I had never paid much attention to it before but the other day I noticed that when I have a steam and non steam version of the game running at the same time, levels and zones like haven load like 3-4x as fast as normal, I wonder if this effects other aspects of the game as well?
~Luke
My stand alone client was running like greased lightning with my steam account (mule, craft alt) sitting in haven.
The only thing I can think of is that it loaded haven in like 1.5 seconds because I already had it loaded on another client, but it seemed to be working elsewhere too.
Maybe java was allowing for more resource time because 2 clients were open but only one was actively being used and profiting from the extra headroom?
~Luke
Could have been nick's doing. few perverts are capable of such witchery.
To test this without bias, you'd need to try timing loading one on a fresh reboot, and then restart your computer and time loading the other.
Otherwise stuff like cache, leftover processes and such could get in the way of results.
Nevertheless, the standalone client will most likely come out on top, even if only by a small margin, due to the lack of an overlay.
wild theory:
does SK use only one processor?
Maybe on a multicore machine, the first client got assigned to core1. Core1 was also busy doing background stuff.
The second client wouldn't fit into core1 so it got assigned to core2. Core2 was lonely and dedicated all it's love to the client.
That is a good theory LJ, because the stand alone client was the last one I opened with steam, pandora/firefox evga precision and hardware monitor all opened up previously, or perhaps it negated the go-stepping on my i3570k by keeping it under full load and not letting it throttle back.
~Luke
I can pretty much confirm what Hexzyle said.
I've ran FSC with three alts and my main:
Steam
Standalone 1
Standalone 2
Standalone 3
My Main took about 3-5 seconds longer to load than all my other standalone clients loading within literally 0.5 seconds of each-other. However, it ran much better than my standalone client(s) did with less lag and various other things. It really does seem like the UI on Steam takes a bit longer. Part of it could also be that whenever you load something, that's the time it syncs up with Steam to update your inventory.
EDIT: Specs to compare:
8GB of Ram
Intel i5 Core Processor
GeForce GTX 660
D/U Speed: 2gb/s|1gb/s*
Windows 7 64x
*Comcast ISP, I have really bad latency with the servers despite the download/upload speed.
I did not use extra.txt on the Client Versions nor the Steam Version.
Exact same except:
gtx 550 ti
Win8 64
Has the extra.txt file on stand alone but not steam but I dont think this is a factor as it hasnt seemed to make much of a difference when running either of the two indapendently in the past.
But this was sick, I've never loaded into haven before and *almost* not even seen a loading screen, it was that quick.
Glacies, have you ever looked into a traffic shaping program called Cfos that allows you to prioritize your programs? I think it pings different routs too looking for the ones with less delay and packet loss. I have comcast as well and have never seen less than all bars. Maybe I'm just lucky and am on a good node.
~Luke
Which version did this? If you were loading levels simultaneously, one of the applications could have had more priority than the other.