SOW loading time
Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2012 4:03 am
Happy to report that running SOW off a solid state drive, I can load a full scenario (in this case GCM 40,000 troops, and max graphics) in 15 seconds. This is immediately after rebooting my computer, so the game isn't already cached in memory which brings it down to 10 seconds.
The drive was $80 on newegg during a sale, and during a given week there's usually some kind of 128gb SSD available for that price. So it's not a super high end thing, and prices are still dropping, eventually everyone will have an SSD. I didn't get it mainly for SOW, it makes everything else load faster too, including rebooting which is down to 20 seconds instead of 1 minute.
I compare this with my laptop which loads the same scenario with the same settings in 35 seconds, using a standard 7200rpm disk drive.
It's also good to note that Windows 7 will automatically fill all of your available RAM with whatever it thinks you're most likely to use, based on past patterns. For example I have 16gb of ram in my desktop, only 5gb are "in use" currently, but the rest of it has things cached in it so they load faster. Presumably, given enough time after rebooting my computer, SOW and its data files will be in there as well. Ram is also very important for SOW, and it's relatively cheap. You can get 8gb for around $40 on newegg which is plenty for now. As said, the more ram you have, the more likely SOW will stay cached in memory so it loads really fast.
Anyway, I look forward to the day when all SOW MP players have SSDs and at least 8gb of ram, so the games load in 15 seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if this is mostly true within three years.
The drive was $80 on newegg during a sale, and during a given week there's usually some kind of 128gb SSD available for that price. So it's not a super high end thing, and prices are still dropping, eventually everyone will have an SSD. I didn't get it mainly for SOW, it makes everything else load faster too, including rebooting which is down to 20 seconds instead of 1 minute.
I compare this with my laptop which loads the same scenario with the same settings in 35 seconds, using a standard 7200rpm disk drive.
It's also good to note that Windows 7 will automatically fill all of your available RAM with whatever it thinks you're most likely to use, based on past patterns. For example I have 16gb of ram in my desktop, only 5gb are "in use" currently, but the rest of it has things cached in it so they load faster. Presumably, given enough time after rebooting my computer, SOW and its data files will be in there as well. Ram is also very important for SOW, and it's relatively cheap. You can get 8gb for around $40 on newegg which is plenty for now. As said, the more ram you have, the more likely SOW will stay cached in memory so it loads really fast.
Anyway, I look forward to the day when all SOW MP players have SSDs and at least 8gb of ram, so the games load in 15 seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if this is mostly true within three years.
