Game Load Takes Unfathomably Long...

[Schrobes]

I recently started to mod Conan Exiles from the Workshop on here....


My game with all my mods takes around 7 minutes to load, from startup to in-game. I am at a loss on what exactly could be the cause. I have modded many of games, from all different kinds of genres and i have never seen anything like this. Though, i do not recall having so many mods that equaled into the tens of gigs in size.

The base game takes but a minute to load in. I am not sure how Workshop Modding works, or even how modding this game works. I have 58 mods from here. I followed a list that someone created on here and they vouched its load order and what not. A bunch of positive ratings would also give the impression of validity. When i do eventually get into the game, everything seems to run smoothly. I never even see hickups when loading all the different assets from mods in the build menu and such.

I am aware that an SSD will cut my time down. But how substantial do you think that would be compared to the whopping 7 it takes on a fairly well made HDD? The HDD was touted to be some gaming drive but i do not know the validity of such statements.

My question is, what the heck is happening to cause such an extreme load time? Like i've mentioned before, i am no where near new to modding and have done so with many of games throughout the years, and have not once seen anything like this.

Thanks for the time.

----The Drive is fine. Everything else on the drive loads and runs fine.

[Mad Scientist]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Schrobes:

I am aware that an SSD will cut my time down. But how substantial do you think that would be compared to the whopping 7 it takes on a fairly well made HDD? The HDD was touted to be some gaming drive but i do not know the validity of such statements.

Well I'm not familiar with how the game handles, but I have a large game that likes to preload assets before getting into games.

Basically, a good HDD is nice and all, so is an SSD, but SSD and NVME are usually extremely faster for loading times, as in a fraction of the time easily if the rest of your hardware can keep up with the demands of the SSD/NVME. I would expect with good specs if Conan is like RUST, that 7 minutes can likely be ~30 seconds or less, again,extremely dependent on how the game handles loading and how good the specs are. Perhaps people with that game that know both scenarios might chime in.

Also have you tried to see if one specific mod might be causing the slowdowns during loading? I'd expect that for high asset count/textures etc.

[Schrobes]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mad Scientist:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Schrobes:

I am aware that an SSD will cut my time down. But how substantial do you think that would be compared to the whopping 7 it takes on a fairly well made HDD? The HDD was touted to be some gaming drive but i do not know the validity of such statements.

Well I'm not familiar with how the game handles, but I have a large game that likes to preload assets before getting into games.

Basically, a good HDD is nice and all, so is an SSD, but SSD and NVME are usually extremely faster for loading times, as in a fraction of the time easily if the rest of your hardware can keep up with the demands of the SSD/NVME. I would expect with good specs if Conan is like RUST, that 7 minutes can likely be ~30 seconds or less, again,extremely dependent on how the game handles loading and how good the specs are. Perhaps people with that game that know both scenarios might chime in.

Also have you tried to see if one specific mod might be causing the slowdowns during loading? I'd expect that for high asset count/textures etc.

That is my next venture, troubleshooting it. I will likely disable and go down the list.

You mentioned Asset and Textures being a drag, and i was thinking the same thing. Maybe i start with them :D

[Mad Scientist]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Schrobes:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mad Scientist:

Well I'm not familiar with how the game handles, but I have a large game that likes to preload assets before getting into games.

Basically, a good HDD is nice and all, so is an SSD, but SSD and NVME are usually extremely faster for loading times, as in a fraction of the time easily if the rest of your hardware can keep up with the demands of the SSD/NVME. I would expect with good specs if Conan is like RUST, that 7 minutes can likely be ~30 seconds or less, again,extremely dependent on how the game handles loading and how good the specs are. Perhaps people with that game that know both scenarios might chime in.

Also have you tried to see if one specific mod might be causing the slowdowns during loading? I'd expect that for high asset count/textures etc.

That is my next venture, troubleshooting it. I will likely disable and go down the list.

