Slower Loading on Faster Machine?

[King Bob VI]

Hi all, I've been out of MTW for a while, but all the excitement over MTW II has prompted me to get into it again. Anyways, I've gotten a new computer since the last time I played, which I thought would make MTW even more enjoyable, but it is not so. Even though my new comp has twice the RAM, nearly twice the processor, and a much better graphics card, it takes FOREVER to load battles. Every other process loads pretty much instantly, such as the screens when you start a new campaign where you choose your faction and such, those load quickly. But whenever the big load screen comes up (the one with the red progress bar) it takes a lot longer than on my old PC to load. Even battles with 3 or 4 units take a long time, and huge battles take as long as 5 minutes!:wall: (And the loading after the battle to go to the campaign takes a long time too). Any ideas about why this is happening and what might improve it?
I guess for now I'll just have to keep a book on my desk and read while battles are loading. :)
:help:

PS: Running Vanilla MTW + VI (Battle Collection)

[ChaosLord]

Well one possibility is that MTW uses up as much ram as you have available rather then just howevermuch it needs. Can't really test that as i've used the same setup. The other possibility since your other components are fine is that your harddrive is badly fragged, maybe just the files relating to the battles. So i'd try defragging and seeing what kind of shape the drive is in.

[mfberg]

Another possibility is that MTW is loading up a higher level of graphics. Check the graphics settings, its been awhile since I've played with mine, so I don't remember which ones to change.

mfberg

[Geezer57]

I'd speculate driver or graphics settings issues may be involved - could you post a little more info on your hardware/software/DirectX configurations?

[King Bob VI]

RAM: 1 GB
Processor: Pentium IV 2.6 Ghz
Graphics: 256 MB ATI Radeon
Brand new, plenty of hard drive space

Game settings:
Normal unit size
Highest resolution because my monitor is huge (problem?)
AGP (IIRC) Memory thingy is all the way up
Everything else pretty much default I think (I'm not looking at it right now)

DirectX: 9.0 I think, dunno about any settings.

[Sensei Warrior]

RAM: 1 GB
Processor: Pentium IV 2.6 Ghz
Graphics: 256 MB ATI Radeon
Brand new, plenty of hard drive space

Game settings:
Normal unit size
Highest resolution because my monitor is huge (problem?)
AGP (IIRC) Memory thingy is all the way up
Everything else pretty much default I think (I'm not looking at it right now)

DirectX: 9.0 I think, dunno about any settings.

Oooh thats a nice one!
Well, I'm not much of an expert but I'll give it a whack.

Normal unit size shouldn't be a problem.

Highest resolution for your monitor, and I'm assuming the game screen might be as well. That's a whole heck of alot to load.

AGP Memory all the way up should be helping you out if your talking about what I think you are.

Your "default" settings might be alot higher now than before because your graphics card is alot better, and I think MTW places your setting at what it thinks it'll run best at.

Set by step a few things you should check:

Make sure you have the most up to date graphics driver for your card. Your comp is new so it shouldn't be a prob, but just to be sure.

Definately check to see if you need a defrag.

You might want to take a peek at your virtual memory to see if its set to dedicate memory to applications and to see if its an appropriate size. The appropriate size is 1.5X your memory size (In simple terms it should be 1.5gigs).

If none of that helps, try toning back on the size of resolution you are running at. That will probably help a good bit.

Much more than that and you might want to post this in the Hard and Software Forum where the Tech guys are, they probably know a good deal more than me.

[King Bob VI]

Okay, I'll turn down the resolution and defrag my hard drive, thanks for the help guys.
~:cheers:

[Geezer57]

RAM: 1 GB
Processor: Pentium IV 2.6 Ghz
Graphics: 256 MB ATI Radeon

Sorry I wasn't more specific in my earlier post, but could you please let me know which ATI Radeon chip you're using?
I've been playing MTW with Radeon 97/9800 series chips for years, but a few months ago I encountered trouble after updating to the (then) newest Catalyst drivers. When I rolled back to the Radeon Omega Drivers 2.6.53 (Catalyst 5.7) drivers (available here http://www.omegadrivers.net/ in the archive), my troubles went away. When I upgraded my machine to an x850 chip, I kept the older Omega drivers without problems. Just F.Y.I.

[King Bob VI]

Oh, sorry:

Chip Type: Radeon X600
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)

And what is this?
Page file: 337MB used, 2121MB available

[Sensei Warrior]

And what is this?
Page file: 337MB used, 2121MB available

That's the virtual memory thing I was refering to in my earlier post. From the numbers it looks to be in acceptable order.

[Geezer57]

Chip Type: Radeon X600
DAC Type: Internal DAC (400MHz)
And what is this?
Page file: 337MB used, 2121MB available
I agree with Sensei Warrior - everything looks pretty good from here. Try switching the video drivers, and let us know if it has any beneficial effect.