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Load Time

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ve6tp
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Load Time

Post by ve6tp »

Hi:

Is it just me or does it take forever for the game to load when your first start up or when you have to load again after you are killed?

It really takes a long, long time to load. I'm talking about 3 minutes or more before the initial loading is done, before I can select which "save" I want to load. That part is done in seconds.

My CPU is as about up to date as you can get. I just up-graded about 2 weeks ago. I have 3.2 Gig RAM, Clock speed is 3.1 Gig. and a high grade Graphic Card. I have (2) 500 Gig Hard Drives, etc., etc.

Is this normal to take so long to load all the time??

Thanks.
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DesR85
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Post by DesR85 »

I remember it took me around a minute to load a game with 2GB of RAM. A lot longer in both the Trade Quarter and Old Vizima levels. That is in the original game, not the Enhanced Edition version.

Have you tried defragging your hard drive? It should help in shortening the load times by a lot.
''They say truth is the first casualty of war. But who defines what's true? Truth is just a matter of perspective. The duty of every soldier is to protect the innocent, and sometimes that means preserving the lie of good and evil, that war isn't just natural selection played out on a grand scale. The only truth I found is that the world we live in is a giant tinderbox. All it takes...is someone to light the match" - Captain Price
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ve6tp
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Post by ve6tp »

Hi Des:

Thanks for the reply.

For all acts of the game (I'm now in act III) it has taken probably about 3 minutes or more to load. Very frustrating.

No point in defragmenting my drives .... they are brand new, only had them installed less than a week or two ago.

I've got lots of RAM, at 3.1 Gig. and a high quality Video card. And it is 2 Core, dual system mother board. Doesn't get any faster than that right now.

Are you saying that after act III, it doesn't take so long to load up??
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DesR85
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Post by DesR85 »

ve6tp wrote: For all acts of the game (I'm now in act III) it has taken probably about 3 minutes or more to load. Very frustrating.

No point in defragmenting my drives .... they are brand new, only had them installed less than a week or two ago.
I suggest doing so, as some games don't perform that well if they're not defragged after installation. The Sims series is a good example of what happens if you don't defrag after installation. Long loading times, sluggish performance, etc.
ve6tp wrote:Are you saying that after act III, it doesn't take so long to load up??
Only in Act IV, the loading times will be the same like the other levels before Act III. Act V will behave the same like in Act III.
''They say truth is the first casualty of war. But who defines what's true? Truth is just a matter of perspective. The duty of every soldier is to protect the innocent, and sometimes that means preserving the lie of good and evil, that war isn't just natural selection played out on a grand scale. The only truth I found is that the world we live in is a giant tinderbox. All it takes...is someone to light the match" - Captain Price
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drazac
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Post by drazac »

How much GB are your savegames... it took me around minute to load the list of 6GB of save games, although, that amount of GB i had when i finished the game... so if you've saved every fue mins, this could be the cause of long loading time... if not, check your virtual memory, Pagefile Optimization...
There is also boot tweak, it helped me a great deal regarding crashes, i don't know will it work for long loading times... but if you wanna try, open a boot.ini file and add these lines:
/3GB USERVA = 2500 this is important: USERVA, you can set this value from 2000 to 2800, important thing is you should find whats the best value for you system... for me it was 2200 (just experiment with it)

Download Diskepper 2008, this program will automatically defragment all your drivers in background

Last thing, 3GB's of memory sounds odd, you lost dual channel mode, so try removing one module and c how are your loading times then
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ve6tp
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Post by ve6tp »

Hi drazac:

Thanks for all the time and effort you put into helping me. I do appreciate it very much. I'll answer some of your questions ....

1. Regarding "Saved Games", this was the main thought with me too. I had already tried this by deleting all the saved games for chapters I and II but it didn't make any difference to the load time.

Since you brought up the subject though, I have looked at "the whicher" files in the "Program Files" section and I cannot see any folder where the saved games are stored. Can you tell me, is there a particular folder where I can find them? It would be so much faster to delete them that way, than by the use of the program option of deleting them one game at a time. Or do you have a suggestion how I can group selections and do a delete??

