Can drivers affect a games loading time?

Lazy8s

Lazy8s

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The issue is a single game. I'm running a 290 with the 18.2.2 driver set, new install of win10 on dual SSDs. 3570k and 16Gb DDR3 2133. Nothing overclocked.

Prey, Doom, The Surge and others are at the main menu within seconds every time.

Dark Souls 3 on the other hand can take upwards of 8 minutes (I timed it) just to get to the main menu. Once the game is loaded everything is fine though.

Drivers/software are the only thing I can think of, and yes, I've redownloaded/verified integrity etc.

Thanks in advance guys.
 
No, not really. Slow Hard drive or one with low free space, lack of system memory, and possibly low GPU memory can affect it, but not to the extent you are talking about. You have 16 GB system memory, so that isn't it. I suspect you have it it SSD, but even a standard Hard drive should't cause long load times you mention. I suggest you see how much space you have free on the drive you have it installed on. If you are running out of room, it can cause havoc with load times on some games/applications because how the game/app utilizes it's own game swap file. Not enough GPU memory would normally only be causing problems once you actually Enter the game from it's menu.

However, I googled the game you are having problems with, and there are many people who have such issues, with some stuck in a never ending load screen. One solution suggests you verify game's cache/files in steam, because corrupt game files can cause it.

It could also be windows 10. Even if you verify all files, it could have a hickup. My son had issues with CS:GO shortly after the Fall Creator's update, he verified game files, verified windows files, drivers, everything, he would have stutter and lag like crazy. Finally, last resort, he wiped his machine, reinstalled windows 10 and all drivers.. Game runs perfect now, as it did. We are not sure if it was a corrupt Fall creator's update or what. But Windows 10 is fully up to date now, just as it was before he wiped it, and no issues.
 
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Thanks NWR - all new SSDs less than 30% full, new install etc lol.

I'm suspecting the game as well, although the posts I found had to do with after a player has already been in game. Mine is great after it loads. Just takes forever to get there.

Figures it had to be a game I enjoy ya know? :p
 
Yes drivers *can* effect loading times, though more than likely its other things.

Things like caches and (re)compiling shaders can vary between driver versions with occasional rare driver version blowing out loading times...

Also some games will reconfigure themselves and optimise data formats for a target video card so when you change video cards or do a significant driver update they will do a 1 off recompile/reformat of data.

Though what you can do to help track down your bottleneck is bring up your task manager before loading the game and see whats getting thrashed during the loading process...eg Game drive usage, cpu usage ,net ...etc
 
Thanks for the tips Bitey. And yes - cpu shows 50% usage the whole time, but there's no particular process other than the game or systems that are showing any heavy use.

I launched all the other games I've downloaded and ironically enough, Dark Souls 1 will not launch on the 18.2.2 driver set either. I rolled back to a 17 series set and now DaS1 launches and plays fine, but 3 is still borked. I'm convinced it's drivers now though, so I begin the tedious process of testing various sets....

Hopefully I'll find one set that everything works acceptably with.

Thanks again for the help :)
 
battlefield games were notoriously slow with load times that improved with drivers. Mantle games used to take longer to load also. Dark souls 3 unlocks for me in few days lazy so ill test it out
 
Bitey said:
Yes drivers *can* effect loading times, though more than likely its other things.

Things like caches and (re)compiling shaders can vary between driver versions with occasional rare driver version blowing out loading times...

Also some games will reconfigure themselves and optimise data formats for a target video card so when you change video cards or do a significant driver update they will do a 1 off recompile/reformat of data.

Though what you can do to help track down your bottleneck is bring up your task manager before loading the game and see whats getting thrashed during the loading process...eg Game drive usage, cpu usage ,net ...etc
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Sorry, GPU drivers will not effect load times from Desktop to menu in any measurable way. (they can however effect load times once the actual game has been launched from the menu)

The only exception is first time run of a game after the initial install when it does the hardware detection stage, or if you make a hardware change to the system, which forces the game to re-detect your system hardware at launch. Drivers can trigger such re-detection when changed, but it would only happen once after the initial install of the drivers, not every time he starts the game. Beyond that, GPU drivers will NOT effect load times of a game going from desktop to menu.

With that said, there could be a bug with this particular game where it is not saving the system hardware once detected, forcing it to re-detect at every launch, and that is not caused by the drivers, but the game itself.
 
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Higgy10 said:
battlefield games were notoriously slow with load times that improved with drivers. Mantle games used to take longer to load also. Dark souls 3 unlocks for me in few days lazy so ill test it out
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You are talking about after launching the game from the menu, he is talking about going from desktop to menu. Yes, drivers can effect load times when you actually enter the game from it's menu as in your example here.
 
