Optimizing mod install to reduce load times

[BootySweat]

I'm not exactly sure how compressed OMOD files work, but my load times have suffered a great deal after installling a crapload of mods.

OBGEv2 seemed to be a significant culprit, and after removing some shaders from the .ini file, my load times improved significantly.

Now, I'm about to install some new mods and I'm wondering if using OMODs slows down load times by creating a new compressed archive file that must be extracted each time I run the game.

What is the best route to take to reduce load times? Should I go back and extract some OMOD files that I already have installed? (Currently using Wrye Bash, FCOM, OBSE and quite a few other mods.)

As for my hardware, my primary drive is a set of dual Intel X18 SSDs in Raid0, which is lightning fast (about double the read/write speeds of a single SSD). With vanilla Oblivion, load times were almost nonexistent. After installing lots of mods, I have to wait as long as roughly 30 seconds when starting the game and around 15-20 seconds to reload after dying.

Edited August 16, 2011 by BootySweat

[Hanaisse]

Well...

Fact: The more mods you have, the longer the load time.

Fact: FCOM is a BEAR for this problem.

Fact: The more OBSE plugins that need to load, the longer the load time.

Fact: Those beautiful higher rez graphics that you just must have, add to load time. (not you in particular, in general)

Fact: Uncompressed archives lower load time slightly (slight, not significant) over compressed archives. A reason some people repack bsa's.

Fact: Pyffi'ing meshes slightly increases load time. Again not significant.

While 30 seconds may seem like a long time when you want to play, it's really not that bad.

[Arthmoor]

Where, precisely, are you running into the insane load times? With a ton of mods, the initial logo screen sits there for quite some time before anything happens. In-game load times though don't seem to be affected, even when transitioning from one large cell to another.

You could also be running into OBGE shaders compiling themselves at startup and during save game loads. IIRC, updating to OBGEv3 will solve that in that the shader compiling only needs to be done once.

[_echo]

defragment or an SSD is the best you can do.

[BootySweat]

Where, precisely, are you running into the insane load times? With a ton of mods, the initial logo screen sits there for quite some time before anything happens. In-game load times though don't seem to be affected, even when transitioning from one large cell to another.

You could also be running into OBGE shaders compiling themselves at startup and during save game loads. IIRC, updating to OBGEv3 will solve that in that the shader compiling only needs to be done once.

It's not a problem going from interior to exterior cells. (although it's longer than vanilla version, which was almost nonexistent)

The problem is starting the game and reloading after dying. It takes around 30 seconds to start the game and 20 - 30 seconds each time I die. In the vanilla version these took only a few seconds at most.

It may not sound like a lot, but I'm using FCOM, Duke Patricks at around 75% on the difficulty slider and I die very frequently, which I enjoy, but I would like to optimize my install if possible, to reduce these loading times.

and great tip about upgrading to OBGEv3 - I didn't even realize there was a v3!

Edited August 17, 2011 by BootySweat

[Arthmoor]

Yes, starting the game has some amount of pre-processing it has to do before the mods load. I have no idea what, but that progress bar at the bottom of the logo screen sits there longer the more mods you have. Mine for instance has enough time to actually switch to a load screen before it reaches the main menu.

[_echo]

When you die, it has to reload an old save, which in basic lingo is to undo all the crap you did before dieing.

In tech savvy lingo, it has to purge the current memory in order to make room for the "new" save to load up.