Why do some games take several minutes to load the first time after startup?
Asked by
MellowOrbit42
When I launch certain games, especially Victoria 3 and Factorio, the first load after starting my PC can take up to eight minutes. If I close the game and launch it again, it loads in roughly ten seconds. The games are installed on a 1TB NVMe SSD rather than a hard drive, and I don't have other programs running in the background. My system has a Ryzen 5 7600X, an ASRock AM5 motherboard, 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory, and a Radeon RX 7900 with 16GB of VRAM. Drivers are up to date, and the hardware should be more than capable. What could cause such a huge difference between the first and second launch?
Answers
The motherboard could be worth investigating, especially if you also notice unusually long boot times, freezes, or inconsistent performance outside the games. Updating the motherboard BIOS and checking chipset settings would be a reasonable first step. If the PC itself takes several minutes to boot, testing with another motherboard or having the board checked may help, but the game-specific first-launch pattern more commonly points to caching, antivirus scanning, or SSD behavior.
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A fresh installation or game update may trigger shader compilation and other one-time cache creation. That can make the first launch slower, although eight minutes still sounds excessive. See whether the delay happens again after clearing the game’s shader cache or after a major update, and watch for any shader-compilation message during startup.
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The faster second launch is probably because Windows and the game have cached files in memory after the first run. That part is normal, but eight minutes is far longer than expected. Check Task Manager while the game is loading to see whether the SSD is being heavily used. Windows Defender or another antivirus program scanning every game file during the first launch is a common cause, so you could temporarily test with an appropriate exclusion for the game folder. Also check the SSD’s health and remaining space; performance can drop if it is nearly full.
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MellowOrbit42: Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll check the disk activity, SSD health, and antivirus scanning first.