Delay when zoning?

[Makr]

So, I installed the new engine, and my old 210 video card just couldn't handle it, not even at the lowest settings.

Went out, and picked up a GTX950. Once I'm in a zone, it does pretty good. But when I zone, it takes an extraordinary amount of time for all of the graphics to load. Sometimes, AO even goes "not responding".

I play windowed, at 1440x960x32 if that makes a difference.

So, what should I try here?...

[DigitalBath]

So, I installed the new engine, and my old 210 video card just couldn't handle it, not even at the lowest settings.

Went out, and picked up a GTX950. Once I'm in a zone, it does pretty good. But when I zone, it takes an extraordinary amount of time for all of the graphics to load. Sometimes, AO even goes "not responding".

I play windowed, at 1440x960x32 if that makes a difference.

So, what should I try here?...

Try going for Borderless Window and possibly lowering any anti-aliasing related settings. Other than that, AO still favours one strong core rather than multicore efficiency so check if that's holding you back at this point. (If you have one core hitting 100% from time to time and your GPU is under 99%..)
The loading bit is negated by an SSD apart from ICC HQ. Even with a decent setup loading that area is visibly slower than others.

AO's new engine isn't particularly efficient, but in some respects it runs faster/smoother than the old one, especially in SL. Looks better, too

[Difs]

Loading a new zone is influenced mostly by the speed of your hdd.
I had the same problem but when i replaced my hdd with a sdd, it all disappeared

[Makr]

Loading a new zone is influenced mostly by the speed of your hdd.
I had the same problem but when i replaced my hdd with a sdd, it all disappeared

I can understand that, but I never had a problem like that with the old engine. I turned down antialiasing and it helped a little. Was watching AMD's sysmon, and ya, one core is being hit hard, but it's not constantly pegged.

I'm running an AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6ghz. Would hate to have to upgrade more components to play this game...

[DigitalBath]

I can understand that, but I never had a problem like that with the old engine. I turned down antialiasing and it helped a little. Was watching AMD's sysmon, and ya, one core is being hit hard, but it's not constantly pegged.

I'm running an AMD Athlon II X4 620 @ 2.6ghz. Would hate to have to upgrade more components to play this game...

An SSD would likely be the greatest improvement you could make to that system by quite a large margin.
That said, the problem isn't necessarily your system here. The engine is not good at doing certain things and its multicore support is bad across most of what I could try related to it (in TSW I get some issues on high settings even on my fx8350 @4.7GHz + GTX 780.. while recent and much higher-quality multiplayer games run amazingly well at 60+ fps (madmax, star wars battlefront beta.. etc).

Can't really think of much else that would make things better for you here other than waiting for any sort of engine optimization down the line.

[Cratertina]

SsD.. Cheap ones cost 50€ or less used, and do anything AO desires well.

[Makr]

Thanks all, I may just go ahead and pick up a small SSD and see if I gain anything there. But AO isn't work $800 to me to pick up a new MB/CPU at this point... I'll go back to the old engine before I spend that type of money.

[vitriolic-v]

For what it is doing, AO's new engine should be performing a lot better than it is. My system is a new build with a mid-range current-gen graphics card and it performs great at everything I've thrown at it. AO is the worst performer.

But it's a new engine. If they're serious about optimizing it, the performance will more closely approach parity with the graphics quality.