# Why does Origin download games so much faster than Steam?



## Phusius (Jul 30, 2012)

I get 2.7 mb/s to 3.2 mb/s on Steam consistently, and 7.5 mb/s to 9.3 mb/s on Origin game downloads consistently.


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## Laurijan (Jul 30, 2012)

I guess that the steam server is just not able to give you more speed - might change when there is less traffic.


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## OneMoar (Jul 30, 2012)

Origin lies about its download speeds check your network traffic logs


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## MxPhenom 216 (Jul 30, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> Origin lies about its download speeds check your network traffic logs



No it doesn't. from what ive noticed a 9GB game finishes downloading faster on origin then a 9GB downloading on steam.


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## OneMoar (Jul 30, 2012)

nvidiaintelftw said:


> No it doesn't. from what ive noticed a 9GB game finishes downloading faster on origin then a 9GB downloading on steam.



considering I had origin telling me it was downloading at 4MB/s and my connection cap is 15mbit ... hMmmhnmmmm


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 30, 2012)

EA is using a better CDN.


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## Frick (Jul 30, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> considering I had origin tells me it was downloading at 4MB/s and my connection cap is 15mbit ... hMmmhnmmmm



How effective is that cap? I had a 2mbit connection once that I regularly got 10mbit/s out of.


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## OneMoar (Jul 30, 2012)

FordGT90Concept said:


> EA is using a better CDN.



I doubt that ea's servers are dead slow at anything there always overloaded and flaky
ever try and change your EA master profile .... yea ...


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## Phusius (Jul 30, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> Origin lies about its download speeds check your network traffic logs



No I checked and it is not lying about the speeds, downloaded Dragon Origins 30gb almost in total at super fast speeds.  (I did the math and the Origin times were correct)


And Steam is that 2.7-3.2 anytime of day or night.  Sucks, kind of an Origin fanboy now.


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## RejZoR (Jul 30, 2012)

Origin doesn't have as many users as Steam so they also don't have as many server load problems.


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## NC37 (Jul 30, 2012)

RejZoR said:


> Origin doesn't have as many users as Steam so they also don't have as many server load problems.



Exactly.


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## HD64G (Jul 30, 2012)

Pretty easy to think of...


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## HTC (Jul 30, 2012)

RejZoR said:


> Origin doesn't have as many users as Steam so they also don't have as many server load problems.



That's a good argument.

Still, Steam probably has accessed the average connections to their site and concluded that the current speeds are sufficient. The problem with this way of thinking is that it neglects the small detail that games are getting bigger and bigger and, with the other small detail that bandwidth availability for home users is increasing allot, what 2 years ago would be considered tremendously fast is now slow as hell.

It's about damn time they update their servers bandwidth, IMO.


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## FordGT90Concept (Jul 30, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> I doubt that ea's servers are dead slow at anything there always overloaded and flaky
> ever try and change your EA master profile .... yea ...


User authentication is very likely to be EA's dedicated servers, not the CDN.


Additionally, the slow downloads could be due to Steam itself.  The code they use for downloading is dodgy at best.  I've seen some very, very ackward downloading behavior.  It even often ignores user input and there doesn't appear to be anyway to prioritize downloads.


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## NinkobEi (Jul 30, 2012)

Could be because Steam has 4 million users online on an average day. I'm betting Origin has 500k on a good day. But 2.7MB/s is nothing to cry about. Still it takes what, an hour for 10 gigs? less time?


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## TheMailMan78 (Jul 30, 2012)

All you have to do is change your download location in steam and BAM faster downloads. I went from 2.5 in Miami to 4.9 in Atlanta.


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## HTC (Jul 30, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> Could be because Steam has 4 million users online on an average day. I'm betting Origin has 500k on a good day. But 2.7MB/s is nothing to cry about. Still it takes what, an hour for 10 gigs? less time?



Around 63 minutes and 12 seconds, by my math.

Question @ OP: you state "mb/s". That stands for Mb/s or MB/s? I'm assuming MB/s.


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## Widjaja (Jul 30, 2012)

You think your steam download speeds are bad, mine is constantly capped at 660kb/ps.


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## Wrigleyvillain (Jul 30, 2012)

In addition to less concurrent users than Steam I always assumed that EA being such a behemoth simply has lots of data center contracts all over the damn place. But that is all speculation and not very technical speculation at that.