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Higgy10 said:
battlefield games were notoriously slow with load times that improved with drivers. Mantle games used to take longer to load also. Dark souls 3 unlocks for me in few days lazy so ill test it out
Click to expand...

Cool thanks Higgy
 
NWR_Midnight said:
You are talking about after launching the game from the menu, he is talking about going from desktop to menu. Yes, drivers can effect load times when you actually enter the game from it's menu as in your example here.
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Yep, this is a desktop to menu issue. It's fine after it finally loads.

Bitey - sorry if I wasn't clear on that.
 
Doesn't DS3 have to connect to the dedicated servers at start up? Maybe that's what's taking so long.

I haven't fired up the game in a long time, but I don't remember it taking more than a minute to connect to the servers and get in game. Maybe its longer now for some reason.
 
Meteor_of_War said:
Doesn't DS3 have to connect to the dedicated servers at start up? Maybe that's what's taking so long.

I haven't fired up the game in a long time, but I don't remember it taking more than a minute to connect to the servers and get in game. Maybe its longer now for some reason.
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It never took more than a minute for me before either, but that's a good question. Setting steam to offline should bypass that I think? I can give that a shot when I get home today. Never occurred to me that it might be a network/server issue.
 
Lazy8s said:
It never took more than a minute for me before either, but that's a good question. Setting steam to offline should bypass that I think? I can give that a shot when I get home today. Never occurred to me that it might be a network/server issue.
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Yeah, either that or set the game to offline mode from within the game options?
 
Meteor_of_War said:
Yeah, either that or set the game to offline mode from within the game options?
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I tried that already - I'm sure there's still some communication to the servers though. Your idea makes mucho sense. I'm actually excited about it possibly working because I still can't get DaS out of my blood lol.
 
Lazy8s said:
I tried that already - I'm sure there's still some communication to the servers though. Your idea makes mucho sense. I'm actually excited about it possibly working because I still can't get DaS out of my blood lol.
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Yeah, I wouldnt be surprised it still communicates with the servers at start up.

Hell yeah, best game series of all time IMO.
 
since you own the game lazy, get a crack and see if that works. If the cracked version loads up right away its most likely a server issue
 
are you playing the game with a controller, like an xbox controller? if so, unplug it and see if it loads quickly.

A suggestion I found during my googling to see if we can find your solution for you. It reduced one guys load up time by 3 minutes. Might want to test other USB devices, and see if one of those are causing it as well. After coming across those suggestions, it reminded me of a time that a game(can't remember which game it was) wouldn't even load with my old Logitech controller plugged in.

I also found this:

Okay, I've figured it out. In order to fix this problem, go to the Control Panel, Hardware and Settings. Then open up the Device Manager. Note, that you'll need administrative access to do this. Go to Human Interface Devices, and uninstall any item labelled "HID Compliant", as I think Dark Souls (or GFWL) tries to install its own drivers. You may need to restart your computer. Afterwards, Dark Souls will instantaneously start up rather than taking 3-5 minutes.
 
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NWR_Midnight said:
are you playing the game with a controller, like an xbox controller? if so, unplug it and see if it loads quickly.

A suggestion I found during my googling to see if we can find your solution for you. It reduced one guys load up time by 3 minutes. Might want to test other USB devices, and see if one of those are causing it as well. After coming across those suggestions, it reminded me of a time that a game(can't remember which game it was) wouldn't even load with my old Logitech controller plugged in.

I also found this:

Okay, I've figured it out. In order to fix this problem, go to the Control Panel, Hardware and Settings. Then open up the Device Manager. Note, that you'll need administrative access to do this. Go to Human Interface Devices, and uninstall any item labelled "HID Compliant", as I think Dark Souls (or GFWL) tries to install its own drivers. You may need to restart your computer. Afterwards, Dark Souls will instantaneously start up rather than taking 3-5 minutes.
Click to expand...

Oh damn - you know I had issues with HID after win10 first rolled out and forgot all about it - I will definitely do that, as well as the controller. I do use a PS4 controller (steam supported, no 3rd party stuff) so I'll check that out too. It's always plugged in when I start the game.

Thanks!
 
NWR_Midnight said:
Okay, I've figured it out. In order to fix this problem, go to the Control Panel, Hardware and Settings. Then open up the Device Manager. Note, that you'll need administrative access to do this. Go to Human Interface Devices, and uninstall any item labelled "HID Compliant", as I think Dark Souls (or GFWL) tries to install its own drivers. You may need to restart your computer. Afterwards, Dark Souls will instantaneously start up rather than taking 3-5 minutes.
Click to expand...

FWIW, that sounds like they were trying to fix a problem with the original Dark Souls since they mentioned GFWL. Lazy8s mentioned he's having an issue with Dark Souls 3.
 
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