Since getting a new PC last October I've not been getting the download speeds I used to get on my old previous PC, nor on the "alternate" very old PC I have still working - which is truly a potato!

Ok, this new PC has:-
- Intel i-7-11700F (2.5GHz / 16CPUs) I thought it was a eight-core, but DxDiag says 16 here. And I've seen it clock up to 4.8GHz so where 2.5 comes from I dunno. Ah well.
- Windows 10 Home 64-bit
- GeForce RTX 3070
- TUF Gaming Z590 Mobo. The vendor said it was "WiFi 6" whatever than means and should be "superfast". Bollocks. Well, so far that claim has been bollocks! :D

Ok, well, on this "superduper, bollocks" WiFi 6 I was getting just 2.5 Mb/s (I'm talking megabytes per second in this post, NOT megabits BTW). This was on both GOG and Steam. And it was worsened by frequent cut-outs while doing so along with constant "wireless network is not secure, it uses outdated protocols" alerts.

Yet the potato downstairs pull 8Mb/s on WiFi here on GOG, with no alerts. I don't have the Steam app installed on that so cannot vouch for Steam.

Anyway, I found some old (must be at least 15yr) ethernet plugs recently, which still work........ somewhere I saw on some Windows settings screen they're capable of 54Mb/s. That's still slow by today's measures, but they are old plugs. And even that 54Mb/s seems to be. Bollocks! :D
I'm getting 9Mb/s absolute maximum from Steam, and a varying 5Mb/s to 7Mb/s here on GOG (but with no cut-outs, not annoying "not secure" messages).

That is still SLOWER than the potato pulling 8Mb/s over the (what should be) slower WiFi connection!

My old Acer Predator used to get around 15Mb/s on GOG/Steam on the same WiFi/router. Never tried the ethernet on it.

My router is at least 10yr old though...... so maybe that's not helping. I'll have to get on to the idiots at British Telecom over that! :)

I've tried Tom's Hardware but I can not fathom out their technical replies at all.

Just wondered if there are some tech geniuses here on GOG who can suggest something in plain English that I'll understand!

Thanks!!

PS/ I think I should mention I'm using the old "download backup installer" feature and not GOG Galaxy.

Do keep in mind Microsoft pushed a 'torrent-like' system for updates, where they force updates on you, and you sending updates to others using your own internet speed. This alone can mean especially on a new system/install that you may be getting a TON of downloads or uploading to other machines without being asked.

Wifi is going to have a lower max speed than ethernet connection, plus encryption and probably more errors. But i doubt that's the problem in this case.

Though if you are in a congested area with a lot of other wireless connections it might be getting issues, changing frequency or channel number may resolve some of this, but if you are getting different speeds side-by-side then that's probably not it. Wifi-6 appears to have 600-9608 Mbit/s. But again you need a wireless router that supports it as well as it will be a modified protocol. Wifi-6 appears to be a 2019 addition, so no it won't help you any.

From your motherboard's web page:
Pair your motherboard with ASUS WiFi 6 routers to fully experience the networking potential of WiFi 6. Learn more

It seems it would be best if your ISP can send someone over to look at your setup and do some speed tests. If you know what the maximum download speed is for your plan, you can go to Speedtest.net and run some tests. Bear in mind the sites you download from may not have servers in your country. Downloading from a foreign country is usually noticeably slower.

Also, 2.5 GHz is your CPU's base frequency, while 4.8 GHz is the Turbo Boost 2.0 frequency.

Just to check its not simply a UK issue I checked on speedtest.net and then downloaded Quake 2 RTX (as its free, so you can check against my results).

Got a 7MB/s download speed from GOG which matches to my speedtest results - however I'm in one of the few cities with UFO. That said I'm also using a cheap plug n play wifi usb stick.

I've managed to disable Win10 updates / that update seeding thing (which really boosted speeds overall) some time ago.

Edit: may have been mentioned above, but as the wifi is built in to your mobo, is it possible it needs a bios / firmware / driver update? On the latter Ive found win 10 to be atrocious.

I get 30MB a second download from GOG, same as Steam, so I doubt it's a problem on their end. Unless it's region specific somehow.

That almost sounds illegal! Just what you'd expect from the spreaders of the biggest piece of malware in computer history.

Is there a way to find out if this is happening / stop it?

I'm getting different speeds for different games.

Some big update for Dead Cells finished without even me knowing. It was like a gig or something.

Now I'm trying to download Xenonauts, but i've got super slow speeds for it

Determine when it's happening? Not sure. I know a friend with a big beefy gaming machine had terrible framerates when updates were being pushed on him. I'll assume some external tool that lets you see a history of your traffic and/or firewall config would be the best way.

Stopping it, probably unplug from the internet.

Otherwise you can 'defer' an update, but you can only delay it (like a couple weeks), windows can and will continue when it wants to whether you want it to or not. More than that, any privacy settings you have, after each update love to forget settings back to default so you're back to the stock 'opted in' of everything you might have opted out of... (Or that's how it used to be). If you can remove automatic update entirely then i suppose that would take care of it.

Aha, I had that with Xenonauts. The install was also very slow once downloaded. Though that's the nature of this particular beast, as Xenonauts is composed of tens of thousands (about 54,000 going off memory) small files. Everything is "uncompressed" so all files are easy to get at and customise. Downside is that kind of thing always makes it hard work for the system.

Done a few different speed tests, concentrating on the download speed results I got between 60 - 70 megabits per second, 70mbps is 8.75 megabytes per second. So it seems the internet is intrinsically slower than I expected overall.
That's using these ethernet plugs, not the WiFi.

But like I already said, the routers old, the plugs are old, so maybe getting new might help?

Ooh, ok. Nice to hear it wasn't just me.
Also thanks for the explanation.