I had this bug, The character models fail to load until after the start of the match, and it is MUCH worse if you play between different modes or alt+tab. Not only this, but what I seen on my screen was delayed by sometimes a whole second and if players were moving quickly, none of my hits would register at point blank range… sometimes at a distance even if they were standing still (similar but very different than what lag does).
I tried everything thinking it was my system; dialing resolution down to potato; flat out dedicating half of my ram (32gb); deleting and re-installing; making sure my m.2 game drive wasnt shot… etc.
Solution (for me): change from directX12 to directX11
I had to both add it to the game startup “-d3dx11” AND change in-game options.
After doing this, I could crank the resolution up to acceptable levels and the game almost felt like I was playing in fast forward in comparison getting MUCH higher framerates and lower frame latency.
For others having this problem, I DID test a few things along the way on another system to reproduce the issue (which was already running dx11, before I knew it was dx12).
-If your ram is below 2666hz (down to 2133hz does work, but without it being 2r, you’re going to have some similar issues especially if other parts are middle of the road)
-if you’re playing the game from a mechanical hdd that shares windows (use an ssd for a game drive, but cost-wise, an m.2 drive->pcie adapter is MUCH faster and similarly priced)
-If your GPU is not properly set up with the right drivers or it is not up to snuff (i was able to force a quadro 600 to work at a stable 12fps, but anything below the specs for a quadro p2000 or geforce 1060 AND/OR without the motherboard specific drivers causes similar issues, if they don’t outright crash)
-if youre using a newer GPU that is supposed to use REBAR or SAM but do not have it enabled, or there’s no bios option/dxe driver loading with uefi. Particularly the intel arc b580… This can be modded on many systems to add support, but, I found that specifically using 2666 ram (3100+ caused stuttering/stability issues too) and doing the slight arc overlock took it from the dreaded old system issue to WOW.
Settings for the b580 Overclock == volt limit 25%, power limit 108, freq offset 100, memory speed 20gbps these settings actually take it to the rated speed of the components on the board itself, and anything above IS actual overclocking.