Zone load times - big differences

[Xerical]

What makes the biggest differences on load times? I have a good internet connection (55MB), great PC (i7 3770k , GTX 480, Samsung 840 SSD), and I run WinEQ 2.15 Lite. I still seem to load significantly slower than others. Is it my latency (100-110MS from west coast)? Is it WinEQ? Is it not using a RAM Drive? I've never had problems with other games in terms of performance or load times. With something like Heroes of Newerth which shows load times prior to game match I was always #1 or within a second. But with something like loading into Plane of Fear today... I noticed it took me nearly 15 seconds to load in. Other people claim they load within 5-6 seconds... One of which claims no ssd or ramdrive.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,
Xerical

[Swish]

Solid state drives definitely make a big difference, but that's not the only thing.

It's definitely not your latency, I'm on about 120ms in the UK and I seem to zone quicker than others. My new PC zones fast, my old laptop was slow as hell to load (versus other people).

Not sure what you can really do to improve upon it. How much other stuff do you run alongside EQ?

[Baler]

Part of the problem I believe is that the titanium client is a bit older at this point. It isn't as well optimized to allow to faster load times and optimization of new hardware. Also the server(s) has to communicate with the client when you load which can be variable despite what your latency is to the current server you're connected to.

I think all the zones are on separate servers that's all hosted on the same rack. May be wrong about this but I think that's how eq emu works?

I can say for sure that my client gos to a black screen for 5-10 seconds, then shows the eq loading screen for 1-2 seconds and finally after that it shows me the world. That's on hdd, I can cut the time in 1/2 or 1/3 if i use ramdisk. So i conclude it's just the old titanium client.

Edit: another thing I didn't think about is that when titanium came out there was no windows 7+, so it's not optimized for that either.

[Messianic]

Part of the problem I believe is that the titanium client is a bit older at this point. It isn't as well optimized to allow to faster load times and optimization of new hardware. Also the server(s) has to communicate with the client when you load which can be variable despite what your latency is to the current server you're connected to.

I think all the zones are on separate servers that's all hosted on the same rack. May be wrong about this but I think that's how eq emu works?

I can say for sure that my client gos to a black screen for 5-10 seconds, then shows the eq loading screen for 1-2 seconds and finally after that it shows me the world. That's on hdd, I can cut the time in 1/2 or 1/3 if i use ramdisk. So i conclude it's just the old titanium client.

Edit: another thing I didn't think about is that when titanium came out there was no windows 7+, so it's not optimized for that either.

I noticed on one of my really old machines (still on XP) a while back that I loaded zones faster than nearly everyone else. Probably because of what you mentioned.

[Kika Maslyaka]

its just old software and not very good zoning coding that EQ uses.
On the same machine I got WoW running faster and better fps that EQ1.

[Pringles]

If you have enough memory, try a RAM drive.

[Bboboo]

I took EQ off my SSD a while back, maybe about a 5-10 sec difference.

[Xerical]

I took EQ off my SSD a while back, maybe about a 5-10 sec difference.

Why would taking EQ off your SSD make it faster? I think everyone who has tried SSD had got faster load times in EQ. Most say its almost the same as RAM drive.

[Bboboo]

Meant 5-10 seconds longer.

[Champion_Standing]

SSD honestly doesn't make it much faster in my experience. I think GTA 5 loads up in about the same amount of time that EQ does for me.

[Jobitussin]

Did you guys actually time your load times to come up with a 5-10 second load time? I haven't but I'm pretty sure when zoning normally i think my little sh*tty laptop zones at about 5 seconds max everywhere i've zoned so far. i don't run anything with my EQ other then my Avast and background things. Sometimes i even go as far as to close the dwm.exe that is just a useless process to be running in the first place. my task manager doesn't have any more then 7 processes (8 when eqgame.exe is running). This lappy cost me 230 bucks after taxes, 3 years ago. AMD radeon with integrated graphics and a processor speed of only 1.7 Ghz. If this little sh*t box loads this quick then you guys should have no problems at all. My latency also stays around the 60-80 mark so that makes a difference. My hdd is also not how it was when purchased. It has been formatted more then once and im running windows 7 ultimate.

One piece of advice I will give that will benefit you in every way on your comp if you don't do it already - open up your task manager and look-up and learn what every proccess running is/does and get rid of all the extra shit in there. open start - type "msconfig" go into startup tab and unckeck what doesnt need to start with windows.

If you didn't or don't do that yet it should make a difference. you sound like you know what you are doing Xerical but this basic comp clean-up stuff can make huge differences. If you are not on a custom rig and have all the extra junk that they pump into store bought comps then get rid of ALL OF IT. (best buy this, best buy that, samsung, sony, toshiba, BLAH BLAH BLAH.) remove all that junk and only keep your video card settings program, cpu related stuff, and antivirus. anything else can be dumped unless you prefer other things.

[Jobitussin]

SSD honestly doesn't make it much faster in my experience. I think GTA 5 loads up in about the same amount of time that EQ does for me.

I don't know about the pc version but on ps3 i have sat for almost 10 minutes waiting for gta v to load in. contemplated breaking the disc in shards and swallowing them out of frustration towards rockstar. at least thats the only time it really loads. lol

[epicdemic]

Hate loading things onto my ssd but may have to do this...

[Connecticut]

I have two computers.
A nice built gaming PC (desktop) and a bestbuy laptop (that I play on the couch)
Both of them play 1 instance of EQ with great ease.
I don't notice any difference in zone load times between the two.


I seem to load zones faster than most others on both PC's, which leads me to suspect zone loads are largely affected by latency. (I'm in CT, I believe the servers are just up the road in Mass)

[Jobitussin]

(I'm in CT, I believe the servers are just up the road in Mass)

would explain my low latency if they are in mass. i live in southeast mass. XD

[webrunner5]

I have no clue, but I have a SSD drive and when I port people on my Druid I am usually always there a lot faster than the others. I mean in enough time to even move back so they don't Pop on top of me and be able to write half a sentence to them.

And this is on a old Dell Laptop with a slow i5 possessor with 4gb memory. :eek::eek:

No way the SSD does not make a big Difference.

[Erica]

SSD makes a huge difference. I have 325 down 40 up and I was zoning much slower than friends with crappy internet. Then I moved EQ to my SSD and I started zoning faster than them.

[fastboy21]

it obviously depends on your particular bottleneck...for just about everyone SSD will make everything, even if only marginally, faster than a standard hard drive.