2. As for my CPU, it is a PC using XP Pro. I'm wondering if Service Pack III has caused me a problem. Windows service packs seem to cause more problems than they solve.

Virtual Memory is at 2.046 Gib.
System is Intel Dual Core at 3.16 GHz (clock speed)
RAM is 3.17 GHz. Actually more is there but the machine is only capable of using 3.17 Gig.
Video Card is the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT.
I don't think I have any concerns about how I have things set up for the CPU operation, etc. And I do want to thank you for giving me those links. They could be useful in the future.

Look forward to any help regarding the location of 'saved games" folder.

Thanks again.

And DesR85:

Well, defragmenting can't hurt anything. I'll take your suggestion and if it makes any difference I'll be sure to let you know. Thanks.

Regards,
Tru



.
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swcarter
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Post by swcarter »

The Witcher stores its saved games in My Documents/The Witcher.

SWC
Sir Edmund: "Should you obey the lord who asks you to put a village of innocents to the torch? Is that chivalrous? Is it noble?"
Me: "It's a great way to get promoted, I know that much."
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drazac
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Post by drazac »

Okay... i will recommend you to do this first although you don't have to:
You have 3GB of memory, try removing one module so that you end up with 2GB
Start The Witcher, and c how are your loading times

If you dont want to remove one module, then skip the above

Next, savegames are located in my doc folder/the witcher folder
You dont need to delete them all, just cut them and paste them somewhere else, but make sure you leave 5 LAST SAVE GAMES so you can try loading each one... you can restore save games later (i hope this will be your problem, cause you saved constantly, if not, next steps will be more tricky... i had 6GB of save games and it took me around minute to load them all)

Try this, go to virtual memory and change the values:
C partition is default place for pagefile, so you will remove it to another partition (click on No paging file for drive C)... next you will allocate the pagefile between two hard drives (you have 2 hard disks right) for maximum performance... so select ANY partition (except C) of the FIRST HARD DRIVE (i dont know how much partitions you have so ill give you an example)...
FIRST DRIVE has 3 partitions (C, D, E) select D or E (not both) and click CUSTOM SIZE: put these values for both minimum and maximum size: 4608 ... next
select ANY partition of the SECOND HARD DRIVE... heres and example
SECOND HDD has 2 partitions (F, G)... select F or G (not both) and do the same: custom size. max and min = 4608
RESTART COMP

Run The Witcher, and c how are your loading times

If they are still long, you can try this:
Open boot.ini (Right click on My Comp-Properties-Advanced tab-Startup and Recovery-click on settings-new window will open, click on EDIT button that will open boot.ini

Add these vaules: /3GB /userva=xxxx important:xxxx is the number between 2000 and 2800, try setting this at 2400, however you must find the best match for you PC.. mine was 2200... this tweak should solve crashes at chapter 3, 4 and 5 ... i know this aint your problem, but try this and c will it help... dont forget to restart the comp after editing boot.ini

Also if you do the boot.ini tweak, some games wont work when you allocate 3GB for Kernel cause (like brothers in arms HH) they will crash... so make sure to delete these added lines when you finish The Witcher
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ve6tp
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Post by ve6tp »

Hey Guys:

swcarter: As usual, you have come around to help me again. Thank you very much.

I had the right idea about deleting the "saved" files, so I wasn't far off base with the proper answer. My problem, was that I didn't realize the files were under "Documents". I'm so used to everything being in the "Programs Folder". Live and learn I guess.

At any rate, I deleted 85% of my saved files and now it loads almost instantly.

Thanks for the help.

drazac: I can't believe all the trouble you went to, to help me. You are a wealth of information and obviously an expert when it comes to CPU technology. Fortunately for me, I didn't have to attempt some of your recommendations, as the deletion of saved files did the trick. But the information you wrote me was super. Thank you so much for all of that. Not many people would go to so much trouble.

Without doubt, I'm sure both of you will see more "help" postings from me. But I honestly do try and resolve them myself first before posting.

My thanks to you both.

Regards,
Tru
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drazac
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Post by drazac »

ve6tp wrote:I can't believe all the trouble you went to, to help me.
Dont worry about it... im glad the problem is solved... now go play The Witcher and have fun... game is superb
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