CoD MW2, Long load times

**dhuron** · September 16th, 2010, 11:42 PM

Hello,

3 months ago I went from an Nvidia 9600 GT to an ATI 4770. I've been regretting it ever since. Everything generally performs worse compared to the nvidia. Unfortunately, I gave it to my friend as a birthday gift and I'd hate to take it away from him (he upgraded from his on-board 128mb card that could hardly run CoD2). What was most notable was the HORRID framerate on certain maps regarding that ATI card issue with the water. Fixed that, framerate was tolerable and still is, sort of.

Onto the actual problem: It takes FAR too long to load a map. It takes up to an entire minute and a half to load a single map, given that the connection doesn't time out beforehand.

I can't play. It's stressing me the hell out and I don't know what to do. I've defragged my computer, reinstalled MW2 (took 4 days to download) and freed up plenty of space. I'm running out of ideas, help!

Thanks very much in advance!

**ShyguyXPC** · September 17th, 2010, 12:27 AM

When you say Download, Are you talking from Steam, or a similar service, or is this some other means?

**dhuron** · September 17th, 2010, 12:41 AM

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

When you say Download, Are you talking from Steam, or a similar service, or is this some other means?

I used steam to download it

**ShyguyXPC** · September 17th, 2010, 01:03 AM

ok. Well that rules out stuff thats not allowed to be discussed on here then.

Whats the rest of the specs of your PC?

Have you noticed the PC taking longer to load other programs?

Generally Long load times have to do with the hard drive (slow hard drive, Fragmented files, not enough drive space, etc, but at least 2 of those have been ruled out in this case), or other programs running in the background accessing the hard drive while gaming, like Antivirus, etc.

are you downloading any files while playing? sometimes that can slow the hard drives performance, while trying to read files for games (while data is being written to drive from other programs)

When you installed the Radeon, was this a simple Video card upgrade or did you do a complete Reinstall of the Operating system along with it (sometimes some people do a complete reinstall with "major" upgrades like this, if you did, I just want to rule out whether the Motherboards Chipset drivers were updated and installed right, sometimes old or lack of Drive Controller drivers can cause a hard drive to run slower than it should)

Otherwise, the Radeon should be able to run MW2 just fine.

maybe a bit laggy at times with frame rates depending on settings but should run on that 4770.

also the 4770 isn't really that much of an upgrade over the older 9600GT you had. even a Radeon 4830 wouldn't of been much of an upgrade, both are on par with a 9800GT which is only a step up from the 9600GT.

**nemowolf** · September 17th, 2010, 12:15 PM

Originally Posted by dhuron

Hello,

3 months ago I went from an Nvidia 9600 GT to an ATI 4770. I've been regretting it ever since. Everything generally performs worse compared to the nvidia. Unfortunately, I gave it to my friend as a birthday gift and I'd hate to take it away from him (he upgraded from his on-board 128mb card that could hardly run CoD2). What was most notable was the HORRID framerate on certain maps regarding that ATI card issue with the water. Fixed that, framerate was tolerable and still is, sort of.

Onto the actual problem: It takes FAR too long to load a map. It takes up to an entire minute and a half to load a single map, given that the connection doesn't time out beforehand.

I can't play. It's stressing me the hell out and I don't know what to do. I've defragged my computer, reinstalled MW2 (took 4 days to download) and freed up plenty of space. I'm running out of ideas, help!

Thanks very much in advance!

Id like to start out as a bit of a reality check. If your stressing yourself to insomnia or worse because you cant play a game, go out side and join a game of kick ball with some 6 year olds and remember to breath, have fun and its just a computer.

That said, something else to make sure is that you have uninstalled your Nvidia drivers to do a clean install for the ATI. When switching manufacturers i find that some people dont uninstall the old drivers and that causes problems.

**ShyguyXPC** · September 17th, 2010, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by nemowolf

Id like to start out as a bit of a reality check. If your stressing yourself to insomnia or worse because you cant play a game, go out side and join a game of kick ball with some 6 year olds and remember to breath, have fun and its just a computer.

That said, something else to make sure is that you have uninstalled your Nvidia drivers to do a clean install for the ATI. When switching manufacturers i find that some people dont uninstall the old drivers and that causes problems.

Good catch, forgot about that.

(though if they did a OS reinstall, like I had inquired about, dealing with chipset drivers, that would of been taken care of with that)

But still good catch.

**dhuron** · September 17th, 2010, 03:21 PM

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

ok. Well that rules out stuff thats not allowed to be discussed on here then.

Whats the rest of the specs of your PC?

Have you noticed the PC taking longer to load other programs?

Generally Long load times have to do with the hard drive (slow hard drive, Fragmented files, not enough drive space, etc, but at least 2 of those have been ruled out in this case), or other programs running in the background accessing the hard drive while gaming, like Antivirus, etc.

are you downloading any files while playing? sometimes that can slow the hard drives performance, while trying to read files for games (while data is being written to drive from other programs)

When you installed the Radeon, was this a simple Video card upgrade or did you do a complete Reinstall of the Operating system along with it (sometimes some people do a complete reinstall with "major" upgrades like this, if you did, I just want to rule out whether the Motherboards Chipset drivers were updated and installed right, sometimes old or lack of Drive Controller drivers can cause a hard drive to run slower than it should)

Otherwise, the Radeon should be able to run MW2 just fine.

maybe a bit laggy at times with frame rates depending on settings but should run on that 4770.

also the 4770 isn't really that much of an upgrade over the older 9600GT you had. even a Radeon 4830 wouldn't of been much of an upgrade, both are on par with a 9800GT which is only a step up from the 9600GT.

CPU: Intel Wolfdale Core 2 Duo 2.8ghz
RAM: 2GB DDR2

I upgraded to a GTX 460 today. Load times have not changed, and I believe the HDD is at fault here (possibly the RAM)

Yes, the time to boot up via the windows loading screen has at least tripled ever since I formatted and had a fresh install about a month ago. XP's defrag tool tells me there is no need for defragging, and I've used CCleaner to clean the registry, but to no avail.

I normally run nothing more than steam and MW2/WoW when I'm gaming, always making sure to keep firefox closed and everything else I'm not using.

I'm unsure of my mobo's chipset. I recently jumped from a 400GB HD to this 250 due to the same issues, only at a MUCH slower pace (up to 5 minutes of the XP loading screen alone) I'll see if there are updates available.

Originally Posted by nemowolf

Id like to start out as a bit of a reality check. If your stressing yourself to insomnia or worse because you cant play a game, go out side and join a game of kick ball with some 6 year olds and remember to breath, have fun and its just a computer.

That said, something else to make sure is that you have uninstalled your Nvidia drivers to do a clean install for the ATI. When switching manufacturers i find that some people dont uninstall the old drivers and that causes problems.

I'm not stressed to insomnia over it... I might have overexaggerated in my frustrations over this. My mistake.

When I jumped from the 400 to the 250 I already had the radeon installed, so there were no previous drivers.

**dhuron** · September 17th, 2010, 05:12 PM

I have discovered the problem.

After hours of research, The plague was revealed: PIO Mode.

The hard drive is now back to UDME and working normally.

Thanks for the support!

**ShyguyXPC** · September 17th, 2010, 08:09 PM

Yep, after confirming whether or not the proper Drivers for the Chipset/Drive Controller was installed/updated, that was next on my list, check to make sure the drive is running in the right mode.

looks like you found it.

that 460 you upgraded to, once the Load times are taken out of the equation, you should notice a HUGE improvement in games with it, considering the 460 should be 2 to 3 times faster/better performing than the old 4770's.