PSA: Remember to ONLY Pre-Load if your download speeds are slow!

[Atrum Ruina]

A lot of people like to pre-load games when they're excited about them, but then get disappointed when unpacking takes longer than downloading would have. The parity can be closer on modern CPUs, but for MOST users, downloading on release day will be faster than pre-loading and unpacking.

Just be mindful of your internet speeds when deciding if pre-loading is for you, and don't complain about unpacking times on release day. =P

[Kyrch_47]

i wonder if it isn't worth preloading anyway because of its size..

[Atrum Ruina]

Originally posted by Kyrch_47:

i wonder if it isn't worth preloading anyway because of its size..

It's still going to depend on your CPU and storage versus your download speeds. For me, I get ~600Mbps. A 100GB download takes me about 20 minutes, so I expect this will sit close to half an hour. It's unlikely that unpacking the 175GB install size will take less overall time than that, since I have a mid-range (though modern) CPU.

[Ofan]

Originally posted by Atrum Ruina:

Originally posted by Kyrch_47:

i wonder if it isn't worth preloading anyway because of its size..

It's still going to depend on your CPU and storage versus your download speeds. For me, I get ~600Mbps. A 100GB download takes me about 20 minutes, so I expect this will sit close to half an hour. It's unlikely that unpacking the 175GB install size will take less overall time than that, since I have a mid-range (though modern) CPU.

Fairly slow for unpacking, you running off an older drive or something?

[Atrum Ruina]

Originally posted by Ofan:

Originally posted by Atrum Ruina:

It's still going to depend on your CPU and storage versus your download speeds. For me, I get ~600Mbps. A 100GB download takes me about 20 minutes, so I expect this will sit close to half an hour. It's unlikely that unpacking the 175GB install size will take less overall time than that, since I have a mid-range (though modern) CPU.

Fairly slow for unpacking, you running off an older drive or something?

Nah, I honestly haven't tried unpacking on my current computer because my download speeds are fast enough that it doesn't seem necessary. That's kinda my point though; no point in risking it if your download speeds are high enough. I've seen more than a few recent releases where people are on high end machines and unpacking takes awhile anyway, maybe because of the encryption used.

I don't mean to imply pre-loading isn't a good feature, just making a note that it's not necessarily going to save time depending on your configuration. Almost every release with pre-loading ends up with a flood of angry topics on launch day with people complaining about how long the unpacking is taking because they don't understand what it's for.

[Ofan]

Originally posted by Atrum Ruina:

Originally posted by Ofan:

Fairly slow for unpacking, you running off an older drive or something?

Nah, I honestly haven't tried unpacking on my current computer because my download speeds are fast enough that it doesn't seem necessary. That's kinda my point though; no point in risking it if your download speeds are high enough. I've seen more than a few recent releases where people are on high end machines and unpacking takes awhile anyway, maybe because of the encryption used.

I don't mean to imply pre-loading isn't a good feature, just making a note that it's not necessarily going to save time depending on your configuration. Almost every release with pre-loading ends up with a flood of angry topics on launch day with people complaining about how long the unpacking is taking because they don't understand what it's for.

I have to ask then, if you haven't tried it yourself what makes you say it's slow? The biggest bottleneck for data handling on a drive ....is the drive speed. Your CPU is always going to be faster and benefit from a faster drive, even a dual core from 15 years ago would work faster if you could somehow connect it to a modern NVME drive.

Any its cool you are trying to help people regardless, no hate. Take care big dog,

[Ki11s0n3]

Yeah even though I'm on an SSD it still takes forever to unpack. I have a 1gig speed so I just wait because I can download it faster than unpacking

[X1_Soxm]

Originally posted by Atrum Ruina:

Originally posted by Kyrch_47:

i wonder if it isn't worth preloading anyway because of its size..

It's still going to depend on your CPU and storage versus your download speeds. For me, I get ~600Mbps. A 100GB download takes me about 20 minutes, so I expect this will sit close to half an hour. It's unlikely that unpacking the 175GB install size will take less overall time than that, since I have a mid-range (though modern) CPU.

how long do you think it would take for a i5 3rd gen and a drive with 5kmbps take to unpack? preloading is well worth it either way for me just wondering tho

[Atrum Ruina]

Originally posted by Ofan:

Originally posted by Atrum Ruina:

Nah, I honestly haven't tried unpacking on my current computer because my download speeds are fast enough that it doesn't seem necessary. That's kinda my point though; no point in risking it if your download speeds are high enough. I've seen more than a few recent releases where people are on high end machines and unpacking takes awhile anyway, maybe because of the encryption used.

