Long Loading Time

Makenshi

I know the load time has been generally long for some of these maps, but I do believe that mine are extra long for some inexplicable reason.

I have 3 Western Digital Caviar Black on a Raid0 setup. I load faster than most people in 90% of the games I play. Yet, in NS2, in every single instance, I am one of the last person to load after a mapchange. My buddy is using a 5 years old hard drive and loads significantly slower than me in every single game we've played, yet in NS2 he is loading anywhere between 15 seconds to a minute faster than me consistently. Does anyone have a similar issue or suggestions I can try to fix the issue?

i7 920 @4ghz
eVGA X58 Classified E762
16GB 1600mhz DDR3 Corsair Dominator GT
2x 2GB Radon HD 6950
3x 640GB 7200rpm WD6401AALS in Raid0
Corsair HX1000 100W PSU

sharnrock

do you have texture streaming turned on?

Makenshi

Yes. Turned it off before, didn't seem to make much of a difference.

Ghosthree3

My advice is against Texture Streaming, I had it on to reduce load times, and it worked, went down to 10 second load times from 2 minutes, but you get random crashes every hour so it's really not worth it.

Makenshi

<!--quoteo(post=2050226:date=Dec 23 2012, 09:42 AM:name=Ghosthree3)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Ghosthree3 @ Dec 23 2012, 09:42 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2050226"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->My advice is against Texture Streaming, I had it on to reduce load times, and it worked, went down to 10 second load times from 2 minutes, but you get random crashes every hour so it's really not worth it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Well, regardless of whether I have it on or off, it still takes a minute or two to load every map. I still get shot behind the wall randomly and still get the same random crashes; in short, it doesn't really make much of a difference at all. That is not the issue at hand, however. I was wondering why my Raid0 setup which loads as fast as SSD on most games takes much longer to load NS2 than my buddy with his aging hard drive and whether anyone have experienced something similar to possibly provide a fix.

Ghosthree3

If you're getting shot behind walls frequently, seems your computer isn't able to process the game fast enough (assuming your ping is good). Drop the resolution see if that disappears, the load times I dunno, my PC is good enough to run at max settings (occlusion excepted) while maintaining 60fps consistently, and yet I'm usually one of the last people to load into the game. There's gotta be a reason, but I doubt it'll be discovered by anyone except the dev's/playtesters or someone who tests the game across various hardware/software installations. Random crashes seem to have spiked since build 234, I don't think it's you, don't worry about it. I doubt your Raid setup has anything to do with it.

Makenshi

I already game well below my optimal resolution. I typically game on 3 monitors. As it is, I am running below full HD resolution on a single monitor, and it did not seem to load any faster (though it did alleviate late game fps drop somewhat). As for being wallshot and the hitreg issues, I highly doubt it is performance related. I am able to max everything with 4xaa16af at my current resolution and maintain 60fps until very late game, but I am still consistently (not very frequently, just consistently on a hourly/by-match basis) being shot by shotguns pointed at the other direction or being killed by marines 2 corridors away from me.

However, it seems like this thread has been going the wrong direction thus far. I don't care about the hitreg and most of the major performance issues, I have learned to just deal with it. I was wondering if anyone knows anything about this mysterious loading time bug that has me staring at 0% precaching for anything up to minutes at a time. Since it obviously doesn't affect everyone, I am assuming there is some way to fix or at least alleviate the issue. I've had games almost ended by a rush as I load into the maps before.

Makenshi

I solved the issue. Disabling vsync in game greatly reduces the loading time. I then had a flickering issue because I am using 3 monitors, so I had to unplug one of them physically in order to fix it (Catalyst force vsync does not work with NS2).

Ghosthree3

I see no reason why vsync would cause longer load times, it simply caps your frame rate, definitely worth it to leave it on though imo.

Makenshi

I didn't THINK it would, but it did. There is quite a big difference between a two minute loading time and 20 seconds, and I'm inclined to think that I can differentiate between the two especially since I got a frame of reference now that I am constantly loading before my buddy.