Fix your SLOW Origin Games download speeds – UPDATED

ORIGINAL POST BELOW:

Origin can be sluggish at times.

While downloading a large game patch, the client downloaded @ 2.5 MB/s on a 70 Mbps connection, well below the theoretical maximum of 8.75 MB/s on that connection. This was with a best-case setup: a 1 GBps wired connection from the computer to the router and another from the router to the cable company modem.

Research on Reddit posts, forum replies, and a long-running thread on answers.ea.com showed people trying all kinds of methods to improve Origin download speeds. There was no good official fix for this.

A snippet of information from https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/ pointed to a workaround. The post section, readable here, addresses an issue where the Origin client suddenly stops downloading mid-download, but reports that it also improves download speeds.

The excerpt from the site is reproduced below. Very easy steps:

• Exit Origin
• Create a new empty document on your desktop
• Enter the following text in the file:

[connection]
EnvironmentName=production

[Feature]
CdnOverride=akamai

• Save the file as EACore.ini.
• Now start Origin.

Upon start, Origin asks whether to import the file created on the desktop. Press Yes. This overwrites the old config file.

Note¶

• The EACore.ini file is deleted from the desktop as soon as it is imported. To leave R&D mode later, go to the location where Origin is installed and delete the EACore.ini file found there.

It has been reported that having Origin in R&D-mode increases download speed. With this change, the Origin client started with a display of “R&D | PR” in the upper right corner. On the next patch download, Origin reached 8.83 MB/s.

As a note, Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) was also in use on the gaming computer.

The patch downloaded in a couple of minutes with these settings.