Still long load times even with NVMe drive...

[d0rmant]

So I've got a decently fast computer: i5 7600k, gtx1070, nvme drive. The load times in HL1 are practically instantaneous, but they're still painfully slow in HL2. What gives? There's got to be some way to take advantage of modern hardware in order for level data to be loaded faster.

[Matt]

Maybe your game isn’t utilising cores and threads effectively. There are some launch options to change this, but I don’t remember them.

[Ghidrah1]

What model nvme do you have? I do notice the loading times in Obduction are considerably faster than with hdds and older ssds

[d0rmant]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167411

[Sikobae]

You can only do so much on dated engines. It was true for framerates, it's true for load times. That's called diminishing returns.

[Ghidrah1]

Dormant,
Max Sequential Read Up to 1570 MBps Max Sequential Write Up to 540 MBps

Yes, that stick is half as fast as the 960 and 970 series nvmes, but nearly twice as fast as my sata 750 evo ands nearly 3 times faster than the sata 6 hdds. The prices have dropped about $40 since late spring I'm waiting for the 970s to drop another 30 -40 to buy

[d0rmant]

Yeah i know it's not as fast as the 960 or 970 but I got it cheap. I'm just really disappointed that it feels no faster than my old SDD or even when I first played the game like 13 years ago on our family's old Dell.

[Ghidrah1]

Other than the longish load times the game plays well yeah, no blackouts, blurring, shearing, strobing, stutters, etc? I don't know what the frame rate is I get on the 750 evo and 1050 gti but its good enough to make it all look smooth.

With the sata2 hdd, map load times in the game Obduction were incredibly long from 50 to 70 seconds, the game load screen took nearly 90 secs. With the 750 evo Obduction game load time is 10 to 12 secs and map 6 to 8.

I’m thinking when I upgrade to the 970 for the OS and use the 960 for games that’ll hopefully cut map load times by another 25 to 50%. This would be great for playing, recording and editing games.

[Paul]

Loading times and other things are broken since the latest Valve client updates.

Valve probably don't know about Half Life games.

Loading times are awfull now.

[spade]

Originally posted by Sikobae:

You can only do so much on dated engines. It was true for framerates, it's true for load times. That's called diminishing returns.

uh, no, as op stated hl1 doesn't have this issue. this occurs because the source engine is an unoptimized pile of ♥♥♥♥ and always has been, source has notoriously long loading times especially for multiplayer games no matter the hardware

[Sikobae]

Originally posted by Halagini:

[
uh, no, as op stated hl1 doesn't have this issue.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of generation gaps.

Half Life is literally running on the Quake 1 engine.
Half Life was released when Windows 98 was mainstream.
The entire install size of the game fits on a single 700 MB disc.
Every texture in the game is an 8-bit color format.
Every sound file has a bit rate of 88kb, and is probably 11 khz upsampled to 22khz in real-time.
Every stock map is no bigger than 4 MB

Obviously, it's going to load extremely quickly. If you want to be technical, HL1 -does- have this issue, because hypothetically, we shouldnt even see the "Loading..." text on todays hardware. It's almost as if there are diminshing returns.

Originally posted by Halagini:

source has notoriously long loading times

Last I checked loads have gotten more optimized over the years even on trash drives.

No game engine has unlimited scaling capability with hardware, ever.

[spade]

Originally posted by Sikobae:

Originally posted by Halagini:

[
uh, no, as op stated hl1 doesn't have this issue.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of generation gaps.

Half Life is literally running on the Quake 1 engine.
Half Life was released when Windows 98 was mainstream.
The entire install size of the game fits on a single 700 MB disc.
Every texture in the game is an 8-bit color format.
Every sound file has a bit rate of 88kb, and is probably 11 khz upsampled to 22khz in real-time.
Every stock map is no bigger than 4 MB

Obviously, it's going to load extremely quickly. If you want to be technical, HL1 -does- have this issue, because hypothetically, we shouldnt even see the "Loading..." text on todays hardware. It's almost as if there are diminshing returns.

Originally posted by Halagini:

source has notoriously long loading times

Last I checked loads have gotten more optimized over the years even on trash drives.

No game engine has unlimited scaling capability with hardware, ever.

and yet games much more demanding than half-life 2 load in literally less than 10% of the time hl2 requires, oh but no it's surely because of generational gaps

half life 1 loads in seconds but half-life 2 takes over 20-30 seconds at a time when newer and more demanding games can load in under 5 seconds because xyz source is great

[Paul]

I said that's because of the recent updates and the VR stuff.

It wasn't like this before.

[Paul]

But do you really think that some Valve employees will actually play Half Life 2, notice it and report the bug ?

[wyt_gogogog]

The problem is lazy garbage software design at valve.

I think the story goes like this (but it was some years ago):

For consoles valve had to link loading to framerate.

On PC there is much faster loading available, BUT valve didn't adapt it correctly.
So when you have VSYNC enabled it will load at the same speed as from optical disk on old consoles and it takes absolute ages. When you disable VSYNC it will load very quickly.

Same problem with other source games like portal.

So in the end you have to choose between incredible loading time at level changes or have screen tearing.
Well played valve, well played.

[wyt_gogogog]

Originally posted by Sikobae:

Originally posted by Halagini:

[
uh, no, as op stated hl1 doesn't have this issue.

Apparently you don't understand the concept of generation gaps.

Half Life is literally running on the Quake 1 engine.
Half Life was released when Windows 98 was mainstream.
The entire install size of the game fits on a single 700 MB disc.
Every texture in the game is an 8-bit color format.
Every sound file has a bit rate of 88kb, and is probably 11 khz upsampled to 22khz in real-time.
Every stock map is no bigger than 4 MB

Obviously, it's going to load extremely quickly. If you want to be technical, HL1 -does- have this issue, because hypothetically, we shouldnt even see the "Loading..." text on todays hardware. It's almost as if there are diminshing returns.

Originally posted by Halagini:

source has notoriously long loading times

Last I checked loads have gotten more optimized over the years even on trash drives.

No game engine has unlimited scaling capability with hardware, ever.

Sorry, but you are dead wrong.
For me HL2 level loads take 30sec to over a minute with VSYNC enabled.
They are only a few seconds when VSYNC is disabled.
And this is from a 5400rpm drive.

This has nothing to do with the generational gap between HL1 and HL2. It's just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ programming that valve never cared enough about to fix.

Thinking of it, maybe it can be fixed by disabling vsync in HL2 and forcing it on in driver.. Hmmm.. Something to try :)