As the title says, CoD:WW takes about 2-3 mins to load a map, compared to 20-30 seconds on my friends computer (specs below). The config I'm using is a slightly modified version of yitchww1.cfg.

My PC:
2.4GHz Pentium 4
1.5GB DDR1 RAM
512MB HD3850 AGP

Friends PC:
AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 3600+, ~2.0GHz
1.5GB DDR2 RAM
Intergrated GeForce 6150SE nForce 430

I'm wondering if it's the RAM speed of my computer is slowing down the load times. Maybe also time for a defrag (250GB HDD, haven't defragged before in 2-3 years).

3 things will slow map loading for mp:
cpu speed
HDD
Ram

Well I think we can rule out CPU speed. As I said before I should probably defrag my HDD soon. Last night I did a defrag on just the CoDWW folder in Program Files/Activision which made no difference at all. As for the RAM, I'd be thinking the faster speed of his RAM is making the game load faster.

With your HD being so cluttered, i would definitely start cleaning it up and disable anything that's running in the background that you do not need. I'd even disable any antivirus you have while playing. With the specs you posted, you need all the resources you can get. Soon enough, you will have to upgrade in order to keep up with the newer games coming out.

My last pc was a:
p4 2.6ghz
1gb pc2700
radeon x1600 512mb agp

I added another 1gb of ram and noticed a big difference in "CoD4". I also formatted my computer and started over fresh to have my system running at its best. I usually got into the server as the 5th-10th player with most of the ingame setting turned down and kept a decent FPS. So cleaning up your pc is really your best bet for improvement without spending money, but no guarantees that you'll see and big improvements based on the hours you will spend doing this. Good luck

Yup, I'm probably going to get a whole new PC within the first few months of '09. Yesterday I uninstalled a LOT of programs and deleted some files I don't need, that got me about 40-60GB of space

Another interesting observation, my friend (same one mentioned in my 1st post) said that by turning the Texture Resolution setting from Low to Extra, his game was running faster.

I'm also considering backing up my saved games, music, pics and other documents and reformatting.

Bump

defrag your ENTIRE hdd, overclock your CPU(if u have a 3rd party cooler),pray it loads faster thats about all u can do

What you should do is start->execute type in msconfig and go to autostart.
Deactivate as much as you can.
This will give you more performance because you have less backround processes running.
At friends computers I have seen horrible things when I watched what processes were running.
99% blank.

I havent defraged for 2 years and I was also astonished when I saw my harddrives were completely fragmented.(I thought that doesnt happen with ntfs )
Defragmenting the hdds brought a noticably increase in loading time. (cod4 maps)


There is no reason to overheat the cpu when its the ram that cant shovel the data in fast enough.
My cpu is overclocked a little but the advantage isnt so big, I just do it because its for free