Ha a Guild Wars player. I love GvG on GW - I was not a bad monk myself - mostly for top 50 guilds.tlarseth,put GW on the same drive as your OS and move your Page File on your E Drive.
If you were refering to me on that Mobidoy, my system uses the C drive for the page file which is 2046 min 4092 maxMobidoy said:
The reason my games are on the E drive is because it is a much faster drive as far as performance, and for some odd reason my mobo refuses to let a SATA drive be primary booting, so the OS had to be on a standard ATA drive.Mobidoy said:
Wasn't talking to you 
But still, i would recommand to have the pagefile on the faster drive.... Windows does a prefetch (read ahead) of what it will need and put it in the pagefile, when the memory needs it, it gets it from the pagefile. So if you think of it, you better have your faster hard disk having the pagefile so it will get faster to the memory then to have windows reading ahead faster
But still, i would recommand to have the pagefile on the faster drive.... Windows does a prefetch (read ahead) of what it will need and put it in the pagefile, when the memory needs it, it gets it from the pagefile. So if you think of it, you better have your faster hard disk having the pagefile so it will get faster to the memory then to have windows reading ahead faster 
Wow, I finally fixed my extreme loading times issue. I had only 1GB of RAM and that simply wasn't enough at all. My load times were about 10 minutes leaving a building. I added 2GB making 3 and now my load times are max 1 minute. I have a 2 year old computer that was good at the time. NVidia 7800 GTX 256MB. Anyway, I'd been reading these posts and it helped see that the RAM was my primary problem. Funny because this is the first game (an I play most) that has practically shut my computer down. Well, now I should be ready for Crysis when it arrives. Thanks, -Nathan
tlarseth, I added 2 1GB sticks of DDR400 RAM because my ASUS A8N motherboard is 2 years old and will only take DDR400 ram, not DDR2. I had 2 Mushking 512MB sticks in slots 1 & 3 and I just added Patriot brand of RAM in the empty slots, 2 & 4 (they were out of Kingston which was my first choice). I think they had some Corsair for a little more $ but they said the ram was all really the same. So I'm wondering would Corsair be much better or just the same as they said? And do you think leaving the 2 512MB sticks in creates any problems in the current configuration I have? It's working of course better than the only 1GB I had before. Thank you, -Nathan
Difference between known brands is very small, if not negligible. It is more about the right model that works well with your motherboard. Best practice with RAM is too make sure you have the same speed and latency rating. This prevents system instability. If you have to get a slower RAM vs a faster RAM that have different ratings - stick with the slower and more stable RAM. Faster RAM does not really increase system performance that much (maybe few frames or couple of seconds during load times).
I posted this info in another thread but it may be of some help here:My modest rig (pent 4/3.2ghz, 1gig RAM (low latency Corsair), Radeon X800XT Platinum 256meg) runs the game quite well at 1280x960 medium settings with the grass features turned off. Even at these settings the game looks brilliant. I currently experience the following loading times:Entering a building> 15secsLeaving a building> 60secsQuick save> 20secsNormal Save> 40secsLeaving a building (or an area) with saving> 80secsSince posting this I now disable all AV programs as well as Zone Alarm. I also run my defrag program before playing. By making sure that absolutely nothing else is running in the background I have been able to shave off about 10-15seconds from the longest loading sessions.So while the loading times are still quite long at times, the game is playable (although the 1.2 patch is desperately needed stubbs
stubbsSomething that helps to reduce area load times, at least on my system, is to unpack all the bif's into override.It may not work for everybody - it depends where your bottleneck is - but it works for me. Load time for entering a building is down from ~2 mins to ~1 min and for outside areas is down from ~8 mins to ~5 mins.OMB
I was thinking of doing that very same thing after the next patch (wouldn't want to have to undo it then redo it...patch will be out soonOldMansBeard said:
. Is there already an override folder? Or have to create one?There isn't an override folder by default. I created one under data\ (i.e. alongside \modules, \movies and \music) and dumped everything into there. I used BifRip by tk102 http://iamtk102.googlepages.com/. Unpacked the patch100 and patch200 bif's last, in case they were supposed to overwrite the othersYes, I shall delete it all (or at least move it away) before installing the next patch and then maybe try it again if I think I need tphalzyr said:I was thinking of doing that very same thing after the next patch (wouldn't want to have to undo it then redo it...patch will be out soonphalzyr said:
MBJust wanted to post an update - Old System:Intel E6600 2GB of RAMNVidia 7950GT3 drives (1 for OS, 1 for Programs and 1 for Page files)1680 x 1050MAX settings + 2AA26-34 fps in large areas (daytime)small bldg: 2-6 secLarge areas: 40-55 secSave: 10-20 secupgrades:Nvidia 8800GTmoved Witcher from Program files drive BACK to OS drivedefrag all drives+1GB of RAM (3GB total)NOW:small bldg: 1-2 seconds (maybe 3 seconds on big bldg like bars)Large areas: 10-20 secondsave: 10-14 second50-62 fps (large areas in daytime)Separating your OS/Program files from your page file REALLY made a huge difference. I tested putting the page file and programs on the SAME drive as the OS (this is the default setup and likely what most of us use) - the load times where atrocious. small bldg took 8-20 seconds. Large areas was well over a minute. Once I separated the page file from the rest, it really reduced the load times.The new graphics card also helped - not only doubling my frame rate, it also sahved off several seconds off my load times. Usually there would be 3-5 seconds of pause after the red load bar is full. Now once the red bar is full, there is only 1 sec of delay.BTW - I keep my page file size FIXED (4GB). This prevents Windows from moving the page file which slows it down tremendously. Also, ideally you want the page file written on the drive while the drive is still quite empty. If the drive is full, page file will take a performance hit. Hard drives are faster when they are empty and gets slower when they get filled.I know all of this is in the FAQs. Just wanted to give you my experience.
