I have an ssd, and I have found that cpu speed helps loading times. If you have slow precaching I think you just have poor performance in ns2 in general.
i have ssd on os as well, but not steam maybe i should install steam or natural selection on the ssd!?
Well yeah, if it's taking a long time to read files from the HDD on which they rest, perhaps installing NS2 on the SSD instead might help The SSD can't magically help speed up transfer of files that aren't even stored on it!
As james888 said, CPU speed also helps here. You really want at least a couple of cores running well over 4GHz if you can (and even then, late game performance will still be horrible: on my i5 4670K at 4.4GHz with a 780 superclocked, it gets nasty late game). But at least loading times for me are fast, so I can't complain about that.
IronHorseDeveloper, QA Manager, Technical Support & contributorJoin Date: 2010-05-08Member: 71669Members, Super Administrators, Forum Admins, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Subnautica Playtester, Subnautica PT Lead, Pistachionauts
edited June 2014
If you place it on an SSD you'll more than likely chop your loading time down to ~30 seconds, as said in here. (varies based on the rest of your rig)
If you want it to load faster than that, I'm afraid that's up to the servers you join and their consistency checking settings. (none at all = 10 seconds tops w/ SSD)
If you place it on an SSD you'll more than likely chop your loading time down to ~30 seconds, as said in here. (varies based on the rest of your rig)
If you want it to load faster than that, I'm afraid that's up to the servers you join and their consistency checking settings. (none at all = 10 seconds tops w/ SSD)
I usually range from 10-20 seconds on a server load, with a 5ghz cpu. That sounds pretty good.
So is this why consoles are so popular? Just having to buy it once without any maintenance, without any worry of in-game competitors having better rigs with smoother gameplay...
Am I really the only one not that bothered by loading times?
First time load is like, just over a minute, on my 4gz cpu, NS2 installed on a shitty old 500gb SATA HDD, and that's completely fine by me. I just grab a coffee or send a text or whatever in that time.
i'm not saying that there's anything wrong or right about the loading times atm, but it's never really been something that's irked me :-S
Am I really the only one not that bothered by loading times?
First time load is like, just over a minute, on my 4gz cpu, NS2 installed on a shitty old 500gb SATA HDD, and that's completely fine by me. I just grab a coffee or send a text or whatever in that time.
i'm not saying that there's anything wrong or right about the loading times atm, but it's never really been something that's irked me :-S
Same here, first load takes a while, but after that its pretty damn fast, even on good ol' HDD.
If you switch from "Fullscreen" to "Windowed Fullscreen" in the graphics options, you can Alt+Tab while loading without any problems. There is no second-long delay (like with Fullscreen) and I never crashed because of this (which I did when trying to do the same with Fullscreen only).
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
I talked it over with @Ironhorse and did some digging.
Windows Aero mode combined with fullscreen windowed mode produces some additional input lag.
Most folk who always use fullscreen windowed, like me, dont seem to notice. (The mind adapts ya know)
But it can be around a good amount of added ms.
Then again, my reaction speed blows as is.
matsoMaster of PatchesJoin Date: 2002-11-05Member: 7000Members, Forum Moderators, NS2 Developer, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver, Squad Five Gold, Reinforced - Shadow, NS2 Community Developer
If you have a rotary disk and windows have decided that it wants to index that disk while NS2 wants to precache, you are SOL - the disk head will be busy reading a file for indexing and NS2 will just have to wait until the head meanders back to it. And as soon as NS2 has read a file, the head is heading back to read files for the indexer.
When that happened, it used to take more than five minutes to start NS2.
Not a problem with an SSD, of course.
Of course, it might be possible to solve that if NS2 built a zip archive of all files loaded during VM startup, and then just loaded all those files into the precache when starting (with the usual modification check, of course). Might work.
Though you would engine access to fix that.
Which reminds me... can't use that excuse anymore, happy times!
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
Indexing is a different cup and, very often, utterly misused.
