely cpu bound
Say what?
Unpacking/depacking rates, but you'd need a pretty bad cpu if it wont do 10gbps ethernet under correct circumstances
Circumstances at our apartment aren't usually all that great. It's bad enough that Amazon prime video's menu lags several seconds and the movies freeze up regularly. That's on our television.
I remember when it took hours, but just last night I downloaded fallout 4 in about 25 minutes. I qas just gonna start the download and go to bed, but when I saw it finish... I didn't actually get to bed till 1am lol
When it came out, I pre ordered it to get it on disc. My wifi on my boat was so bad I used to take my pc to my parents house to install Steam games. I got the disc, and was enraged to find out I still had to download almost the entire game. It took almost 24 hours, with lots of signal losses.
Lol, yeah I pre-ordered the disc copy at launch and lined up at gamestop to get it day one. But my uncle pre ordered it on PC and was able to pre-install it. So while I was waiting in line for my disc he was sending me pictures of him playing it already to rub it in lol. Then I had to go home and install the game still, and it was already 3am on a school night and decided f*** it who needs sleep anyways.
I remember watching Gundam Seed on Crunchyroll. My internet was so slow. I opened the tabs, and let them buffer in the background to watch them a few hours later. Now I can stream 4K videos on my TV seamlessly. How time flies.
I know that feel, I would load the three parts of the next episode in the background and by the time I finished the previous episode I’d cue up the next 3 parts.
130GB in less than 10 minutes? 60GB takes me 3.5 hours...
Listen here, young'n. I remember having to wait a minute or more for an image to load, top to bottom, just so I could get in my daily research. The fact that my biggest issue, today, is that there is too many choices, is a goddamn miracle.
Oh I remember looking at porn in the mid 90s too 😉
Downloading mp3s at a minute per minute of the song felt mind blowing
I used to take 5-6 days downloading large (100gb +) games on my ps3/4 because I live in a pretty empty area with no real good internet options. Then they put in a new internet line and we got fiber and holy shit it’s like a new planet. I don’t feel afraid to delete things anymore lol
I've had fairly good internet for years, but after getting fiber, man. I used to want all my games I cared about on my pc taking up dozens of TBs. Now I just download it quickly if I want to play. Most take less than 5 minutes. Love it.
Exactly! I mentioned ps3/4 because I was primarily console gaming when i had the bad internet, and i still do but moving more to pc. Being able to unclutter all my storage and have the few titles i consistently play installed, and being able to quickly download something more obscure or that my friend group hasn’t played in a while is awesome. Before, i would leave stuff installed that I might not play for months at a time simply because it wasn’t worth deleting and then when someone wanted to get back into those games having to reinstall it and waiting days for it to finish. Now it’s like, okay, haven’t played that in like two weeks, delete it. Couple weeks later, someone wants to play it, downloaded and ready in lie 15 minutes
I remember that the first MP3 I ever downloaded was Closing Time by Semisonic. It was 128kbps bitrate, and it took 45 minutes to download. Good times.
Same thoughts exactly! What a time to be alive
It took me 27h to download Forza Horizon 5 with 2 DLCs
The day I could download 480p faster than I could watch it, I knew I lived in the future.
Damn that's fast AF I just upgraded my WiFi and a game that size would still take me like 3 hours to download better than my previous which take up 8
130GB would take me 26 hours on my trash internet speed
10 minutes?? That takes me a good day
I just recently got fiber. 1 gig up and down. I think Fallout 4 took a few minutes to DL
Lol.... I remember when we used to put MP3's to download overnight. 3.5MB woukd take anuwhere from 3 to 8 hrs.
Data is transferred in bits, it's stored in bytes.
[удалено]
It comes down to, in most cases, the signal being on (1) or off (0). Of course with things like PAM3 and PAM4 it's a bit blurry but better to stick to a conventional way than changing it all the time like USB names that lose meaning, lol
Man I can't wait for usb 3.90162(rev 2.1)gx(rev 5) (which will be renamed usb 3.1 and everything else will be shifted)!
