Loading time for HL2 and levels

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.

With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(

And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?

(strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)

PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!

 

[rolly]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud plaatste dit op zijn scherm :
> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>
> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>
> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>
> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>
> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented

1 minute is fast.

--
Al wat je nodig hebt is http://www.google.be/ en
http://home.mine.be/~joinus/index.html

Rolly.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud wrote:
> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>
> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>
> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>
> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>
> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented

on mine Levels take about 20 seconds to load.. I have P4@2.26Ghz, 1GB
RDRAM@533, ATI9800pro & ATA-133 HD. Can't think why it would be so
slow on yours... I have my heapsize at 64MB, which I think is the default.




--
Ben Cottrell AKA Bench

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Ben Cottrell skrev:

> on mine Levels take about 20 seconds to load.. I have P4@2.26Ghz, 1GB
> RDRAM@533, ATI9800pro & ATA-133 HD. Can't think why it would be so
> slow on yours... I have my heapsize at 64MB, which I think is the default.

I could get more RAM (if it swaps to pagefile the HDD would slow
down). More RAM never hurts anyway. I'll put it on my wishlist

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Ben Cottrell skrev:

> slow on yours... I have my heapsize at 64MB, which I think is the default.

Where do you set that?

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud wrote:
> Ben Cottrell skrev:
>
>
>>slow on yours... I have my heapsize at 64MB, which I think is the default.
>
>
> Where do you set that?

I didn't.. Like I said, i think it's the default setting (but i'm
not sure if the game does it automatically based on your RAM)

but if you want to specify the heapsize manually, add "-heapsize 65536"
(no quotes) to your command line params or launch options in Steam for
HL2.. that will set it to 64MB ... 131072 would be 128MB


--
Ben Cottrell AKA Bench

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud wrote:
> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>
> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>
> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>
> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>
> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented


AMD FX-55, 2 gig of RAM... takes about 15 seconds tops...

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

"Lars-Erik Østerud" <.@.> wrote in message
news:cEvCd.334$VR2.324@amstwist00

About 30 to 40 seconds.

> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>
> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>
> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>
> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>
> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented

 

[DaveL]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

"McGrandpa" <McGrandpaNOT@NOThotmail.com> wrote in message
news:AeGCd.40892$wD4.7251@fe1.texas.rr.com...
>
> About 30 to 40 seconds.
>
So is it safe to guess that you have 1 gb of ram?

DaveL

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

"Toe Jam" <toejam@yourfoot.com> wrote in message
news:tuFCd.56356$mA3.20451@fe2.columbus.rr.com...
> Lars-Erik Østerud wrote:
>> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>>
>> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
>> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>>
>> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
>> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>>
>> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
>> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
>> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>>
>> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented
>
>
> AMD FX-55, 2 gig of RAM... takes about 15 seconds tops...
>

Noticing a pattern here. person with 512mb ram says 1 min, person with 1 gig
says 30 seconds and person with 2 gig says 15 seconds.


>

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Iain Dingsdale skrev:

> Noticing a pattern here. person with 512mb ram says 1 min, person with 1 gig
> says 30 seconds and person with 2 gig says 15 seconds.

Bottom line must be that the longer loading time comes from "swapping"
memory to pagefile due to too little physical RAM in the PC. THat
would explain the slow transfer from HDD as well (head need to move
back/forth between swapfile and GCF file during the loading).

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud skrev:
> Iain Dingsdale skrev:
>
>
>>Noticing a pattern here. person with 512mb ram says 1 min, person with 1 gig
>>says 30 seconds and person with 2 gig says 15 seconds.
>
>
> Bottom line must be that the longer loading time comes from "swapping"
> memory to pagefile due to too little physical RAM in the PC. THat
> would explain the slow transfer from HDD as well (head need to move
> back/forth between swapfile and GCF file during the loading).
>

Th amount of RAM has little to do with it. Maybe a few seconds shorter
from 512M to 1Gig, but nothing more. The two main factors is the hard
drive speed and most important the main system troughput.

To maximize the hard drive speed you want a fast SATA drive, and
preferably a RAID system. Make sure the Steam files are not fragmented,
and located near the beginning of the physical drive.

To maximize the system troughput you need fast memory, a processor with
fast memory access, and a motherboard with fast chipset. You want a
socket 939 Athlon processor, becuse the 250MHz core frequency gives
higher memory bandwidth than any other processor except for the very
expensive Pentium EE Gallatin models. Then you want at least 500 MHz
memory speed, that means DDR-PC4000 or higher. And for the motherboard
you want either K8T800PRO or nForce4Ultra chipset which gives by far the
fastest access between the system devices.

Only this way you can get the loading time down to as low as 15 seconds.

