Ultra Slow Loading and Horrendous Performance

from Sins Forums
The demo ran very well, with maxed out settings and very fast load times. But I bought the game a few days ago (download) and now it takes about 3 mins to load with extremely bad performance. The game hangs for over a minute after loading, if I select units or planets or go into their sub menus it can also pause for around 5 seconds. And lastly I occasionally get bad stuttering or hanging when zooming or moving between planets. 

I'm running an 8800GT, AMD 6000+x2, 1GB RAM, Windows XP Pro.

I tried re-installing but it wasn't fixed. I also noticed that the settings and stuff did not change between the demo and reinstalls (ie resolution, detail levels and profiles were kept). Where can I delete that stuff manually? It doesn't seem to be in Documents or anywhere like that.

Thanks.
technical
4,381 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I would guess that your 1GB RAM is not enough to run this on high settings.

when I play on "high" or "very high" the game-process takes up to 1.2 - 1.4 GB of RAM alone.
so you're windows is constantly swapping around and thus makes the game unplayable slow.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Did you apply the 1.3 patch? It significantly smoothed out loading issues once loaded. My game also loads in about 20 seconds when I boot up and loads in first during multiplayer, but I have a 500 GB SATA HD and a quad core 2GB ram maybe its time to upgrade to something heavier.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
its definitely that 1 gb of ram. i have a 7900gs, amd 3800+x2 and 4gbs ram, and i play with max settings and loading teh game takes seconds
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
What kind of harddrive space do you have available, are you close to the last few gigs or god forbid megs of space? Could the swap file be playing games with your system?

JBD
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
8800GTS AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+ (512x2) 1GB Corsair CMX512-3200C2 XP pro

I have everything set to High 2xAA. I am not getting any of the problems being reported by the OP.

I would guess that is more than just 1GB of memory causing it.

Download the latest drivers for everything you have. Nvidia has a new 174.xx driver out right now. + Check make sure you don't have any erroneous programs running when playing that might be taking up a lot of memory and such.

[email protected] is where you will want to seek more help
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
But the demo ran fine on that hardware. Also, if I can run Crysis on high I don't see why I shouldn't be able to run this on max.

Do the patches get added automatically through Stardock Central?

I've got 15GB left on my HDD so it shouldn't be that.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Patches are automatically applied via Stardock Central, so it sounds like you already have the latest version.  The demo only had the textures for one race in them, so now that you've got all 3, it could be bogging down.  I would try using the latest beta drivers from Nvidia as they fixed a lot of issues.  I trust that you uninstalled the demo completely first and didn't install the full game on top of it?  That could also be the issue.