Not sure if this has been mentioned or not (too lazy to go thru the whole thread :, but unchecking the Depth of Field reduced my load times by at least half!If it's not working the first time you try it, try the following...This is the way I did it, so there might be something else involved that I either missed or that is internal.I went from high to medium (global slider in advanced settings). I then noticed that my loads were much faster. THEN I put back the textures/lighting and a few others to high and the load times were still good.. that's when I tested DOF (Depth of Field).With Depth of field on, I get around 50-75 seconds load times in the Temple Area, and 15 secs to enter buildings,Without DOP, I get around 20-25 seconds load times in the temple area and roughly 5 seconds max to enter buildings.Not sure if this will help others shorten their load times, but I thought I should post it just in case it does I will admit that the game is much more enjoyable now than it was before this change.good hunting..._Rej_P.S. Not sure "why" DOF makes a difference since I thought this was processed by the graphic card while running the game. Either they load more textures for the DOF effect or my drivers/card are screwed. I'll retest when I install 7.11 and if the reviews of it are favorable (Catalyst 7.11)
, but unchecking the Depth of Field reduced my load times by at least half!If it's not working the first time you try it, try the following...This is the way I did it, so there might be something else involved that I either missed or that is internal.I went from high to medium (global slider in advanced settings). I then noticed that my loads were much faster. THEN I put back the textures/lighting and a few others to high and the load times were still good.. that's when I tested DOF (Depth of Field).With Depth of field on, I get around 50-75 seconds load times in the Temple Area, and 15 secs to enter buildings,Without DOP, I get around 20-25 seconds load times in the temple area and roughly 5 seconds max to enter buildings.Not sure if this will help others shorten their load times, but I thought I should post it just in case it does I will admit that the game is much more enjoyable now than it was before this change.good hunting..._Rej_P.S. Not sure "why" DOF makes a difference since I thought this was processed by the graphic card while running the game. Either they load more textures for the DOF effect or my drivers/card are screwed. I'll retest when I install 7.11 and if the reviews of it are favorable (Catalyst 7.11)LOL! 2GB will always beat out 1GB, especially in memory-starved applications. The speed difference between name brands is negligible, and between RAM timings generally only equates to a few seconds on artificial benchmarks. The reason why some prefer the "name brand" memory is that they tend to be the better results of bin testing, which results in higher speeds (to match with CPU in overclocking)/lower voltages.So, no, believing you would definitely *not* be the zhengque thing to do.Also, a reminder (mobidoy had it posted in one of the pinned FAQs for me as well), that it's far better to use a defragmenting utility such as JK Defrag (command line, GUI interfaces can be found in the "Contributed by Other People" section of that same page), as they allow you to not only defragment, but also move files around in terms of the physical location on the HDD, keeping in mind that files on the outer edge are read faster than those towards the inside. JKDefrag also has the ability to rearrange based on programs, so, for instance, I can keep all of my games' files together physically on the HDD on the outer edge. Oh, and it's free.tlarseth said:
What I was referring to was Dual-channel RAM. Wikipedia lists a note about it not having a difference in gaming that is noticeable, but then they were basing that on an Athlon 64 X2 6400+ processor with 4GB of RAM and a Nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX, so yea they wouldn't notice a performance increase, but those of us with a mid-high range computer like mine which is an AMD 4400+ x2 with 2GB of RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce 6150SE Video Card will notice a performance increase.As far as Brand of RAM, my wife used to have 1GB of PNY RAM in her system and was constantly lagging in multiplayer and singleplayer in her games. We changed her 1GB of PNY RAM to 1GB of Corsair RAM, and bam no more lag she went from 12-15 FPS to literally 25-27 FPS.
Lets not exaggerate now.. 45-60 seconds... And you said you're system specs are well over the recommended specifications.. This can't really be true, its takes around 10 seconds for me. And Remember, its not only loading when entering doors.. Its also the autosaving. (Which, if not already, should be possible to turn off..)AndChaple said:
Uhm.. I don't think its lagg we're talking about here.. its the loading time.. The lagg appears because you don't have good enough system specs for The Witcher..Well.. Imo, I don't think the loading times is any problem (Of course it would be nice if it were lowered just a little bit..), and there no, absolutely no lagg for me either..Chaple said:
2 things that helps load times, first, is to keep only 2 savegame in the savegame folder, move the rest in a back up folder, also, do a full defrag with jkdefrag, reboot at command prompt in safe mode and use Jkdefrag.exe -a 7It is long but worth it....Safe mode defrag lets the defrag utility move usually locked system files !
Sounds like a bad RAM kit. Again, name brand vs. "non" name brand RAM will not see any noticeable difference, and RAM has barely any affect upon FPS; it does deal with load times/stuttering/occasionally FPS reduction when game textures go beyond GPU memory (i.e. Oblivion's system if you implement texture replacers).Dual-channel will indeed increase performance, but nowadays nearly everyone has it. Also, in testing the effects of RAM upon FPS/load time, you always make sure that all of your other components are up to snuff to see whether your tested component is the limiting factor.tlarseth said:
Hmmm...I didn't notice much of a difference moving my back up savegame files to another folder Mobidoy, but -7 is indeed a good choice for defrag.Additionally, it's a bootable defragment that lets you really move around/defrag everything...even safe mode won't let you do everything (and bootable defrag is the only way to get at the pagefile).tlarseth said:
Well usualy when i do a full safe mode defrag, i remove my pagefile completly prior too, i then reboot, defrag and create a new one. Also, i have windows set as it will delete the content of the pagefile at shutdown. I have found out that even if the pagefile doesn't get fragmented, the content of it does and, with the size suggested (4GB) there can be alot of slow down from it !