Long load times compared to Civ 5

[Sterling Archer]

So I played a fair bit of Civ 5, and being one of "those" players who rerolls the start if it's not to their liking (Seriously, why doesn't Civ 6 have a Restart Game option on turn 0?) I was shocked to find that my loading time for a new game seemed considerably longer this time around! Now I like Sean Bean as much as the next guy, but it gets a bit grating hearing the whole speech each time followed by 30+ seconds of silence, so I thought I'd do a bit of comparing between the two games on my system and ask for some advice on possible upgrade paths if there aren't any "quick fixes".

My system specs are as follows:
CPU - FC-LGA12C Core i5-3450 (Gen 3, 4 Cores)
RAM - Corsair 8GB 1600MHz CL9 DDR3 (2x 4GB)
GPU - XFX Radeon HD6870 Graphics Card 1 GB GDDR5
HDD - Kingston 120GB SSD
OS - Windows 8.1

So I did 4 different tests:
1) Civ 5 (GAK + BNW - No Mods) - 1080p, 8x MSAA, High Settings
2) Civ 5 (GAK + BNW - No Mods) - 1024x768, No AA, Minimum Settings
3) Civ 6 - 1080p, 8x MSAA High Settings
4) Civ 6 - 1024x768, No AA, Minimum Settings

With the following game settings on both games:
Standard map size
Prince (Not that it would have any effect)
8 Civs + default CS numbers
Continents
Standard or middle setting for everything else

And got the following average load times across 3 restarts (From clicking Start Game to the Begin Game button being active):
1) 13 Seconds
2) 10 Seconds
3) 1 Minute 26 Seconds
4) 50 Seconds

So it appears that in Civ 6 playing at higher settings affects load times significantly (duh), however taking 5 - 6.5 times longer to load as Civ 5 does says to me that there's definitely something else bottlenecking here. I appreciate everything is now rendered in 3d (and looks beautiful!), but I could really do with speeding these load times up!

So I suppose my main questions are:
1) Are there any tweaks anyone has figured out that speeds up the load times? I've already excluded the Civ 6 game folder from Windows Defender as that was causing it to crash during loading.
2) If there aren't any tweaks and it's just that my PC is entering potato territory, which upgrades would get the most "bang for my buck" in my setup?

I don't want to upgrade the GPU if it isn't going to change much except allowing me to crank up the settings, however I'm assuming new CPU = new motherboard and the cost that goes along with that. I did notice the recommended settings mention a gen 4 Core i5, is this my likely bottleneck?

Cheers for reading and thanks in advance

 

[callan]

Strongly suspect that your issue is the 1GB vRAM on your GPU. What's more, I strongly suspect that option 3) would become very laggy by the mid-game as the engine is forced to start shuttling textures between vRAM and RAM constantly because of the wider variety of units, differing map terrains etc. The fact you have Civ on an SSD is likely buying you a lot of leeway already.

In general I would view everything except your GPU as being capable of playing the game on option 3) with acceptable framerates in late era. Your CPU is perfectly adequate and further performance can still be gained from a modest overclock if turn times (the only thing this will effect) get too long on huge maps, assuming you play them.

My advice here would be to consider a staged upgrade process for this PC to maximise it's remaining value. Stage 1 - upgrade GPU. Stage 2 - Modest CPU overclock to ~3.5GHz if required. Consideration to add more SSD space because it's always useful. Timeframe 0 to ~18 months. Stage 3 - Upgrade the rest in ~18 to 24 months. This would give you a few options as regards choice of GPU. Assuming your MB supports the latest gen cards (double-check, but it really should) then the new 1050Ti retails at about $150, doesn't requires extra power connectors (if this is an issue) and will be a solid performer until at least Stage 3. Or you could opt for something like the 1060 3GB, retailing at about $200 and a viable card to take past Stage 3, which would offer great value. Or you could stump for a premium card which will definitely last into your next build but which your current hardware would not be able to make the most of. I have always felt that the inability to maximise an expensive product impacts greatly on value and would not advise this in your case.

 

[Sterling Archer]

Cheers for the advice, I'll look into those GPUs