Which hardware causes loading screens to get slower over time?

[Meesmoth]

Latest loading time in my game (11/25/2019) was 53 minutes, 33 seconds.

Months ago, last August or September, it was only 20-22 minutes.

Assets: 1,545 (nothing added from August to November btw)
Mods: 110 (also no change, no new mods added)

In my case I believe it's caused by aging hardware and not custom content, because I use the exact same content months ago without adding new, the only new was added to my game was the new CCP.

However, I can't find which hardware causes this, other games on my PC show GPU-related issues, while CS' loading screens never use GPU at all, only the CPU, RAM, and HDD.

[snowflitzer]

Every time you add more assets, game update, new DLC it will add more to it.
A bigger city will increase loading as well.

Remove a few assets
or inrease RAM
or increase Pagefile
or decrease texture. I dropped my loading from 34 min to 7 min :)

[Verullus Forgefire]

Well as you mentioned a lot of times your computer is ancient. Most likely the entire computer needs to be exchanged with a new one.
Most important is plenty of RAM, a good CPU and instead of a HDD you should invest in a new SSD.

[MarkJohnson]

Long loading times come from running out of memory. When you RAM fills up, Windows swaps unused memory from RAM to Windows Virtual Memory (page file). This can take a long time with the more workshop subscribed. At some point Windows page file ability goes haywire trying to allocate a lot of memory at once, and it bogs down the system from resizing your Virtual Memory (page file). and can cause it to crash completely.

Here's an article from Microsoft about the issue, if you care to read it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4055223/memory-allocation-errors-can-be-caused-by-slow-page-file-growth

You may not be getting these errors yet, but will likely happening soon.

The simple cure is trimming workshop, or eliminate it completely.

You can increase memory by adding more RAM or manually increasing your Virtual Memory (page file), so windows doesn't try to resize it constantly. I recommend triple the RAM size, so the page file would be 24 GB (or 24000 MB for page file setting)

But the base game is using over 10 GB of memory itself, but each DLC adds a couple GB more, plus workshop can increase in several GB as well. Plus Windows can use a few GB and all of your apps that launch down by the clock, then anti-virus and other apps, plus web browsers, etc. As you can see, memory goes quickly.

I own all DLC and the game itself uses over 20 GB of memory. about 30 GB with windows and all of my other apps launch. I do not use workshop on my cities. When I do, it will climb to 32 or even 64 GB of memory usage. One map was 96 GB of memory. I have 32 GB of RAM installed.

But with you having over 1,500 workshop, you are looking at roughly 24 GB memory usage alone.

What do both of the loading screen mod GB show when loading your city? The top number is RAM, the lower number the page file. It shows only the game's memory usage. There is also Windows and your other apps to count as well.

[Meesmoth]

Originally posted by MarkJohnson:

Long loading times come from running out of memory. When you RAM fills up, Windows swaps unused memory from RAM to Windows Virtual Memory (page file). This can take a long time with the more workshop subscribed. At some point Windows page file ability goes haywire trying to allocate a lot of memory at once, and it bogs down the system from resizing your Virtual Memory (page file). and can cause it to crash completely.

Here's an article from Microsoft about the issue, if you care to read it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4055223/memory-allocation-errors-can-be-caused-by-slow-page-file-growth

You may not be getting these errors yet, but will likely happening soon.

The simple cure is trimming workshop, or eliminate it completely.

You can increase memory by adding more RAM or manually increasing your Virtual Memory (page file), so windows doesn't try to resize it constantly. I recommend triple the RAM size, so the page file would be 24 GB (or 24000 MB for page file setting)

But with you having over 1,500 workshop, you are looking at roughly 24 GB memory usage alone.

What do both of the loading screen mod GB show when loading your city? The top number is RAM, the lower number the page file. It shows only the game's memory usage. There is also Windows and your other apps to count as well.

I use a fixed pagefile so Windows does not resize it automatically, it is set at 32000MB (which is 32GB).

According to LSM, the top number shows 9.0GB while the lower one shows 16-18GB when the loading screen goes into the "LevelLoaded" stage, which means the game/city has loaded.

I only use 12GB of RAM.

[Colonel]

1) Installing game in your only SSD folder;
2) Make the ~43-45 gb of virtual pagefile on your ssd;
3) Disable most of useless processes on task manager;

4) Profit!

[MarkJohnson]

Oh, it's you meesmoth. I thought we had this ironed out once already.

What are your page file setting in windows?

From Windows Start button, type Advanaced System Settings.

In System Properties pop-up, Click the Settings button in Performance section.

In Performance Options pop-up, Click the Advanced tab. Under Virtual Memory section, click Change.

Post settings in Virtual Memory POP-up.

[Meesmoth]

It is set manually to 32000MB as shown in this pic: https://imgur.com/a/cRKKMHT

[MarkJohnson]

It acts like it's running out of RAM. I know it's an older laptop with a dual core CPU with integrated graphic. But graphics shouldn't use but maybe 2GB.

But it's acting like it's running out of memory still. Maybe other apps running?

Maybe try boosting to 48GB of page file and test?

Otherwise you need to have a talk with Santa about getting a new system. I've hope you've been good the last year. lol

[Borsch]

It is caused entirely by the custom content. Unfortunately, due to being run created on Unity Engine, the game is pretty poorly optimized, especially when it comes to handling a lot of custom assets. You can experience a noticeable increase in loading time even with as little as few mods or around 100 assets and it is also heavily dependent on the computer hardware the game is played on.

The most important handicap is most often RAM and having at least 16GB is mandatory for a regular gameplay with plenty of workshop items enabled.