--
Robert Aksland

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Robert Aksland skrev:

> To maximize the hard drive speed you want a fast SATA drive, and

I have a fast S-ATA (Hitachi 80GB newest type) on a Promise S-ATA raid
controller on an Asus P4PE mainboard with a Pentium 4 at 2.54 Ghz. But
still the HDD LED only glimmers at load (not lighting up all the time)

Strangely, when I die, and reload a level it takes much less time.
Is there som buffering (someone were talking about "precaching",
is this something I should turn on in HL2, it off by default I see)

> preferably a RAID system. Make sure the Steam files are not fragmented,

No fragmentation (had to defrag in Win98 as XP wouldn't 100%)

> and located near the beginning of the physical drive.

That's a bit hard to fix, OK, I could do a defrag in Win98 and put all
the GCF files on the "Files first" list. Should they be close to the
paging file as well (to make the heads move less back/forth

> To maximize the system troughput you need fast memory, a processor with

As fast as P4PE can do

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

"Lars-Erik Østerud" <.@.> wrote in message
news:SXZCd.464$VR2.336@amstwist00...
> Robert Aksland skrev:

> Strangely, when I die, and reload a level it takes much less time.
> Is there som buffering (someone were talking about "precaching",
> is this something I should turn on in HL2, it off by default I see)

That's because of two reasons:

(1) If the same level is reloaded, the game effectively shortcuts reloading
many resources because it already has them in memory and haven't changed
since last time (eg. textures).
(1) Hard drives employ memory caches to speed up reading of the same data.
That's why it's recommended that when you benchmark your video card for
example, you run the benchmark twice and take the second score you get,
because the first will have been slower due to disk accesses that were
cached for the second benchmark.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

"DaveL" <dave1027@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:WIednR6z8PREj0HcRVn-qQ@comcast.com
> "McGrandpa" <McGrandpaNOT@NOThotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:AeGCd.40892$wD4.7251@fe1.texas.rr.com...
>>
>> About 30 to 40 seconds.
>>
> So is it safe to guess that you have 1 gb of ram?
>
> DaveL

Yes I removed the -heapsize 512000 from the command line. Load was
28 secs. reload was 10 seconds.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

On Tue, 04 Jan 2005 13:05:29 +0100, Lars-Erik Østerud <.@.> wrote:

> What is the usual loading time? I think it takes forever.
>
> With a P4 2.54Ghz, 512MB RAM and a S-ATA disk it still
> takes almost a minute to start and load levels :-(
>
> And the HDD LED doesn't light up, just flicker.
> Is it HL2 that is this slow, or anything wrong?
>
> (strange, to me me my new S-ATA disk on the Promise controller of my
> Asus P4PE seems slower than my old P-ATA 66 disk, and even stranger,
> it seems slower in XP than in 98, latest drivers installed too...)
>
> PS! All GCF-files are 100% defragmented
>


Make sure that you also have Windows Auto-indexing
turned off. That nasty bit of code can slow your
real *work* to a crawl....


thomas.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

Lars-Erik Østerud skrev:
> Robert Aksland skrev:
>
>
>>To maximize the hard drive speed you want a fast SATA drive, and
>
>
> I have a fast S-ATA (Hitachi 80GB newest type) on a Promise S-ATA raid
> controller on an Asus P4PE mainboard with a Pentium 4 at 2.54 Ghz. But
> still the HDD LED only glimmers at load (not lighting up all the time)
>
> Strangely, when I die, and reload a level it takes much less time.
> Is there som buffering (someone were talking about "precaching",
> is this something I should turn on in HL2, it off by default I see)

When you die, the game already have the necessary data in memory. Also
to load a game within a level takes short time, but loading a game from
a different level takes the same time as walking into a new part.

>>preferably a RAID system. Make sure the Steam files are not fragmented,
>
> No fragmentation (had to defrag in Win98 as XP wouldn't 100%)
>
>>and located near the beginning of the physical drive.
>
> That's a bit hard to fix, OK, I could do a defrag in Win98 and put all
> the GCF files on the "Files first" list. Should they be close to the
> paging file as well (to make the heads move less back/forth

Copy it onto a new fast hard drive

>>To maximize the system troughput you need fast memory, a processor with
>
> As fast as P4PE can do

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-24.html

I believe this chart on memory bandwidth is close connected to the
loading times in HL2. If your processor score 6000 here, you will get
less than 30 seconds loading time, depending on the rest of your system.
With a score of 3000 you will get up to 60 seconds, and so on.

--
Robert Aksland

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.games.half-life (More info?)

thomas rush <SelfGovern(at)@(at)Yahoo.Com> skrev:

> Make sure that you also have Windows Auto-indexing
> turned off. That nasty bit of code can slow your

You are think of the index-server service, right?
Disabled of course (along with many other services

--
Lars-Erik - http://home.chello.no/~larse/ - ICQ # 7297605
Win98se, Asus P4PE, 2.53 GHz, Asus V8420 (Ti4200), SB-Live!