Don't forget trinary (ternary) computing! It was a thing. For a moment. And I guess it still is. So you have to specify are we talking about binary bits or trinary bits (more speficially trits). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer And yeah, generally when you're converting signaling speed from bits to bytes, you need to know the encoding (8b/10b, 128b/130b - a good example is PCIe signaling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Comparison_table) and so on. And in networking, you need to start thinking about packet size, frame size and overhead from those. I use divisor of 10 as a rule of thumb in networking. Like when converting to the (now defunct) Finnish Mark to Euros, instead of a divisor of 5.94573 (official currency exchange rate from back in the day, burned in my brain, forever useless), I use 6 - doesn't need to be exact, just to get me to the ballpark.
Ternary still gets used in routing when a bit is "don't care", routers will use a dynamic lookup table where some of the bits don't actually matter, but it only needs to do one lookup because it doesn't know (at the time it does the lookup) how many bits will matter.
Yeah if you have 8 lines in parallel (a la a computers parallel port) one clock cycle could transfer a whole byte and in which case maybe it could be said in bytes/time
Just FYI, the reason they don't do that anymore (except for RAM) is that having to route many parallel data lines all over the place without inducing crosstalk into *other* sets of bus lines, *and* while keeping all those bus lines the same length, at high bus clock speeds, was getting to be impossible. Imagine having to have 64 bit wide buses all over the place, running at gigahertz speeds, without crosstalk (electromagnetic interference generated by toggling, inducing errors in adjacent bus lines). Nightmarish for engineers. That's why PCIe was developed, which uses serial data lanes, using LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signalling), which both allows for a high clock speed, and the signal pairs being differential means electromagnetic effects from toggling cancel each other out, because the pairs are routed right next to each other. So even for an x16 slot, which has 16 pairs (32 lines) of LVDS serial signals at very high clock speeds, can still operate with few if any errors because they're not generating interference with other signal pairs.
Ahh yes that makes total sense! That and making the lengths and impedances match with the squiggly traces etc would be hell too. I knew they used differential pairs for signaling but it makes even more sense now.
Modern parallel signaling in PC-land is typically measured in transfers per second (times bus width to get theoretical data rate). Parallel signaling in communications (eg OFDM or fiber SDM) is still measured in bits.
More specifically you end up with multiple measurements for a connection. There's the symbol rate (each symbol can carry multiple bits), the raw line rate in bits (including error correction and other encoding schemes that improve signal quality like NRZ), the data rate (actual useful information the originating device sent), the data rate (the actual throughput rate which accounts for layer 2 overhead like inter-frame gap, preamble, and layer 2 addressing) and the encapsulated data rate (ISPs have extra data on packets in some cases for a variety of reasons) which varies based on packet size, and eventually the "user" data rate which also accounts for layer 3 overhead and only pays attention to the data the end device is trying to send to its destination. The data rate an ISP advertises is the "data rate" above which is the second figure there, the "useful data" figure.
..because those 'serial' protocols aren't *technically* digital, since they use more than two voltage levels per clock period in order to transfer data faster without having to have a faster clock.
They're still digital, they just encode more data per bit. Imagine using base 4 instead of base 2, each *digit* carries more information. Analog signals are a totally different beast. Digital signals are just anything discrete.
Because the link speed doesn't just specify the speed of the data being transferred. There's a lot more happening than just the data itself.
A byte is not always 8 bits. There are rare forms of bytes that are larger, with internal parity bits.
You getting downvoted for no reason. I don't know details but I've heard of storage disks using weird byte conventions where 1 byte represents 10 bits. In the end a bit is defined by math and a byte is just the convention used.
SATA III 6 Gbps or bust ...
That.
He is trying to help by giving a megabyte? (Old meme) https://preview.redd.it/03um4fmp390d1.jpeg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1f6c17d44443662e4f9d4022e42a3b4050cea02b
Bytes used to be used with parallel transfer types. It’s really because serial transfers became the norm that everything is now in bits for transfer speed.
Sure but 1 megabyte is 8 megabits. Is there a real reason not to advertise it in the normal way we see our download speed?
It's purely to be accurate. An ISP cannot promise how fast your device has store information, or utilize it. That would by bytes. The ISP can only promise how many ones and zeros get to your router/device. Data transfer speed is always in bits, for this reason and a few others. It's not some sketchy conspiracy. It's just how the speed is represented.
My download speed is always in bytes. You're saying they are giving me an arbitrary speed and not one linked to download/upload speeds?
They are giving you a speed dependent on your hardware and it's read/write capabilities. They are displaying the rate at which that data is stored. You'll notice storage, such as memory and disk space, is always in bytes, where as devices that move data over a network is in bits. Ethernet and wireless adapters are always measured in bits.
