Hello.

I'm curious if others have experienced similar load times.

Potentially confounding factors regarding my computer:
-5200 rpm hard drive
-below minimum reqs: 4gb ram, i3 processor

Nope, I've not had any loading problems. Your system is a little underpowered, so I'd put it down to that. When was the last time you did a defragmentation???

Any other not vital apps running in the back?
With this system I would take care not to have anything running that is not needed for Windows (in addition to the game).

When I tried to run W3 on my old rig, that has i7-2600k, loading times are also long, somewhat similar to yours, maybe just a tad lower. But even my new rig, after one of recent patches, has rather long loading times, especially if I don't tap a key during those voiced load screens, they could easily go around minute. Otherwise, if I'm lucky, around 30 seconds.

If I die and need to reload a save game it takes about 10 seconds.

Fast travel within same map is about 2 seconds.

Fast travel to other map is about 10 seconds.

Game startup ("play" button click in Galaxy) to in game player control is 18 seconds (I timed it exactly).

I do have an SSD, so maybe that is why it is faster.

Simple answer: caching

When the game starts up initially, none of it is in RAM at the OS level so it isn't cached and has to come right off the disk, including save games, all map data and game assets. When you reload a save game after dying the game will most likely have all of the textures and other game data loaded into RAM and the GPU texture memory so it doesn't need to load that tonne of data and can benefit both from it's own caching as well as OS level disk/page cache.

must be the hard disk, I also now run it with 4GB but a SSD and have the same loading times as with 8gb, maybe 15 secs

Thanks bro, this is informative.

It is also interesting to hear also what SSD load times are, though one would fully expect them to be radically faster. Interesting to note. Curious if this would still be the case on a 5200 rpm, e.g. if additional movement of data in and out of ram occurs with 4gb but happens so fast on SSD to be irrelevant.

Actually, it's not quite as fast as you imagine, as in, it's not instantaneous or anything like that, but it is much quicker. For instance, I measured this some time back:

Booting into my fully loaded system (Win8.1, using same image):

SAM 7200rpm 3TB HDD 2m42s; SAM 850 PRO 256GB SSD 0m24s.

World of Tanks, from commencement of battle loading screen to being on battlefield watching timer go down:

SAM 7200rpm 3TB HDD 0m14s; SAM PRO 256GB SSD 0m03s.

Yes, it is quicker, but you still have to remember that the memory has to be populated and the program executed to tell what to store in memory, which takes time. However, it's when you boot up Windows and general usage (including games) where you notice the difference. One of my SSD's failed and whilst waiting for an RMA I thought, to save a little work, I'd put the OS on a HDD, thinking 'Oh, it won't be that slow...'. Boy, was I wrong! I was so used to pressing the power button on my PC, seeing the Desktop and straight away opening a program or browser, all in about 20secs. With the HDD on the other hand, I had time enough between pressing the power button and then realistically being able to do anything productive to make a cup of tea! Man, I hated those couple of days so much. Anyhow, I got really sick of it so quickly did the necessary work to install the OS on another SSD whilst awaiting the RMA'ed SSD. Oh now that was a beautiful and happy experience - no more waiting! :D

The same applies to games really. It's not instantaneous quick, but an SSD is so much quicker than a HDD that you will never want to go back to one - it really is a game changer and one of the best bang-per-buck upgrades you will EVER do.

You're welcome. Sorry I can't help you to improve loading times. Guess if you could buy 240GB SSD or new, better HDD, you'd already done that.

I tried to install game on SSD to find whether there is drastic improvements. If I'm not mistaken, the difference is about 2-2.5 times faster on SSD. Since I can't remove that VO entirely and they still go for several seconds (yes, I hate them THAT much, I like to try different approaches), I reinstalled the game back to HDD. Same map fast travel, takes under 10 seconds, as well as loading after death. Going to different map is approximately equal to ordinary loading (i.e. not first one, as our honourable Skeletonbow of Rivia said) may took up to 30 seconds. Prior patching it was 20 or less. And I think it's not related to stage of game - I loaded one of earliest saves I made in White Orchard, it still took longer to load. Those VOs have one good side after all - you can use them as timings. :)

5200 hdd, there's your problem. Green HDDs are "cool" and all but they are extremely slow.

Get a SSD, they are significantly faster and far "Greener" in power consumption

I get 10-15 secs tops, appart from the times the game decides the Bard's recap tale can't be skipped.

SSD your OS.

7200 RPM HDD for priority enjoyment games

W/e RPM high Capacity HDD for remaining drives.

While your at, it, more ram, and faster ram helps. A processor that can keep up is better. i3 is not a gaming chip, hell its not even a performance chip, though some comments that is equivilent to a AMD Sempron is pretty F'd up. i5, and i7 yea. i3s are pretty bargain.

My i7 Laptop chip with a GeForce 670M and 12 gigs of ram, no more than a 20 second load. 10 second on dieing.

cough 20 frames tho cough cough miss desktop cough but now if I cough drag it out cough gotta upgrade everything even the case cough usb 2 ports

Hey, no threats! Or you have to Noctua your AMD, before someone will Corsair your RAM!
:p

I have a quite old, low-spin (5200RPM) HDD with tiny cache and initial load times take below 1 minute when starting in Novigrad. Once, the game took very long time (few minutes) to load somewhere in Velen, but it never happened again.

I have no antivirus installed nor any other resident software running in the background except NVidia GeForce Experience and GOG Galaxy (I'm using Windows only for playing games), so maybe you should look for any junk, that may be clobbering your system. It's generally a good idea to close Steam, Origin, UPlay or any other gaming client you don't use at the moment. Closing just their windows is not enough.

4GB of RAM can also have a negative impact on load times. AFAIR 6GB is an absolute minimum for this game. Try adding another 4GB. You can never have too much RAM (up to whatever your motherboard supports)... Besides, Windows is using pre-fetch caching when reading data from HDD, so increasing RAM amount can only make things better.

IT WAS THE RAM

Doesn't make any sense to me, but getting a second 4gb stick (now 8gb total) obliterated my load times. From menu to in-game (timed at Kaer Morin, different place from previously), it took 15 seconds.

That's 7 times faster than before.