Jim909

whenever i load a new map it always takes 2-3 minutes to load the new map i was just wondering if there was any thing or way i could lower my map load time

WhiskeySix

Turning down your video setting for Textures will speed up the load time. High textures = larger = longer to load.


oh - and welcome to TG

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Lyramion

also defrag your harddrive

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Jim909

how do i defrag my hard drive?

WhiskeySix

The easiest way: Open My Computer, right click your C: drive and go to Properties. In there, go to the Tools tab - you'll see the defragment option.

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Jim909

how lond does defraging take?

Augustus Gloop

Depends on how big your hard drive, how full it is, and how long since you last defragged it.

Figure 30 minutesish?

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Cappy

also if you have never derfragged it before this it may take awhile longer

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|TG-6th| Cappy

Lyramion

...also dont mix defragmentate with deflorate!

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Augustus Gloop

That could lead to some angry fathers!

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Jim909

thanks guys just defrag it took over 2 hours first time defraging it lol but i just played bf2 and it didnot seem to load maps any faster than normal? could i have possibly done something wrong or is there any other things i could do? thanks

msdz

I do not like the default Windows Defrag. I use a program called DiskTrix UltimateDefrag. This program after reading up on it and figuring out how to set it up to defrag the way I like will allow you to place the folders and files on the hard drive how you would like for them to be placed. Placing the information in certain areas of the hard drive will make them get accessed quicker. For an example I place Project Reality folder on the outer most part of the hard drive and then BF2. This speeds up the maps to be loaded for PR. Then BF2, thn BF2142. These games are also on the second hard drive which will read faster cause it does not need to be looking for Windows information with the same head.

Also, stoppping any running background task will help, the less resources you have running the better the game will load and play. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete at the same time and look under the Processes tab. Most programs that can be safely shut down will be under your user name, the only one that should not be shutdown is the Explorer.exe. Most of the others can be shutdown. Don't worry about making a mistake either, when you restart the computer all the programs will start right back up.
Some of these can be permanently shutdown using "msconfig" typed in the "Run" box from the "Start" menu. Unistalling any old programs you no longer need or want will help. Doing a disk cleanup may help. Finding and using a Registry Cleaner can help as well but great care needs to be taken when fooling with the registry. There are a bunch of little things that can be done to speed up the computer and let you load maps quicker.

Just to let you know, Windows default Defrag program does not actually move the files, it just defrags in place and if the files are in the middle of the hard drive then the files will most likely stay there even after a defrag plus it usually takes more than just one time of defragging to get the files organized neatly.

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Sabre_Tooth_Tigger

The average filesize of the pr mod for bf2 is 120k I think so there is very little you can to speed things up afaik

A raid wont help because the filesizes are too small. A raptor would help as that has a low seek time also maybe a scsi hard drive with 15,000 RPM. I think those cost hundreds at their cheapest though.

A solid state drive should have excellent seek time since its basically memory. 10GB of memory is probably quite cheap now and should fit bf2 on there.

If you think of the hdd as a record player or old jukebox it might help
Things to consider when buying a hard drive are Seek time, RPM & density of data storage. The last one is to do with seperate platters, sometimes a bigger drive is slower and older in its technology but usually new and big is good. Sata 2 has high burst throughput, good for small files maybe as they will load from the hdd cache faster.

Vista has the ability to use a memory stick as a kind of fast small cache. ie. its quicker to fetch a 120k file from a memory stick then it is to tell the hard drive to shift its drive head over to that yonder file and read, big files still need the hdd though.


You can do this immediately but it might not help, try:

my computer > right click > properties > advanced > performance, settings > advanced


Set the pagefile [Virtual memory] to a constant [custom] high figure like 888, put it on a physically seperate drive from windows, temp dir or the game files. Also do not locate those drives on the same channel if you still use IDE

Change the other buttons and see if it helps..


I recommend clearing the startup group out too. If you have every program you've used in the last 5 years loaded in there it will slow things down. Some will want to examine every file you load into memory, not good.

Clear your drive so its at least 30% empty


Slow map loading is normal though, windows defrag is not great & winxp should not use more then 150meg normally

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msdz

One other suggestion I could give but not sure how others will think of it or if it is even legal.
Strip Windows down to the bare essentials to help it run faster. I will not post the link but there is a program that will allow you to strip XP down fairly easy or even Vista.

Someone I am sure will post whether or not it may be legal.

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Iamthefallen

What are your system specs?

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