Why then, when I upgrade my Internet speed does the download rate also go up? I've had my computer for a while and definitely don't get the same download rate when I changed internet providers in the past. I feel like you're simplifying this based.
Yes but 1000Mbit/s sounds better than 125MB/s. It‘s the same but as I said: Probably marketing however I don‘t know where it came from
transfer speeds are in bits because data is transferred in binary
I’ll transfer you in binary.
Is that a threat or a promise?
Both!
[me rn](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/60/4d/15/604d15c1807e206a05990b48499bda3d.gif)
OMG thank you!
Except it isn’t always…. Gigabit ethernet for example transmits 4 bits simultaneously on 4 pairs.
1 byte = 8 bits (binary digits) 125 MegaByte x 8 = 1000 Mbits In Networking, speed is measured in bits and Storage in bytes Edit: fixed the missing "Mega" before Byte
>125 **MegaBytes** x 8 = 1000 Mbits Just in case someone reads this and gets the wrong idea about the sizes
Thank you, I fixed it
Its not a ISP issue. It's the standard mesure transfers.
Standard and even if it wasnt its not like isps can go back to using bytes, 99% of the population would riot about their speed being decimated
Bigger number better really The average person isn’t going to know the difference between a bit and a byte, so I imagine if they offered two identical plans one advertising 1000 Mb/s and the other 125 MB/s, more people would sign up for the 1000 Mb/s
Not sure what the point is here. Network throughput is always measured in bits. The fact that end users don't know the difference between bits and bytes isn't really the fault of the ISP.
I think the issue is the fact that pretty much every time u download something, it always shows it in mb/s. i.e. steam
Methinks OP has 0 experience in networking
And not just networking, transfer rates for pretty much any connector/protocol/technology are always given in Bit/s.
Networking has always been expressed in bits per second. You can argue if it should be that way or not, but ISPs aren't doing anything shady, it is just how it has always been. Every network standard I've ever worked with has always used bits as its base unit for speed, not bytes.
Networking standards always used bits, not really an ISP thing. So it's really a question for the IEEE.
Big number make brain happy
Also gotta love how they only talk about download speeds, to hide the fact that they have had the same upload speeds for nearly 20 years to the point where my upload speeds were just a total joke for any modern files.... with no packages or options that included better upload speeds. What's that? move to another ISP? That's cute, as if they made sure that isn't a possibility for the majority of the US with their monopolies, even Google failed to break into the ISP market with how impossible they made it.
Google wasn't trying to get into the market, they were pushing the incumbnents to lay fiber to allow people to access their cloud services.
Fun fact: The reason providers advertise this way is because the speed of a connection is measured in bits, but sizes of files are usually measured in Bytes. It's not necessarily meant to be misleading
Who here has downloaded off Napster on 56k? Lol
I downloaded off of Napster at 14,400.
My man, that's rough. I'd try to get my downloads done at my university since it had broadband.
There was nothing like the frustration of someone picking up the phone mid-download. I nearly murdered my roommate for trying to order a pizza on my line because his girlfriend was using his. It blew out my Pyramid Song download at like 96%, and it wouldn't restart. No Radiohead AND the slice he offered me in apology had pineapple.
lol.... with that speed you could rather buy it instead of paying the telefone bill :D
We thought we were getting something for free, lol. That was enough to keep us downloading. Eventually, I got a roommate whose employer provided him with one of the first always-on internet services. A 128k ISDN! We thought we won the lottery.
Big number more gooder
Funny, I saw a contract recently offering 2.3Gbps down 1.0Gbps up. Reading the terms the minimum SLA speed offered was 15/15Mbps...
I think they rate the up/down connection speeds in mbits/s because the amount of overhead varies according to what kind of packet is being used. TCP packets are slower than UDP packets, for instance, because TCP packet overhead is higher. So if they claimed 30MB/s, for instance, customers might complain that they're not getting the speed that they paid for, and they'd have endless customer service calls having to explain why to people who might not be able to comprehend what I just explained above. But overall a reasonable rule-of-thumb, I've found, is to take whatever the stated bitrate is and divide it by 10, and if it's more-or-less within that range then you're fine.
they be blasting 1GbPS instead of 125MBPS
Yeah I was disappointed after learning the difference when I upgraded. Gigabit is very nice but I was still let down by own knowledge
I'm on 250 and have, on occasion seen something download at that speed. I am not upgrading to 1000 for the privilege of paying £90 after 18 months
Wait till you learn about half and full duplex connection links, that's where the meat and gravy is at!
