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What makes loading slow?...

I

imported_rod

Golden Member
Alright. Yesterday I got HL2, and spent 45 minutes installing it, and 9 hours updating steam over my dial-up internet. But YES, it was worth it.

Now I have only played the first couple if levels, but I keep running into load screens (my machine is in my sig). My settings are defualt (no AA or AF etc...) except i upped the resolution to 1024x768. My comp has kept the frame rate up through-out. It hasn't slowed enough to notice even once.

But I keep getting to load screens, which take 20seconds or so to load. I though that with a 3200+ and a gig of fast RAM, this wouldnt be happening.

So, my thoughts are this:
1) My HDD (7200rpm/8mb cache) is holding me back. If this is the case, would something like a Raptor or a SATA2 drive make a difference?

2)My CPU is bottle necking me. But this seems unlikely, since the minimum requirement is a P4 1.2GHz, and reccomended is a P4 2.4GHz.

3)RAM. Dunno how, but could it be my RAM? I have 4 times as much as it needs, and 2 times as much as it wants...

4)Video Card. Im pretty sure it's not my Video Card, since the game runs smoothly, it just takes a while for the load screens to finish their loading.

Any ideas ppl, or is this just how the game is?

RoD
 
Nothing is bottlenecking, "it's just how it is"

HDD has always been the bottleneck but there's not much you can do over it. Getting a Raptor won't save you more than 5 second of loading time so it wouldn't worth it at all

Anyway try defragmentating your HDD, which is the most cost-effective way. If you are lucky you can save 1-2 seconds of loading time without costing a penny. Well... that's how it is
 
I doubt it's fragmented. I only created the partion on the weekend, and HL2 is one of the first games i put on it. Thanks for the thought though.

Definately not going to fork out for a Raptor unless it's gonna make it load instantly. Well, Im gonna get a SATA2 drive for my OS and Games when they're available for a reasonable price anyway. At least now i know that my machine is dodgy or anything. Thanks guys.

RoD

BtW: Die STEAM Die!!!
 
Also SATAII drives have no performance advantage to SATA drives
Even the bandwidth of the old PATA-100 is not utilised fully yet...
The newest and fastest 7200rpm drives have average transfer rate of around 70MB, which is no wway near 100MB of ATA-100, 150MB of SATA and 300MB os SATAII.
 
I thought the main advantage of the SATA2 drives was NCQ, which lets them access more data with less revolutions. I dunno. I'll google it.

RoD
 
Originally posted by: rod
I thought the main advantage of the SATA2 drives was NCQ, which lets them access more data with less revolutions. I dunno. I'll google it.

RoD
Click to expand...


AFAIK NCQ only delivers increased performance if many users acces the drive, like in small file serves etc. It might improve speed over non NCQ drives, but for normal use I would think less than 5%.
 
Right now, your system is limited by the hard drive's I/O capacity which isn't very much. The only way to improve load times is to get a faster hard drive which will cost a fair bit.
 
I have the Raptor, and I installed HL2 two days ago. The load times are still really slow - much more than I'm used to. Don't spend money to get the Raptor, because your load times are still going to frustrate you.

I second the 'Die, Steam, Die!' comment. I've never dealt with a system like this, and I find it quite annoying. Thankfully, I have broadband so I didn't have to spend as much time doing it as you, but I still hated every minute of the registration/update/decrypt/verification process, as well as starting the game from a secondary interface.
 
Im just glad that i have an unlimited time, unlimited download account. If I was paying per hour, I would have paid for for bandwidth than the game.

Oh well guys, thanks for the comments.

RoD



EDIT: Hey "NoBull6", what graphics settings do you use? Your system is pretty similar to mine, and Im just wondering how far you can push it before it starts jerking around. I have it at defaults, but with the resolution at 1024x768. Im gonna try with 4xAA and 8xAF next time I play it.
 
Yep, this was my biggest complaint with HL2, incredible amounts or load times, and they are long as hell. Seems dumb b/c the game is honestly not that visually impressive even on max settings.
 
Originally posted by: rod
EDIT: Hey "NoBull6", what graphics settings do you use? Your system is pretty similar to mine, and Im just wondering how far you can push it before it starts jerking around. I have it at defaults, but with the resolution at 1024x768. Im gonna try with 4xAA and 8xAF next time I play it.
Click to expand...

I play in 1280x1024 with everything on High, Reflect World, 2xAA, 4xAF- works great.

I have the 71.89 drivers and my card is slightly OC'd to 533/1067. My 3DMark03 score is 8470 if you want to compare systems with that benchmark.
 
I have broadband and 2x raptors RAID0, It takes some time to load when I first start the game (15-25sec), but after that I don't even notice the load time between levels, seems like just a few seconds.
 
i have a pretty decent machine, A64+ 3500, 1gig ram, x850..overclocked to the max and defragmented...but i also have those **** loading screens while playing. Although i dont think they are 20seconds....but still annoying.
 
Originally posted by: shoRunner
your using dialup....to play an online FPS.....
Click to expand...

Well currently Im not playing online.

CS 1.6 works alright, although Im guessing CS:S needs more bandwidth... Oh Well, Im just holding out until they bring in ADSL2/2+ here. Thats meant to happen sometime in the next few months.

Anyway, thanks for the input guys.
RoD
 
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