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Geo2's avatar
Geo2
Tuning in
12 months ago

On 1 Gig package but only get 70 mbps download speed.

Hey all,

As the title says, a few months ago I upgraded my package to Gig1 Volt speed boost, but everytime I download a large file, or a game from Steam, I max out at 70 mbps. I've done various online speed tests which state my speeds are around 1 gig, I've checked my PC connection status which also says 1 gig speed.

I called Virgin Media customer services who did all the tests and said the speeds were good, they asked how old my PC was, I said around 10 years old. They said the problem could be that I have an old network card, so I looked online and purchased a TP-Link Gigabit PCi Express Network Adapter, installed it and I still get 70 mpbs download speed.

I did a bit more research online and read that another problem could be the ethernet cable being old, so I purchased a cat6 ethernet cable and used that with TP-Link Gigabit PCi adapter, and I still get 70 mbps max download speed.

I'm completely lost now and have no idea what to do.

17 Replies

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    • Geo2's avatar
      Geo2
      Tuning in
      12 months ago

      Hi,

      Thanks for the reply, here are the results from the speed test.

  • SaltKing's avatar
    SaltKing
    Tuning in
    12 months ago

    Hey

    You will be limited by your HDD write speed, to make full use of the speeds, you will need decent M2 (no sata) drives.

    For reference, I get

    140mb on my M2 NVME drive

    70mb on my Sata SSD

    35mb on my old mech HDD

    • Geo2's avatar
      Geo2
      Tuning in
      12 months ago

      Hi SaltKing,

      Thanks for the response, I'm not too tech savvy so I'm not sure what to look for, here are some specs from my PC.

      Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB
      ST2000DM001-1ER164 Standard disk drive (1.82 TB)
      Intel Core i7-5930K CPU @ 3.50GHz
      Rampage V Extreme Motherboard (Rev 1.xx)
      16 GB RAM

      • SaltKing's avatar
        SaltKing
        Tuning in
        12 months ago

        The drive is a old style mechanical drive- that's the best you will get out of it.

  • cje85's avatar
    cje85
    Wise owl
    11 months ago

    Are you sure Steam is showing 70Mb (megabits) and not 70MB (Capital B, megabytes).

    Your connection speed is measured in Megabits but many apps show download speeds in Megabytes. 70 MB/Megabytes = 560 Mb/Megabits.

  • cje85's avatar
    cje85
    Wise owl
    11 months ago

    I've just been able to check and Steam does show Megabytes so the 70MB you're seeing is 560Mb, still only half of your Gig1 connection but that might be most your PC (or the Steam server) can do.