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## Phusius (Aug 1, 2012)

HTC said:


> Around 63 minutes and 12 seconds, by my math.
> 
> Question @ OP: you state "mb/s". That stands for Mb/s or MB/s? I'm assuming MB/s.



I am new to PC stuff in general, I mean when you look at a game in Steam downloading in your Steam Library, it states 2.7 mb/s next to the games name.


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## stinger608 (Aug 2, 2012)

Phusius said:


> I am new to PC stuff in general, I mean when you look at a game in Steam downloading in your Steam Library, it states 2.7 mb/s next to the games name.



Yea that is megabits not megabytes. Most all download speed as well as upload speed is measured in megabits. 

But hell, at 2.7 to 3.2 is nothing to sneeze about. I am usually lucky to get 2.0 from anything.  And my service claims I am getting 15 mb/s (megabits) service.......Yea right!


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## HTC (Aug 2, 2012)

Phusius said:


> I am new to PC stuff in general, I mean when you look at a game in Steam downloading in your Steam Library, it states 2.7 mb/s next to the games name.





stinger608 said:


> Yea that is megabits not megabytes. Most all download speed as well as upload speed is measured in megabits.
> 
> But hell, at 2.7 to 3.2 is nothing to sneeze about. I am usually lucky to get 2.0 from anything.  And my service claims I am getting 15 mb/s (megabits) service.......Yea right!



Then it's not 63 minutes and 12 seconds: it's 9 hours, 25 minutes and 36 seconds and that's slow as hell.


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## RejZoR (Aug 2, 2012)

Well, Steam always maxes my 8Mbit connection. Thats essentially 1MB/s which is fine with me.


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## NC37 (Aug 2, 2012)

NinkobEi said:


> Could be because Steam has 4 million users online on an average day. I'm betting Origin has 500k on a good day. But 2.7MB/s is nothing to cry about. Still it takes what, an hour for 10 gigs? less time?



Well there is at least 800k who bought the BF3 Premium so at the very least yeah prolly about 500k. But how many buying and using Origin....ehhh unknown. Steam Sale went on and Origin had nothing to compete whereas Amazon ran some game download offers. Few other places did too. I checked Origin a few times during it. Surprised. EA wants to compete but then doesn't run sales...yeah thats sure gonna make people want to buy off Origin more.


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## erocker (Aug 2, 2012)

OneMoar said:


> Origin lies about its download speeds check your network traffic logs



This is true.


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## bbmarley (Aug 2, 2012)

they both max my 100mb line 

maybe its just your connection to there servers in dif locations?


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## HTC (Aug 2, 2012)

RejZoR said:


> Well, Steam always maxes my 8Mbit connection. Thats essentially 1MB/s which is fine with me.



With slower connections, that's not a problem but with faster ones it is.



bbmarley said:


> they both max my 100mb line
> 
> maybe its just your connection to there servers in dif locations?



Both of these seem to suggest something's wrong with the OP connection / settings.


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## Bo$$ (Aug 2, 2012)

NC37 said:


> Well there is at least 800k who bought the BF3 Premium



Remember there are the consoles too! soo 500k sounds about right if you include only the PC users and the other games on origin


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## 1Kurgan1 (Aug 2, 2012)

Personally seems my speed is the same between them.



Phusius said:


> And Steam is that 2.7-3.2 anytime of day or night.  Sucks, kind of an Origin fanboy now.



Become a fanboy of Origin because of DL speeds? you must be DLing a lot for that to matter much, since even your Steam DL speed isn't bad at all.



Bo$$ said:


> Remember there are the consoles too! soo 500k sounds about right if you include only the PC users and the other games on origin



Also remember that not everyone bought Premium, there are plenty of people playing without it.


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## pantherx12 (Aug 2, 2012)

I tend to find steam doesn't max out my connection if I'm using firefox or torrents.

Is it possible it has low bandwidth prioity ? If I close Firefox steam after about 10 minutes will pick up and use all 60Mb/s of my bandwidth ( sometimes it sneaks up to 100Mb/s which is cool since that's not the service I pay for with my ISP he he)


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## digibucc (Aug 2, 2012)

not to comment on your specific situation, but there is no noticeable different between the two clients for myself. not that i was specifically looking - but i download enough games between the two that i am confident i would have noticed if the speed were not right.


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