Unreal Tournament loading faster on P3 than Tbird?

[rockstar]

Hi everyone (I hope this is the right forum),
Any ideas why Unreal Tournament (v4.32) loads faster on my P3 600@744 than on my Tbird 800@1000?
I was playing Tactical Ops (v1.5) with a friend and was surprised to find that my "older" P3 BX based PC entered games much quicker. About 10 seconds quicker actually. I updated my kt7 bios to version ul103 and set all my RAM settings in bios to fastest without a difference. The hard drive is churning away at the time. I am surprised that the Tbird based PC is slower at loading it. Once I am in the game, I do get better framerates than the P3 and everything is fine. I am just concerned that I am losing some speed somewhere. I have a 640/256Kb DSL connection.

Does anyone have any ideas to try? Similar experiences? What is a good benchmark to test if my tbird system is running as it should?

System Specs for P3 (see signature for tbird specs):
Abit Bx6r2 | P3 coppermine 600@744 | ATI rage fury 128 32mb | 128 mb. PC100 generic | Quantum 6.2G udma/33 | Linksys Etherfast 10/100 NIC | Win 98SE |

Thanks in advance! :Q

 

[Spook]

Do you have the 'No CD' Patch on??? He might, and you don't... It helps speed things up...

 

[Sunner]

Load times is all about HD seek times and transfer rates.
With a Cheetah X15, an old Pentium MMX or something could beat a TB 1200, if the TB had a crappy HD.

 

[Cheep]

Yes, he's using the 4.32 patch, which doesn't include a CD check. Another thing that speeds up load time is to get rid of the intro movie. That makes the game take longer to load.

 

[Thorn]

Also the amount of RAM makes a difference... Do they both have the same amount?

 

[rockstar]

Thanks for the quick replies!
I am running the latest UT patch (4.32) which disables the CD check. Both computers have 128MB of RAM. Starting the game takes about the same time on each PC, but entering a multiplayer game (Tac Ops) is where the difference is really obvious. It does seem like a hard drive limitation because the HD is being accessed at the time. I did a defrag yesterday too. I will try 256MB of RAM when I get home and see if that helps. Also, I have the hard drive connected to the Highpoint raid controller so maybe I should try it just connected to IDE controller. I know that the highpoint is getting some not-so-positive attention on the forums lately.

-rockstar

 

[sandorski]

There are a myriad of reasons why this could happen. IDE performance, memory performance, swap file settings, pre-caching settings, video resolutions, other video or audio settings, loaded programs in windows, and even your DSL performance. Also note that your friends complete system is overclocked as opposed to only your cpu being overclocked.

I wouldn't worry about it much.

 

[rockstar]

Well, that is interesting. I guess the problem was with the highpoint controller. I switched my hard drive to the regular IDE channel and my load times are much better now. I just wanted to let you know in case other people have noticed similar problems.
Thanks!