Question Steam Download Speeds Faster on Linux than Windows - Why?

Urzu1000

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Dec 24, 2013
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So I recently swapped over to Linux on my main gaming machine and I noticed something peculiar.... Steam downloads significantly faster (actually caps out my gigabit speeds in most cases) on Linux than on Windows. For reference, I typically have burst speeds of about 55MB/s on Windows and then it settles at around 15MB/s to 25MB/s.

Here's a screenshot of a game I downloaded last night....
Screenshot_from_2020-04-22_03-33-45.png


As you can see the download speed quickly ramps up and stays consistent. I'm wondering if it's something to do with the way downloads are compressed and packaged?

I'm just really curious about it and figured I'd ask around. I like to know the why behind things :)