Improved Loading Time

[Tappin]

Hello P99 Community,

I have a question that I hope hasn't been asked before, but I'm fairly sure that it has been asked, somewhere. I did search the forum and came up with no real answer to my question.

I was wondering if there is a way to speed up load times between zones. My load time is already at least average from what I've been able to compare vs. other players, but with the new fixed Mend(CD refreshes on zone), I'd like to find out if its possible to speed this up in any way? Would make monk solo a lot more fun and viable!

If there is any information out there regarding this, I'd be greatly appreciative if they could point me in the right direction!

[Swishahouse]

Turning on the zone caches seems to help. I'm not sure if its defaulted to on or not.
Inside the eqclient.ini under the [Defaults] section look for value.

TextureCache=TRUE

I'm pretty sure this is the correct line and I'm pretty sure it helps.

[Dagwulf]

Solid State Hard Drive.

[Abacab niggah]

Solid State Hard Drive.

as opposed to tube driven?

You just need to cache the files and get one of those 600gig 10,000+ RPM hard drives like the WD VelociRaptor

[Darklake]

If you've got enough memory, you could run the EQLite batch file (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7186) to get the installation down to 1.4Gb, then copy the whole lot into a RAMDisk (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/) before playing.

[Dagwulf]

as opposed to tube driven?

You just need to cache the files and get one of those 600gig 10,000+ RPM hard drives like the WD VelociRaptor


Solid State Drives have no moving parts and use Flash memory cells. An M-Series SSD by Intel (http://www.amazon.com/Kingston-2-5-Inch-Desktop-SNM225-X2B-80GB/dp/B002ZIG43C) is much faster then a 10k V-Raptor hard drive. Of course the cost per GB is higher!

A 10K hard drive makes a bit of difference, but not that much... the seek time is twice as fast as a regular 7.2k drive; but again not as fast as SSD :)

[Tappin]

If you've got enough memory, you could run the EQLite batch file (http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7186) to get the installation down to 1.4Gb, then copy the whole lot into a RAMDisk (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/05/27/free-ramdisk-for-windows-vista-xp-2000-and-2003-server/) before playing.

I'm going to try this out later today. I run XP with 4GB ram, atm. Do you think creating the Ramdisk at 1.4GB would be safe enough with 4GB?

[FatMagic]

I'm curious about the results you find Tappin, because I also play a Monk and wouldn't mind speeding up the zone load times for this reason. I'm loving my monk alot more right now. Such a help for soloing (i'm a casual player so I solo alot)

[Tappin]

I'm curious about the results you find Tappin, because I also play a Monk and wouldn't mind speeding up the zone load times for this reason. I'm loving my monk alot more right now. Such a help for soloing (i'm a casual player so I solo alot)

I'll let you know how it goes, sir! Just finished converting to your lite client. :)

So far, the only problem I could think of, about doing this, is that most people tend to crash when they zone.. or they have a slight chance of doing so. I probably crash 1/10 zones. I'm not sure what causes the crash and I'm not sure if zoning more often would increase the amount of crashes one experiences. Also I'm not sure if the crashes have been addresses elsewhere in another thread, maybe someone has come up with a fix for this.

[Yindalia]

Hello guys, i have a lot of problems zoning. I think my eqclient crash every time i make 2 zones or maybe 3. But today i turn on "TextureCache=TRUE" and dont make more zone crash, i zone like 15 times or more.

PD: i use raptor's hdd and ofcourse the improvement it's a few low, but in other games i see a big diference betwen 7200 RPM hdd's.

PD2: I buy that hdd long time ago and dont exist the ssd, but seeing the actual prices i probably gonna buy one 60gb for system hehe.

[Tappin]

Hello guys, i have a lot of problems zoning. I think my eqclient crash every time i make 2 zones or maybe 3. But today i turn on "TextureCache=TRUE" and dont make more zone crash, i zone like 15 times or more.

PD: i use raptor's hdd and ofcourse the improvement it's a few low, but in other games i see a big diference betwen 7200 RPM hdd's.

PD2: I buy that hdd long time ago and dont exist the ssd, but seeing the actual prices i probably gonna buy one 60gb for system hehe.

SO HARD to read your post without watching your avatar! Thats good to hear. I checked my ini file earlier to make sure it was set to TRUE also, and it is. I assumed it was my default, maybe not though?

[Yindalia]

All ppl love my avatar hahaha. Yeah, if i remember its on by default, but i turn off all options. And thats the problem, if dont know for what its one thing, dont change it lol.

[Tappin]

Alright.

With the freshly created RAMDisk, and a copy of EQLite installed on it... My load times(did tests between EC and West Freeport)... have hardly(if at all)been affected.