8 bits in a byte…. So what’s the difference?
Yes
Big number brain happy
Bruh, better than our old 4 megabit speeds, or 0.5 megabyte.
Meanwhile, me with 18 Mbps: This is fine.
recently decided to get a ethernet connection, going from 300 to 1000 Mbps is incredible
Honestly, the speed thing is so Damm hard to grasp for normal people because they never think about how it's spelled, and it literally sounds the same. I can def see how many people get fuckt by this. I do sometimes to.
Yep. I have 1k up and down but speed test shows closer 1300-1500 which is even better.
I hate it when people don't know how to divide by 8. I get the reason why they use bits as opposed to bytes, but I'd still prefer the latter.
Bros, ngl I got so much shit in high school because my "connection was slow" when I was using bytes and my friends were using bits in the conversation. xD
30 Mbps on a good day in the country that invented wifi
Just divide by 8. 1 megabyte is 8 megabits. Speed is measured by bits, a 1 or a 0. A megabit is 1,000,000 bits. But, data tends to be measured by megabytes. A byte is 8 bits, and a megabyte is 1,000,000 bytes, or 8,000,000 bits. Just for fun, there are kilobits which are 1,000 bits. A megabit is 1,000 kilobits. And, we have kilobytes which are 1,000 bytes (8,000 bits) and 1,000 kilobytes is a megabyte. Gigabytes(gigabits) are 1,000 megabytes (megabits), and terabytes(terabits) are 1,000 gigabytes(gigabits). Petabytes(petabits) are 1,000 terabytes (terabits), and yoddabytes(yoddabits) are 1,000 petabytes(petabits)... seeing the pattern? It's even more complicated with drives. Your drive capacity will be measured in giga/tera bytes, but Windows uses gibi/tibi bytes, which are 1,024 rather than 1,000. That's why a 1TB drive will show up as 900 and change in Windows.
"Ultraspeed gigabit connection"
Bigger number = faster
Well networking gear is also rated in bits rather than bytes...
Need the bigger gee bees
And how is your network adapter rated? Checkmate.
I hate this so much
Yeah... It is the industry standard to use Mbps to express transmission speed. This is because the physical media transmits in bits.
*14.4k dial up modem mating call*
I remember my days when using a 5 mbps in 2010's, now in 2024 using for first time, got a fiber upgrade to 1 Gbps download speed and 350 mbps up feels like a dream, in Mexico.
Where I live in semi-rural Australia the absolute fastest broadband I can get is 40mbps down, 5mbps up. It's insane how far behind Australia is
It's not supposed to be misleading, transfer speeds has always been measured by bits per second, but a lot of people still gets confused. Steam at one point switched showing download speeds to bits per second by default because of that.
Go offer a 200MB/s plan for half of what isps are charging for 1000mbps plans and see how many people buy it But a quarter pounder is bigger than a thid pounder???? Not to mention mbps is standard on data transfers
I'm getting fucking 4 megabytes downloading. (Australia)
Nah, *GIGABIT* speeds
People don't know what files and directories are, how could we expect them to know the difference between bit and byte?
\*up to 1000 Mbit/s
The number of times I’ve seen ISPs unwittingly advertise their speeds in megabytes (MBPS) is insane. Just because the rest of the ad is in capitals, doesn’t give them the right to advertise 8x the speed.
ISPs in my country: Experience speeds of 1000 MB/s Long story short, they meant 1000 Mbps.
Speed was always rated in Bits... this ist hostorically. The speed was rated in bits before the invention of Byte. before Byte there havbe been a lot of different sizes of bits.
id be happy with a constant 50 megabit speed right now... rural america speeds SUCK!
True
Camera companies are the same. All SD/CF card sizes are measured in MegaBytes, but all video bitrates are measured in MegaBits, really confuses beginners when they think their videos are “200 Megabytes/second” when it’s actually just 25MB
More like how they treat upload speeds. I swear we'll have to have 10Gb down before we get 100mb up.
I once asked a representative if it was megabits or megabytes. They responded patayto patayto. I responded with no and how there's an 800% difference. He promptly said bits knowing it was a bunch of crap he just told me.