Question Is my computer limiting my download speeds?

[darvarn]

I pay for a 500mbps internet plan and I test about as much on Speedtest.net. My download speeds on Steam are about 20mb/s, on the Xbox app 5mb/s on Epic Games it's about 10mb/s. My friend with a gigabit connection and a considerably stronger PC (RTX 3060, I'm not sure about the CPU but it shouldn't be too bad either) has up to 4x times faster download speeds on all these apps so I've come to wonder, could my PC (GTX 950, i5-6500) perhaps bottleneck my download speed? I am almost sure that that's what happens on Steam since my CPU is always maxed when downloading from there, but the other apps barely use any CPU. What could be causing my slow download speeds? I use ethernet and download games on a month-old CT1000MX SSD.

 

[Zerk2012]

I pay for a 500mbps internet plan and I test about as much on Speedtest.net. My download speeds on Steam are about 20mb/s, on the Xbox app 5mb/s on Epic Games it's about 10mb/s. My friend with a gigabit connection and a considerably stronger PC (RTX 3060, I'm not sure about the CPU but it shouldn't be too bad either) has up to 4x times faster download speeds on all these apps so I've come to wonder, could my PC (GTX 950, i5-6500) perhaps bottleneck my download speed? I am almost sure that that's what happens on Steam since my CPU is always maxed when downloading from there, but the other apps barely use any CPU. What could be causing my slow download speeds? I use ethernet and download games on a month-old CT1000MX SSD.

Are you sure your reading it right. You can also be limited by the server your downloading from.
Megabits per second vs. megabytes per second
https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/Mbps

 

[darvarn]

Are you sure your reading it right. You can also be limited by the server your downloading from.
Megabits per second vs. megabytes per second
https://www.techtarget.com/searchnetworking/definition/Mbps

Oh man I was definitely reading it wrong........ My bad there, but still, I should have an optimistic max of about 62.5mbps, but I am not getting anywhere near that

 

[Zerk2012]

Oh man I was definitely reading it wrong........ My bad there, but still, I should have an optimistic max of about 62.5mbps, but I am not getting anywhere near that

You can run speedtest (Google it)and see if your getting what your paying for.

But like I said a bunch more factors can figure into it, server, connection to server, amount of people connected downloading the same thing.

 

[Richj444]

But like I said a bunch more factors can figure into it, server, connection to server, amount of people connected downloading the same thing.

Definitely true. But also true the PC can impact download speeds as well. OP, what kind of disk drive is in your PC? SSD or hard disk? Especially with a HDD, the transfer speeds can limit your download speeds because it just can't keep up.