Verifying client data super slow!

[sid_freeman]

I've built two pcs for friends of mine who both play BF2 often. They bought the same cpu, ram and motherboard for both (Sempron 2500, 512 RAM, and Asus A7V8X-X). Not exactly high-end I know. Really the only difference between the two machines is that one has a new hard drive the other an older 20gb drive. The load times for BF2 are 'much' slower on the pc with the older hard drive than the one with the newer. About 3-4 times slower in fact. It's actually the 'verifying client data' that takes so long (takes almost 5 minutes to load a 64 player map from start to finish).

Why there is such a difference in speed of loading has me perplexed. I can't imagine a hard drive that's only 3 or so years older would have that big an impact. Any thoughts? Anyone know what the hardware bottleneck is when BF2 is 'verifying client data'?

I've scanned the old drive for spyware and it's clean. Tried defragging it, did a disk scan; no problems. Still super slow load time. Once the map loads, the game runs just as well as it does on the other machine.

Confused.
Sid

[ptegan]

Re: Verifying client data…super slow!

The map load speed depends on RAM and the verifing data is based on drive speed (or so I'm told).

If it's slow then try this :


If you are running XP, go to device manager and expand 'IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers' Right click on 'Primary channel' and choose properties. (Primary is usually the channel you HD's are connected to)

Click on the 'Advanced Settings' tab, this will show the devices connected to that channel, and their current speeds. Virtually all modern hard drives should be running in Ultra DMA mode 5. Maxtor's on the right chipsets run Mode 6, and most CDrom drives run Mode 2. Any HD's running in PIO mode will seriously affect loading times, as this is the slowest speed possible.


2) How to fix...

XP will slow down the speed of devices if it receives errors while using the device, until it gets to PIO mode. This could be due to faulty cables, device or drivers.

First thing to try is simply change the the transfer mode to 'DMA if available' and reboot. If that does not fix it, uninstall the controller and reboot. XP should reinstall it and reset the fastest transfer speeds. You could also try both the MS drivers and the chipset manufacturers. (I had to install the NVidia drivers on my NF4 chipset, to fix IDE problems. I have also had them cause problems on my NF2 chipset system, so try both)

If it deteriorates or this doesn't fix it, check to make sure you are using 80pin cables, and that any transfer/DMA settings are correct in the BIOS.


This was taken from here :

http://forum.eagames.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=5787&

[lcplsickoll]

Re: Verifying client data…super slow!

I had a ridiculous increase in times when I made the following upgrades. I used to have XP Home on an ATA133 IDE drive and the game on a SATA150. Well I took all my IDE drives and that SATA drive and put them into a make shift file server. I then purchase an 80G SATA 2 drive and installed XP Pro, and BF2. The first map when entering a server loads and verifyies in about 20-30 secs. The rest of the time the maps load and verify in 10-15 MAX! Mostly in 10 Secs...now this blew my mind, but the HD makes a huge difference. It may have had something to do with XP Pro too, but I can't verify what that added if anything.