Anthem‘s Day One (minus two) patch has finally arrived, with one of many large ‘High Level’ fixes being its atrocious loading times, particularly in terms of what Bioware check with as ‘older disk drives’. But how a lot have they really improved by? Well, I’ve gone and re-tested the identical HDD, SSD and NVMe SSD I attempted on Tuesday to see what’s what.
As a reminder, these are the storage drives I’ve used to re-test Anthem’s loading occasions with:
- HDD: WD Blue (1TB, 7200rpm)
- SSD: Samsung 850 Evo (120GB)
- NVMe: WD Black 3D (1TB)
As I additionally talked about in my Anthem loading occasions piece on Tuesday, I’d contemplate these drives to all be pretty mid-range in comparison with different HDDs and SSDs you should buy as we speak, so hopefully they need to be fairly consultant of what you might need inside your PC. The 850 Evo, for instance, was as soon as our best gaming SSD for mid-range patrons, however has since been changed by the even nippier Samsung 860 Evo. The similar goes for my NVMe candidate, too, which has since been changed by the WD Black SN750.
Just like final time, my assessments concerned timing how lengthy it takes to seek for a server after hitting ‘Continue’ from the title display screen, how lengthy you’re left ready for starting an expedition, and the way lengthy it takes to get again from an expedition into Fort Tarsis once more.
For my WD Black 3D NVMe SSD, not a lot has modified. Searching for a server really took virtually double the size of time post-patch – 38 seconds versus 20-25 seconds – however setting off and getting back from an expedition was just about similar. The former got here in at 33 seconds (which beforehand different between 31-36 seconds, so bang within the center), whereas the latter got here in at 15 seconds (two seconds faster than what it took pre-patch).
As for my common Samsung 850 Evo SSD, nevertheless, I’d say Anthem’s loading occasions have really received worse post-patch. The solely time that truly improved was the time it took to seek for a server, which virtually halved from 41-47 seconds down to only 25 seconds.
Everything else took even longer. Whereas launching an expedition as soon as took round 30 seconds, it left me ready between 50-70 seconds this time spherical, and returning again to Fort Tarsis took between 16-22 seconds.
The excellent news is that these promised HDD loading time enhancements are undoubtedly a heck of quite a bit higher. They’re nonetheless significantly longer than what you’ll discover on an SSD, however my WD Blue HDD managed a significantly better 46 seconds to discover a server this time spherical (down from simply over a minute pre-patch), and a mere 52 seconds to launch an expedition (which beforehand took 75-90 seconds). Even getting again into Fort Tarsis was a relative breeze, coming in at simply 24 seconds versus someplace across the 52 second mark.
So sure, Anthem’s loading occasions have been improved the place it counts. I’ll be maintaining a tally of these SSD occasions over the day couple of days to see in the event that they get any higher, however for these of you planning to put in the game in your HDD, that is excellent news certainly.