You mentioned Asset and Textures being a drag, and i was thinking the same thing. Maybe i start with them :D

Some people in RUST on an HDD can take up to 30 minutes to load into a game server using an HDD (especially when its also the OS drive) because it preloads all the assets. Not sure if conon is like that, but when they switch to NVMEs its usually around 30 seconds, minute at the most.

Even see people complain for texture mods like fallout 4's official optional hd textures of massively increasing loading times, especially compared to more efficient mods. So really depends on a few things, but storage speed and CPU are some of the top slowdowns when it comes to large assets & textures.

Good Luck, let us know how it goes.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Schrobes:

I am aware that an SSD will cut my time down. But how substantial do you think that would be compared to the whopping 7 it takes on a fairly well made HDD? The HDD was touted to be some gaming drive but i do not know the validity of such statements.

My question is, what the heck is happening to cause such an extreme load time? Like i've mentioned before, i am no where near new to modding and have done so with many of games throughout the years, and have not once seen anything like this.

Thanks for the time.

----The Drive is fine. Everything else on the drive loads and runs fine.

Its the drive causing the issue. More and more games are struggling on HDD's specially if they are not backed by an SSD cache.

Either install onto the SSD, or look into a cache partition on your SSD + software like PrimoCache.

An SSD is the correct fix. PrimoCache+Partition is the partial fix.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Get HDDs off your PC as internal drives, period. Connect them as externals, occasionally when really needed to do some file backups; then remove such files off your SSD(s).

WinOS like any OS, is NOT TWEAKED for best performance, you need to do that yourself; always have, always will.

[[☥] - CJ -]

It doesnt matter how well made a HDD is, the more data it has to access the slower it'll be and compared to an SSD, even a normal SATA III SSD, there is a considerable difference

Even if you just use the SSD for games and not the OS it'll still make a huge amount of difference, especially when a lot of mods are in play.

[_I_]

access time is relative to the drives platter spin rate (rpm)
head takes a few ms to move to location, platter takes a few more ms to rotate to position that has the data
first it needs to read the index data to see where the file is that needs to be read, the move to where the file data is

more data on fewer platters actually increases its sequential read speed, due to higher data density on the platter

and where the data is also makes a big differences
since head parks off platter, outer rim has lower seek times
and hdd can store more data per rev on outer rim since each track has longer distances on the outer rim, more bits can be written to it

this is why a 2.5in hdd has much lower read/write rates than a 3.5in hdd, even if both are 7200rpm and have similar seek times

[Iron Knights]

1) Get at least a SATA 3 SSD. (NVME won't see any difference in speed up to PCIE-5.0)
2) Make sure you keep at least 25% of the drive EMPTY for best performance, at all times.
So if you're buying new, buy more space than you currently use or plan using shortly.
3) Mods, mods, Mods, MODs, mOds. Cut down on their numbers, I know people who go over 100 per game, that DOES create a loading issue.

[[☥] - CJ -]

I'm sorry?
Did you just compare a SATA III SSDs speeds to an NVME drive?

[Iron Knights]

If you're still confused follow the experts, not the gulag weebfurries: https://youtu.be/4DKLA7w9eeA?si=JQ_3kp_cWH9lZ-8S

[_I_]

any m.2 nvme drive is so much faster than sata3 or m.sata or m.2 sata drive

lol, links to vid from 4 years ago

[Iron Knights]

Update for laymen & web surfers, PCIE 5.0 NVME vs PCIE 4.0 NVME, woohooo hoho oh, wait... there's less... https://youtu.be/jnMMtbVP0ps?si=lPzeKEVnT0Us3YSc

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von ☥ - CJ -:

I'm sorry?
Did you just compare a SATA III SSDs speeds to an NVME drive?

In a majority of games having them.load from a. NVME ssd makes no difference really until more games start supporting DirectStorage. Having OS on NVME instead of SATA SSD does help though. Where people go wrong with ssds is buying DRAM less ones which are all terrible. At least go with WD Blue or Samsung 870 EVO at the very least