Load times with quality graphic settings

[Bartokomus]

I've been impatient lately with the load times of all three of the new games (FI, BN, and RT) when I play at high details, so I ran a test last night to identify where the issue was for my own curiosity.

test rig: Radeon 7950, 16gb RAM, i5-2500K, GIGABYTE GA-Z68XP-UD3, Intel 330 Series 180GB SSD.

Running at desktop resolution (1680x1050) with vSync enabled I loaded up a freshly saved turn of two Huge scenarios CMBN "My honor is my loyalty" and CMRT "Gog and Magog".

I ran four tests for each group of settings, alternating between Fastest/Fastest/AA Off and Best/Best/AA On:

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 18.92s My Honor is my loyalty(CMBN)

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 17.66s My Honor is my loyalty

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 17.99s My Honor is my loyalty

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 18.32s My Honor is my loyalty

best best On 1680x1050 2:49.24s My Honor is my loyalty

best best On 1680x1050 2:48.52s My Honor is my loyalty

best best On 1680x1050 2:48.61s My Honor is my loyalty

best best On 1680x1050 2:49.43s My Honor is my loyalty

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 22.70s Gog and Magog

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 22.47s Gog and Magog

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 22.95s Gog and Magog

fastest fastest Off 1680x1050 23.02s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:08.15s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:11.03s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:00.46s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:04.73s Gog and Magog

Does anyone have a machine/video card which loads turn like Gog and Magog in the 1 minute range with quality settings? What HW are you using?

I run many other demanding games with the same rig at max details, and I've never understood why the lengthy load times for CMx2 games.

I assume its the loading of the hi-res textures which causes the delay. Right/Wrong?

thanks

[Holman]

I'm not able to do a test, but I recently bought a new computer and the load-time improvement is amazing. On my old machine (a dual-core with a 1GB video card), "My Honor Is Loyalty" took three minutes to load at better/better. On my new machine (quad-core with a 2GB video card) it loads in about a minute at best/best.

So whatever else is going on, load times are very hardware dependent.

[Lee_Vincent]

An SSD may help.

[Cirrus]

System configuration has significant role on load times.

For example if I load same PBEM QB save game with identical mods and settings with two different computers the result is hugely different.

Comp 1 specs (Asus laptop): Intel core i7-2630qm 2.0 GHz, OCZ Vertex 3 128 Gb SSD, Nvidia Geforce GT540M 2 Gb, 12 Gb RAM, Windows 8.1

Load time: 01:15

Comp 2: Intel core i7-2600K 3.4 GHz, OCZ Agility 3 128 Gb SSD, ATI Radeon 6850 1 Gb (x2), 16 Gb RAM, Windows 7 SP1

Load time 03:11

I have hard time figuring out that what causes 3 times longer loading on much faster computer. My questimate currently is GPU RAM.

[Bulletpoint]

I'm surprised it would take that long with an SSD...

[Londoner]

Looks like it's down to processor and graphics. My new hazwell lappy and 780 geforce loads any scenario (in full hd, all settings maxed out) in under a minute. Have got rt installed on an ssd and bn on a standard drive and there's no significant difference.

[Andrew Kulin]

I did some load time testing a couple of months ago while sick with the flu using CMBN (2.11). What I found:

• 3D Model Quality had no impact on load times
  
• 3D Texture Quality did affect load times but was reasonable up to balanced then hit a brick wall at improved and higher settings, though the load times with Improved-better-best were all about the same.

I have attached a spreadsheet table that shows the time in seconds to load. I base load time as being the time in seconds from hitting "fight", to when the password screen pops up (it was a PBEM scenario I was testing). Times were measured using a stopwatch and rounded to the nearest full second.

But I also noticed a funny thing when running these load time tests, and that was I started noticing some times were increasing on occasions when I re-ran a test combination.

Eventually I ran the following tests (121 times). I first restarted the computer from power-off and loaded CMBN. I monitored RAM and CPU usage with the windows task manager. Essentially the test was as follows:

• load a PBEM file and use stopwatch to record time to get to password screen from "Fight" (same idea as above) - everything was set at "best", AA on, scenario I cannot find my penciled notes but I a, pretty certain it was the one in MG with German paratroopers holding Devil's Hill
  
• Record various RAM data fields from Task Manager (I settled on showing the committed RAM to CMBN at the end of the load-up (when password screen was visible)
  
• cancel the load at the password screen and repeat

What I saw was:

• Committed RAM at end of each run increased at a generally steady rate (blue line on attached graph). On average, increased by 14.4 kB per run. So there seems to me to be some bleeding of RAM (if that is the correct way to describe it) that can have an effect on load times if you are running CMBN for a long time without restarting it.
  
