Heinously slow asset loading
IeptBarakat
The most difficult name to speak ingame. Join Date: 2009-07-10 Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
The most difficult name to speak ingame. Join Date: 2009-07-10 Member: 68107Members, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, NS2 Map Tester, Reinforced - Diamond, Reinforced - Shadow
Ever since patch (267?) when the loading method for the game's assets were changed, the time it takes for my computer to load assets and connect to servers has drastically increased.
This is the sort of stuff I've been experiencing when trying to play.
It takes about 30-60 seconds to load the main menu, and anywhere near 5-10minutes when trying to join a server. Once I join the server the assets still wait a while before loading or not.
If anyone has any advice I'd greatly appreciate it.
Specs are:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
4096MB RAM DDR3 1333MHz
AMD Radeon HD 6770 1Gb
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ/ST500DM005 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Although ns2 is the only game giving me this kind of problem.
This is the sort of stuff I've been experiencing when trying to play.
It takes about 30-60 seconds to load the main menu, and anywhere near 5-10minutes when trying to join a server. Once I join the server the assets still wait a while before loading or not.
If anyone has any advice I'd greatly appreciate it.
Specs are:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3570K CPU @ 3.40GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.4GHz
4096MB RAM DDR3 1333MHz
AMD Radeon HD 6770 1Gb
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD502HJ/ST500DM005 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s
Although ns2 is the only game giving me this kind of problem.
Comments
NS2 has more then 1GB of textures on high.. So if you use high I am not surprised it keeps swapping textures. (its to prevent stutters)
you can use lower texture quality or set the texture handler to off, but with it off you have the stutters again.
@DC_Darkling I know I don't have enough Vram for high, on lower settings the textures still load very slowly. Slower than they used to be a few patches ago.
7200 RPM HDD as well
Ah, hopefully the CDT will find a fix at some point because this sort of thing is hard to play with.
That seemed to do the trick, I increased it to either 2-3 (can't remember which) and it is loading much quicker aside from a few random textures still taking a couple minutes to load.
It isn't 100%, but it's playable again. Thank you.
I use auslogics disk defrag and have since defragged without it making a difference.
@SupaFred I found the command in the Build 269 patchnotes.
res_workers n (n = number of used loading worker threads, default 1 )
Start using defraggler , auslogics defrag has been known to be worse than the windows vanilla defrag itself under win 7 or higher and i already have seen cases where it did corrupt the file system ....
[00:24:56]Client Authed. Steam ID: 143072788
Wareniels connected.
...
[00:25:29]Chat Team - Wareniels: It's so long for join this game
...
[01:13:14]Chat Team - Wareniels: Anyone now why i wait 10min for join a server pls i have a good pc and a good connection...
I guess when its been tested more to put it on the menu as a option if possible?
That said I don't think the problem is the number of worker threads, increasing it can alleviate the issue but the issue is caused by something else. Otherwise loading/asset loading shouldn't be worse than before multi-threaded loading was supported.
task manager > performance tab > press the shiny performance monitor button. Then on the disk tab, check both the MS column and the queue column. (both columns are in separate windows)
Also be sure to check your event viewer for obvious problems.
AV may be of influence in the matter. (overscanning etc)
Specially those av overreacting about ns2 because it's not digitally signed can cause alot of pain (up to 5 mins extra loading time ... )
It could be your video card's performance, as I also have a 1 GB card like you, (570 gtx) but I dont suffer those long of wait times.. (but my GPU also scores 4 times better than yours!) so I would definitely investigate the health of your hard drive.
Both SSDs and much better GPUs are cheap and available these days.. I know that's not optimal, that you rather find an underlaying issue.. but really think of it this way : before 267 you were hitching so much you just weren't noticing it, now you aren't nearly as much, and can witness to what extent.
TLDR: It's probably your sub par GPU, but you might as well investigate the possibility of a dysfunctional HD and/or software that is reading and writing like AV.
I don't think his GFX card is at fault here, and while an SSD is entirely recommended for all end users in my opinion, I can't help thinking that there's something a bit hinky about the first load. It definitely shouldn't take as long as it does on my system - albeit not in the 5-10minute range, it's still well over a minute, and for a high end SSD on a high end system that seems a bit out of whack...
(Newish specs)
Intel i5 3570k 3.4ghz
8gb DDR3 1333hz memory
Nvidia GTX 960 4gb
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 7200 RPM HDD
Plus side is the game is running really great aside from the whole texture issue.
I defragged, I got a new gpu, hdd is working fine. It's still an issue I have exclusive to this game.
edit: recent patches HAVE increased the texture world fill time lately, it is definitely known, just fyi
Well the ultra blurry textures for 5 minutes happens all the time until they get loaded into vram, it's not area specific as it happens everywhere.
My game nearly freezes(or does freeze) each time I use f_test after launching so I'm not sure how good the results will be.
biodome marine start (fresh start)
veil ready room
veil alien spawn hive under siege cargo
and a bonus (the below caused my gpu driver to crash)