MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Not Running at 6 gb/s

[tsmax17]

I have a 500gb Samsung 850 evo that i have plugged in to the sata 6 slot on the motherboard, and whenever I try to download steam games it is capped at 1.2-1.5 gb/s. This is not a steam issue, because it is capping out at the data transfer speed of my system. Im confused why this is happening because the cables i have are the cables that came with the mobo (the mobo can do 10 gb/s) so that shouldnt be the problem. I read up on the manual and everything and I still ccant figure out why my dls are tanking... Please help!

Thanks, Tyler.

 

[Supahos]

You sure your internet is faster than that?

 

[tsmax17]

jk im a goof my internet is 12 megaBITS which translates to 1.5 megaBYTES sorry lol

 

[Supahos]

And remember GB and Gb aren't the same thing

 

[Supahos]

Yep thought that might be the issue

 

[tsmax17]

I thought my internet was 12 megaBYTES -.- rip

 

[rcxtra]

Where to begin?

First of all, Steam lists d/l speed in Bytes/s (big B), not bits/s (small b).

Second, although SATA III is listed as 6Gbits/s, disk speeds are measured in MBytes/s. But there is a little overhead with the SATA protocol, so in theory SATA III (6Gbits/s) can do disk file transfers at a maximum of 600MBytes/s. However disk speeds usually max out at around 550MBytes/s on the best SSD.

Third, you're conflating your ISP speed, network, and disk speed all into one. Do you even know what your ISP speed is? I doubt you've got even a 1Gbit/s connection, and most definitely not 6Gbit/s.

Download a program called Crystal Disk Mark, it's a benchmark utility that measures your actual disk file transfer speeds.

 

[photonboy]

More info:

1) the ISP (Internet Service Provider) puts the cap on maximum download speed

2) an individual site may be LOWER than this

3) Wi-Fi is usually faster than your INTERNET speed unless you have a great Fibre or similar network.

For example, 7MB/s is pretty easy to get for local wi-fi, and your ISP cap seems to be around 1.5MB/s.

4) Wi-Fi often limits LOCAL network speed such as transferring files between computers. The maximum for Gigabit local transfers is roughly 120MB/second which is what many hard drives can easily do at times and roughly a quarter of what many SSD's can achieve. I have a WD MY CLOUD attached to my router and get up to 90MB/s on that from my desktop PC.

5) Steam Link is a cool device ($50USD) to use your HDTV as a remote monitor for gaming, however Valve recommends using WIRED not wi-fi. It adds some latency but is pretty darn good though you also want an HDTV with low latency overall or a GAME MODE with low latency you can assign to the Steam Link HDMI port.

6) FYI, you can enable "RAPID MODE" for your Samsung SSD. I can't tell if it's better or not though. If you haven't tested the SSD in Samsung Magician do so first. The benchmark after that is MEANINGLESS to real-world situations since it now reads from the system memory.

I probably don't fill up the SSD buffer anyway which normally slows down an SSD. There are benefits (apparently no drawbacks) so I just turned it on.

Latest Samsung Magician is 4.9.7.

7) Let's summarize the terminology since it got started:

B - Byte
b - bit
A Byte is made up of EIGHT bits.

M - Mega
G - Giga
A GigaByte is 1024x larger than a MegaByte
A MegaByte is 1024x larger than a KiloByte
A KiloByte is 1024x larger than a Byte.
I bit my sister eight times when i was kid so I did Byte her only once.

If you run SPEEDTEST I think they use Mbps (Mega BITS per second).

I got about 6Mbps in Speedtest which is roughly 0.75MBps (when I see downloads it's usually listed as 725KBps or 725 Kilo Bytes Per second which is less than 1MB/s).