I don't mean to imply pre-loading isn't a good feature, just making a note that it's not necessarily going to save time depending on your configuration. Almost every release with pre-loading ends up with a flood of angry topics on launch day with people complaining about how long the unpacking is taking because they don't understand what it's for.

I have to ask then, if you haven't tried it yourself what makes you say it's slow? The biggest bottleneck for data handling on a drive ....is the drive speed. Your CPU is always going to be faster and benefit from a faster drive, even a dual core from 15 years ago would work faster if you could somehow connect it to a modern NVME drive.

Any its cool you are trying to help people regardless, no hate. Take care big dog,

I'm not saying it's slow, I'm just saying to be mindful of your hardware and how it relates to your download speeds before making the choice to pre-load. If you have the hardware to quickly unpack it, more power to you, pre-loading is the way to go for you. The post isn't to say "don't pre-load, it's slower than downloading," it's just saying "maybe don't pre-load if your download speeds are fast because you may be stuck unpacking longer than you think." A lot of people misunderstand and think pre-loading will let them immediately load up the game at release time, so this is more for people who don't really know what it does and likely haven't done it before.

I promise you that release day will have a dozen posts with exactly this complaint. =P I'm just hoping to mitigate it slightly.

[Mancubus]

What the hell are you talking about ? Preloading 100,06Gb ..leaves 90Gb more to download after release ...it's simple math ! So 90Gb will take much less time to download than the original 190Gb ....
Why did you mention unpacking in the first place ?
and i do pre-load because i have fast internet connection...why wait in the release day ...

[...]

Originally posted by Mancubus:

What the hell are you talking about ? Preloading 100,06Gb ..leaves 90Gb more to download after release ...it's simple math ! So 90Gb will take much less time to download than the original 190Gb ....
Why did you mention unpacking in the first place ?
and i do pre-load because i have fast internet connection...why wait in the release day ...

don't be too aggressive. you don't even know how pre-loaded packed files work......

[Harry101UK]

Originally posted by Mancubus:

What the hell are you talking about ? Preloading 100,06Gb ..leaves 90Gb more to download after release ...it's simple math ! So 90Gb will take much less time to download than the original 190Gb ....
Why did you mention unpacking in the first place ?
and i do pre-load because i have fast internet connection...why wait in the release day ...

You clearly have no idea how pre-loading works. It downloads a heavily encrypted version of the game when you pre-load, and on release day, your CPU and harddrives / SSD need to crunch extremely hard to unpack that encrypted file. If your CPU or drives are slow, then unpacking the pre-load can take hours for a 190gb game.

If your internet is fast and can download the whole game in less than an hour, then it will be faster to not pre-load.

[Sean8102]

Good point.

Also don't you need double the disk space for the decryption and decompression part? So in this case like ~200 GB? Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Anyways funny enough I just got done ordering gigabit fiber that just became available where I live. Install date is next Tuesday. Going from 100 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up VDSL2 to symmetrical gigabit fiber should be quite a nice upgrade.

Went ahead and did the pre-load since obv the install date is post release, and I have a 7800X3D and the game pre-loaded on a 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro. So it will DEF be faster than downloading (downloading the 100 GB pre load took ~2.5 hours, would be ~15-20 mins once I get the fiber installed).

[GoldInfinit7]

Pre-loading was faster for me than downloading. I didn’t get any where near what my internet was capable of and there will be a lot of internet traffic and Steam being busy when everyone was downloading at same time. Downloading probably took me one to two hours, while preloading took about 10-20 minutes.

[narfkeks]

I'm on a regular SSD and a Ryzen 9 3900x, so I'm expecting somewhat of a longer unpacking, but since my download for 200 GB will almost certainly take around 3 and a half hours I expect that to be the better option over the regular day 1 download. But also, I will just leave the PC running while it unpacks the game and get some chores done, I'm in no big rush to play the game immediately.

[Rim Carrey]

Originally posted by narfkeks:

I'm on a regular SSD and a Ryzen 9 3900x, so I'm expecting somewhat of a longer unpacking, but since my download for 200 GB will almost certainly take around 3 and a half hours I expect that to be the better option over the regular day 1 download. But also, I will just leave the PC running while it unpacks the game and get some chores done, I'm in no big rush to play the game immediately.

I also have a Ryzen 9 3900x. How long do you think it'll take to unpack?