• Load times remained constant up to about Run 88 (35 secs), then increased until run 115 (55 secs) then remained flat after that.
  
• The increases in load times appeared to coincide with dynamic RAM usage during load up when it exceeded roughly the 2 GB level (RAM usage during loading was higher than RAM Commit at password screen, but would fluctuate and I could not reasonably record those readings and operate stopwatch effectively).
  
• As committed RAM levels continued to increase, the amount of time the dynamic RAM during loading was above ~2 GB usage also increased, as did load times
  
• Once committed RAM reached a threshold (around 2287 kB in my investigation) load times flat-lined at 55 seconds.

Gog and Magog - I just tried loading it from start new game screen and it it took 2:29 (min:sec), everything at best with AA on.

System spec's:

• ASUS P9X79 Deluxe (Sandy Bridge-E) with Intel i7 3930K @4.2 Ghz
  
• 64 GB DDR3 RAM @1685 MHz
  
• ASUS HD6970 Direct CuII (2GB DDR5 RAM @890 Mhz/1375 MHz)
  
• Storage - OCZ RevoDrive (OS) and various SSDs
  
• Screen Resolution - 2560x1440 (this is what game is run at)
  
• Win 7 x64 Ultimate

[Oddball-47]

best best On 1680x1050 3:08.15s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:11.03s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:00.46s Gog and Magog

best best On 1680x1050 3:04.73s Gog and Magog

Does anyone have a machine/video card which loads turn like Gog and Magog in the 1 minute range with quality settings? What HW are you using?

My box loaded Gog and Magog up in 1:15

using "best best On" 1680x1050

Here's the basic specs:

Operating System

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1

CPU

Intel Core i7 4770K @ 3.50GHz 34 °C

Haswell 22nm Technology

RAM

8.00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 800MHz (9-9-9-24)

Motherboard

ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. Z87M-PLUS (SOCKET 1150) 28 °C

Graphics

W2252 (1680x1050@60Hz)

2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (ASUStek Computer Inc) 36 °C

Hard Drives

112GB ATA Corsair Neutron SCSI Disk Device (SSD) 33 °C

932GB ATA WDC WD1002FAEX-0 SCSI Disk D

Regards, Odd

[c3k]

Interesting work wrt the RAM.

Thanks.

[Buzz]

Load CMBN 2.12 “Vierville” (appears to be the file in the thumb nail) as Elite, Real Time. Everything (Model Quality, Textures) set at Best, AA, Shadows, Shaders all on. This includes 5.4 GB of many higher texture mods.

Load time < 9”.

Normally I am running CM on DELL U2713HM-2560 x 1440 but am in country using a Smasung TV in 1920x1080P at the moment.

System Specs:

Hackintosh - ‘EVO Black Resurrection’ = EBR

Intel Core i7-4770K-3.89GHz not over-clocked in OS X

Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H motherboard

EVGA GTX 760 ACX 4GB GDDR5 RAM

16GB G.SKILL Sniper Series DDR3 2400 memory at 1600 MHz in OS X

Intel 335 SSD 240GB

Cooler Master HAF XB EVO LAN Case

DELL U2713HM-2560 x 1440

*Apple 10.9.3 public beta

Boot ROM Version: MultiBeast.tonymacx86.com

Andrew’s observations are interesting. I do often close CM after a long session of play. Maybe it is a habit I got into trying to maximized in game response. The other notables are the GTX 760 with 4GB of memory. Even on my 2009 Mac Pro the GTX 760 with 4GB of memory made the CMx2 games much more fluid and attractive at the extreme high end settings. Steve noted in the CMRT Demo thread that v3.0 could bump up against 4GB in some situations. In the Hackintosh the i7-4770K-3.89GHz makes zipping around a huge map (when I can load it) very easy to play w/o any sluggishness.

Hope this helps.

I cannot load “CW My Honor is Loyalty” as Apple’s 10.9.2 update borked their graphic drivers causing a 36% load and crash for many of the larger scenarios. Apple 10.9.3 public beta did improve graphic side a bit but there are still large scenarios that crash at 36%. I don’t own CMRT yet and would love to soon but until Apple fixes their blunder and / or I get a Windows 7 side set up, I am stuck dealing with Apple who should be releasing the real 10.9.3 soon and I truly hope their 2+ month long graphic error is corrected.

see”OSX Mavericks 10.9.2 update issues !!” thread for more load times using the Hackintosh.

Now back to Pro Bull Riding