Why does it take so long to load G&K's?

[Leathaface]

I can be waiting for up to 3 minutes at times for the game to be in my game after I select the "Play in Direct X 10 or 11" option. I have Civ V installed on an external hard drive but I doubt that matters hugely.

The loading time was much, much shorter for Civ IV. Why is this so much longer.

 

[JanghanHong]

I have Civ V installed on an external hard drive but I doubt that matters hugely.

The loading time was much, much shorter for Civ IV. Why is this so much longer.

There's your reason right there. SATA3 that connects internal harddrives these days is much faster than USB that you connected your external drive with.

Your poor computer is probably loading 3 gb of memory from a compressed file game in the drive at the speed of 50mb/s, of course it's gonna take that long.

 

[Leathaface]

I have my Steam folder set by default to my external hard drive.

Can I move Civ V by itself to my internal hard drive, and have it still running on Steam?

 

[joncnunn]

I have my Steam folder set by default to my external hard drive.

Can I move Civ V by itself to my internal hard drive, and have it still running on Steam?

Civ V by itself is 6.31 GB. That is actually a much bigger foot print than Steam itself.

 

[JanghanHong]

I have my Steam folder set by default to my external hard drive.

Can I move Civ V by itself to my internal hard drive, and have it still running on Steam?

I don't even know why you are running any application from an external hard drive unless you're homeless.


Get a 64gb Solid State Drive, inistall your operating system, Steam, and Civilization on it and connect it to your motherboard using SATA3 cable. If you have a laptop... I honestly don't know, never had one.

 

[Ajuga]

There's your reason right there. SATA3 that connects internal harddrives these days is much faster than USB that you connected your external drive with.

Your poor computer is probably loading 3 gb of memory from a compressed file game in the drive at the speed of 50mb/s, of course it's gonna take that long.

Yes SATA 3.0 is much faster than USB, if we are talking about USB 2.0 (480Mbits).
USB 3.0 is a lot faster, having a data transfer speed of 5Gbits it's almost as fast as SATA 3.0 (6Gbits) and there is an updated USB 3.0 version announced that will push it to 10Gbits.

In the case he has USB 3.0 it doesn't matter he uses an external HDD.
Mostly because hard disk drives have a data transfer speed of between 1 and 2 Gbits.
Not to mention that the rate of transfer depends on the track location.

If you really want good speed you should use solid state drives. Their data transfer speed is more reliable and faster because there is no data seeking as there is no physical disk. But consumer solid state drives can reach speeds up to 4.5Gbits easily.
At which point you can both use USB 3.0 or SATA3.
Though their storage size and life expectancy are lower than HDD's, their speed makes a huge impact.

 

[compwiz1202]

A related question is why does it take considerably longer to load since the last patch. Has anyone noticed the game itself running faster to make up for the longer load time? I don't usually play larger maps and larger number of civs to notice.

 

[Mesix]

I have noticed that it takes much longer to load since the last patch as well.

 

[RedFuneral]

What type of connection is the external drive? My external USB 3.0 drive is actually 15% faster than my internal SATA 3.(Regular disk drives don't come anywhere near to maxing out SATA 2 so the disk is all important with these newer techs). On that note, what kind of external drive are you using? Even if your connection speed it good you wouldn't want to be gaming off a WD Green or equivalent 5900RPM drive. Not to mention how such drives are not meant to be running constantly(like they do while gaming.) Many externals are made for backup purposes only, heat and reduced reliability are concerns when using them heavily and often.

Also, do you use mods? The game itself loads up in 1-2 mins for me which is fine but it takes up to 7 minutes to load all the mods and enter the game which is a little annoying.(There apparently is a bug where it redownloads the mods each time you play, I'm uncertain if it has been fixed.)

 

[spuffin]

I have my Steam folder set by default to my external hard drive.

Can I move Civ V by itself to my internal hard drive, and have it still running on Steam?

Depending on your OS this is doable. Let us know what you're running and I will do my best to assist

 

[RedFuneral]

Indeed you can run your games off the internal drive. This program was designed for SSD users but the functionality would be the same with your drive.
http://www.overclock.net/t/853462/ssd-owners-must-have-app