Basicly you only need to index what you will reasonably search through. So for example.. is there a need for you to search the windows folder or your games? No? Then do not bother indexing those. Only index what you need. (search without index is slow, much slower but possible)
You can setup your indexing in windows own system tools.
Added benefit of indexing only what you need is simple, the index will be smaller and easy to create. UPDATING a index takes almost no time at all.
The index options specify a location where it writes its index files. DO NOT EVER index this location! Making a index of the place where you write said index will give your IT person a good laugh, but other then that prove no purpose but pain.
So recap and details!
* Configure windows index in 'Tools'.
* Index what you need only. (yes, indexing that awesome map with 999999999 pictures is a bad bad idea)
* Subfolders count! So if you index my documents (standard) and it contains a subfolder for pictures with previously named 999999999 pictures, it will take LONG until it finally is up to date.
* NEVER index the location you write the index.
* If index is dreaded slow, rebuild from this menu and grab a drink, or slap yourself and reread rule 2&3.
* Updating a index is pretty fast, making one from scratch isn't.
Join Date: 2013-01-16 Member: 179856Members
Comments
Thats what i get for using an iphone with predictive text
Nice sad drive.
Well yeah, if it's taking a long time to read files from the HDD on which they rest, perhaps installing NS2 on the SSD instead might help
As james888 said, CPU speed also helps here. You really want at least a couple of cores running well over 4GHz if you can (and even then, late game performance will still be horrible: on my i5 4670K at 4.4GHz with a 780 superclocked, it gets nasty late game). But at least loading times for me are fast, so I can't complain about that.
Then you can watch your videos while waiting for the rest to load their map
If you want it to load faster than that, I'm afraid that's up to the servers you join and their consistency checking settings. (none at all = 10 seconds tops w/ SSD)
First time load is like, just over a minute, on my 4gz cpu, NS2 installed on a shitty old 500gb SATA HDD, and that's completely fine by me. I just grab a coffee or send a text or whatever in that time.
i'm not saying that there's anything wrong or right about the loading times atm, but it's never really been something that's irked me :-S
Same here, first load takes a while, but after that its pretty damn fast, even on good ol' HDD.
But loading times really aren't that big of an issue. Hell, I would accept a 4 min loading time if the in-game performance got better.
For me it works perfectly fine. On the other hand, what do I know...
Wow ok I never noticed that, or I already adapted
Windows Aero mode combined with fullscreen windowed mode produces some additional input lag.
Most folk who always use fullscreen windowed, like me, dont seem to notice. (The mind adapts ya know)
But it can be around a good amount of added ms.
Then again, my reaction speed blows as is.
Edit - the 5fps was beta... alpha I think I had .001 fps.
When that happened, it used to take more than five minutes to start NS2.
Not a problem with an SSD, of course.
Of course, it might be possible to solve that if NS2 built a zip archive of all files loaded during VM startup, and then just loaded all those files into the precache when starting (with the usual modification check, of course). Might work.
Though you would engine access to fix that.
Which reminds me... can't use that excuse anymore, happy times!
*trello added*
Basicly you only need to index what you will reasonably search through. So for example.. is there a need for you to search the windows folder or your games? No? Then do not bother indexing those. Only index what you need. (search without index is slow, much slower but possible)
You can setup your indexing in windows own system tools.
Added benefit of indexing only what you need is simple, the index will be smaller and easy to create. UPDATING a index takes almost no time at all.
The index options specify a location where it writes its index files. DO NOT EVER index this location! Making a index of the place where you write said index will give your IT person a good laugh, but other then that prove no purpose but pain.
So recap and details!
* Configure windows index in 'Tools'.
* Index what you need only. (yes, indexing that awesome map with 999999999 pictures is a bad bad idea)
* Subfolders count! So if you index my documents (standard) and it contains a subfolder for pictures with previously named 999999999 pictures, it will take LONG until it finally is up to date.
* NEVER index the location you write the index.
* If index is dreaded slow, rebuild from this menu and grab a drink, or slap yourself and reread rule 2&3.
* Updating a index is pretty fast, making one from scratch isn't.