lcm1947 Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 Any body know why it takes so long for the 3-D graphics to load on my computer? I have no problems with the the maps or movements or anything but even when I just load a tiny scenario it takes about 10 - 15 seconds to load up. The other games never took that long and I was wondering what part of my computer is causing it. I have a 850 processer, 382 Ram and a 64 video card. Would you think it's the processor which I assume is the weakest part of my computer? I would appreciate any comments or suggestions. I hope I gave you enough info? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 What other games are you comparing this to ? 10 - 15 seconds doesn't sound too long (even for a small scenario). CM has to setup quite a bit of data, draw objects and texture them and all of this data has to be read from the hard drive setup in memory and then fed to the video card (which does its part). I'm not sure what to recommend to speed up this process significantly. Even upgrading to a much faster computer with much faster components may only give you a small improvement. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 The speed of this phase is entirely dictated by the speed of your harddisk. The game is loading the BMP files for the textures. Improving: - make sure you have DMA set to "on" in your harddisk and IDE controller (if IDE) - be careful with external harddisks, e.g. with USB make sure it is actually using USB 2.0 all the way through - if it is locally, make sure you have a controller that is using the fastest DMA mode the harddisk can do (e.g. you might want to get a PCI card for UDMA133 if your mainboard only does UDMA66) - make sure you don't use a cable that disabled the fastest DMA mode - if it is a network drive, move it locally if you can or improve the network server and the network - maybe get a faster harddisk. Minimum access time is more important than throughput for this situation (loading many small files) - use FAT, not NTFS Again, you are loading many small files here, not one big file as other games do, so the speed requirements for your harddisk are different. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzertruppe Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 10 to 15 seconds to load? I guess life is just to short! Next time I have to wait for 3 minutes to load a game of "Postal 2" I'll just shoot myself! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted January 7, 2004 Author Share Posted January 7, 2004 Thanks guys for your comments and time. So I guess I'm just being a cry baby but it sure seemed longer then the other CM games which I'm comparing CMAK to. Just thought I'd ask. Again, thanks for the help. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 7, 2004 Share Posted January 7, 2004 It may take longer to load the graphics with CMBB & CMAK (I'm not sure what the speed differences are between CMBB & CMAK). The textures (comparing un-modded versions) are larger and there are more of them with the later games. The models (vehicles & infantry) are more complex and some of the maps are bigger (assuming that you're comparing the loading of certain scenarios). As redwolf pointed out, hard drive speed may be the biggest factor in the 3D loading process. Your hard drive will get slower with the more data that you have on it (more info in the directory/file structure to read through to find the data itself). Also where this data is stored on the hard drive (physically) can affect the time to access it. File system fragmentation can also play a part, forcing the hard drive to move its heads around more to read all of the fragmented files. Defragging your hard drive may help a little, but there'll probably be only a small gain with that considering the manner that most defraggers work nowadays. Getting rid of unneccessary bloat (unused programs & data) on your hard drive can help a bit too. [ January 07, 2004, 03:35 PM: Message edited by: Schrullenhaft ] 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted January 8, 2004 Author Share Posted January 8, 2004 Thanks again Schrullenhaft that may be some of my problem and I was or should say am going to get a larger hard drive very very soon anyway so that may solve my problem. If nothing else it'll be interesting to see if it does. Thanks again for the help. I appreciate it and guys like you taking the time to answer what must seem to you to be a stupid question but hey to us stupid people it's serious. Thanks guy. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 You are welcome but how is a bigger hard drive supposed to help the problem? Reminds me of the person who thinks a faster CPU helps against his lock-ups Cheers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted January 8, 2004 Author Share Posted January 8, 2004 What do you mean in how does that help by getting a larger hard drive? Haven't you been paying attention? No seriously, after reading your last post I thought, what is he talking about so went back and reread the posts and see that you and Schrullenhaft are talking about hard drive speed not how large it is. Well, my hard drive will be 7200 RPM instead of my current 5200 RPM so that I assume is what you are meaning? To be quite honest Redwolf that other stuff you said went so far over my head it's not funny. I mean it's like a foreign language to me but I appreciate you trying never the less. And just so you know that I'm not just another pretty face I know that a faster CPU wouldn't help lockups, would it? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Monty Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Originally posted by redwolf: - use FAT, not NTFS Is FAT really faster ? Second question: If so, is it worth it; I though NTFS is more secure and will have less fragmentation. I have all my partitions in NTFS and im quit happy with it. Monty 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Panzertruppe Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Any question about CM is usally not "stupid"(except for the question about "where is the blood" that pops up with the newbies) but I do find humor in this thread when so many of my games take much longer to load then CMAK. Hopefully my humor did not offend. Bill 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Originally posted by Monty: </font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by redwolf: - use FAT, not NTFS Is FAT really faster ? Second question: If so, is it worth it; I though NTFS is more secure and will have less fragmentation. I have all my partitions in NTFS and im quit happy with it. Monty </font> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redwolf Posted January 8, 2004 Share Posted January 8, 2004 Originally posted by lcm1947: What do you mean in how does that help by getting a larger hard drive? Haven't you been paying attention? No seriously, after reading your last post I thought, what is he talking about so went back and reread the posts and see that you and Schrullenhaft are talking about hard drive speed not how large it is. Well, my hard drive will be 7200 RPM instead of my current 5200 RPM so that I assume is what you are meaning? To be quite honest Redwolf that other stuff you said went so far over my head it's not funny. I mean it's like a foreign language to me but I appreciate you trying never the less. And just so you know that I'm not just another pretty face I know that a faster CPU wouldn't help lockups, would it? I didn't want to be inpolite, it was just so obvious that bigger doesn't mean better Sorry. Anyway, the RPM rating mostly affects reading of large files which you don't need here. If you want to minimize CM loading time then the seek time is most important and a big cache on the drive helps, too. You can also put all of CM on a ramdisk Most of the other stuff I posted means that you need a recent IDE controller which supports the fastest mode your drive goes (UDMA66, UDMA100 etc), make sure the cable meets the specs for it and you should install newest drivers for it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lcm1947 Posted January 9, 2004 Author Share Posted January 9, 2004 No, Pazertruppe it didn't offend me in the least I completely understood and saw the humor in your post. No problem whats so ever I can assure you. And Redwolf no "sorry" is needed. A good point. Some might believe that and truth be known it wasn't all that long ago that I actually thought that myself. so no you weren't impolite in the least. Now again you went way and I mean way over my head so since I'll be taking my computer in to get this larger and faster hard drive like I mentioned I have printed your comments out and will show them to my computer guy and see if he can check all that out for me. Again, thanks to all for the help. You guys are great. Thanks. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Die Easy Posted January 10, 2004 Share Posted January 10, 2004 Hi Lee, Even though it does not explain the relative difference in loading time you experience between CMBO/CMBB and CMAK: I experience longer loading time in general when my virus protection is ON when loading the game. I therefore turn it off before starting CM. Best regards Mr. Die Easy 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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