With EQLite on RAMDisk Drive zone FROM EC into WFP:
1) 14.20
2) 14.52
3) 14.14

Full Titanium on my regular HDD zone from EC into WFP:
1) 15.98
2) 15.10
3) 14.97

Note: Times may not be 100% accurate, but they are fairly close(within .10 of a second)

The FULL version is a bit slower, but on EQLite with the RAMDisk, I had all of the options turned off... Shadows... anything that I thought MIGHT be able to affect the load time.

Conclusion
Based on what I've noted myself, its not worth it. UNLESS, others may be able to prove otherwise. Perhaps there is something else that can be done to modify these load times on the RAMDrive? Fatmgaic, someone mentioned on your thread for the EQLite that with a RAMDrive, they would have instant load times. I'm not sure if that was speculation of what they thought would occur, or if by using a RAMDrive, they DID have instant load times.

So being able to shave off a few seconds for each zone load so that monks could get mends in faster, not looking like it will work out :(

I encourage other players to do the same tests, or to try different options. I'm not very savvy so perhaps someone else could add something to the equation that I'm overlooking!

[Extunarian]

Tappin - what are your system specs? I will have time actually run a timer when I get home, but I believe it takes me way less that 15 seconds to zone - I can't be certain but I just watched my office clock tick 15 seconds and thought "I'd quit EQ if it took this long." :-)

What happens internally when a client does request a different zone? Is the heavy lifting just getting the zone files into memory? Or is there something else that accounts for a significant portion of loading times between zones? Your tests (assuming everything worked how it was supposed to) show that keeping the zone files in memory doesn't help, so I'm thinking there must be more to it than that...

[Tappin]

Hey Jorg :D I already told you I'd marry you... what else do you want from me?!

Well, I didn't think I took anywhere NEAR 15s... But when I start timing it does feel like it's MUCH longer than what it normally is. Normally I alt tab and do something else during zones(reply to chats, etc.) so it feels as if they are much faster than what they really are. But like I said, normally when I'm playing with friends, if we zone at the same time, I usually zone through first... this happens around 9/10 players that I encounter. That's why I assumed my zoning time was better than average.

For my system specs:
Windows XP Pro
Intel Core 2 duo(no laughing :P) E8400 3GHz
4 GB RAM
EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB

When I was testing my zone times, I was thinking about that also.. what you asked. Maybe there is just something on server side that has to occur before one can load into another zone? Once that thing has occurred then the computer's hardware takes over. In other words, maybe there is a given number (8 seconds for example) where the server is doing its part of the task and after that its up to your own machine to determine how much longer it takes to zone through.

When you first run into a zone line you get those words on screen... "NOW ENTER WEST FREEPORT..." That part of the zoning process took up 10s out of the ~15 that it takes for me to zone. The actual LOADING screen is up for the remainder.

[toddfx]

What internet speed do you guys run at? You can test it here http://www.speedtest.net/

I've found that internet connection seems to have a heavy effect. When I play at home on my 30 mbps connection, I zone into most zones in under 10 seconds. When I am away from home playing on public wi-fi, it seems to take me 20+ seconds to zone. I also seem to crash much more often when playing on weaker/slower wireless networks.

When I zone with a group, I pretty much always appear first when I am playing at home.

EDIT: My machine specs: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.8ghz, 6 gigs RAM, 500 gig WD 7200 RPM hard drive, EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS, Windows 7 Ultimate x64.

I use EQLite, so I'll test loading my game into RAM tonight.

[Tappin]

Hmmm. Not sure about the internet speed thing either. Or at least not it being 100% of what makes up the load speed.

One of my RL friends who I play with has higher speed than myself, however my computer is better, and I zone faster than him.

Tod, your speed is like 3 times better than mine and your computer is much better than mine. I'm sure both internet speed and computer hardware contribute you in some way.

[Tappin]

After doing a bit more testing... its pretty obvious that some zones load MUCH faster than others. Befallen and Runnyeye both load in about 10s. One would assume its due to the smaller amount of objects to load vs. larger zones(like WFP/EC). This still doesn't really help to determine what affects load time more.. net speed vs. computer hardware. It does however, prove the obvious... larger zone = larger load time.

[aswin]

What internet speed do you guys run at? You can test it here http://www.speedtest.net/
.

hi I test the speed of my internet in many sites I got the best speed results from here scanmyspeed (http://www.scanmyspeed.com/)
my results are
download=1.09Mbps
upload=0.87Mbps
I dont know the reason why my speed seems to be slow many of them said that if Cable Internet services share bandwidth with satellite Internet access.
If there are many subscribers using that same bandwidth, it can slow down the connection.
kindly guide me how to solve this problem .

[hotstud]

Most of the zone speed depends on the server. When you touch a zone line everything up until the screen goes black and has a loading bar is just you waiting for the server to handle your zone request. The loading screen is your actual computer. If your computer isn't ancient you likely will zone just as fast as anyone else and any speed differences you notice come down to the server handling your zone request which you have no control over.