The New Xbox Experience, currently available to a select few but releasing to the general Xbox 360 population on November 19th, will have a plethora of new features for both casual and hardcore gamers alike. Some options will undoubtedly be an improvement over what is currently offered; others will perhaps be better left unused. It appears the optional ability of installing games directly to the hard drive will be a good move for Gears of War 2 fanatics but not so much for the Halo dedicated who still trudge through campaign on a regular basis. Eurogamer tested several different sections of various games (including Gears of War 2, The Orange Box, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, Grand Theft Auto IV, Halo 3, Fable II, Mass Effect, BioShock, Project Gotham Racing 4, and Call of Duty 4) to compare DVD and HDD load times. Results were expectedly varied with some games seeing improvements while others actually saw longer loading times. Checking out Halo 3’s results then head on over to Eurogamer’s article to see how the rest of the games fared.
| Section Tested | DVD Load Time | HDD Load Time |
|---|---|---|
| Sierra 117 | 46 seconds | 53 seconds |
| Crow’s Nest | 59 seconds | 70 seconds |
| Tsavo Highway | 46.5 seconds | 57 seconds |
| The Storm | 52 seconds | 64 seconds |
| Floodgate | 54 seconds | 64.5 seconds |
| The Ark | 61 seconds | 69 seconds |
| The Covenant | 66.5 seconds | 78 seconds |
| Cortana | 40.5 seconds | 48.5 seconds |
| Halo | 80 seconds | 65 seconds |
Posted by Fezzer on November 11, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Fail.
Posted by Xor1an on November 11, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I’m pretty sure that earlier versions of Halo would essentially copy and un-compress the campaign levels from the DVD onto the HD. (I remember reading about people patching “cache files” in the Halo 1 modding scene.) This sped up later operations, like the “Loading… done” when you move from one area of the level to another.
I’m betting that’s still true for Halo 3. If you have the game copied to the HD to begin with, then it would be essentially copying the level from one part of the HD to another part of the HD. Usually copying from one device to another is faster than copying from one device to itself. (In a crude analogy, it wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate to say that “the tubes get full.”) That’s my guess as to why it would be slower with Halo 3 copied to the HD.
To put it another way, I believe the Bungie guys already optimized for the case where the game is on a DVD (with the “cache file” method). If you copy the game disc to the HD, you’ve changed some things they assumed would always be true. So it’s not too surprising that it wouldn’t work as well. Of course for some other games where the developers haven’t done such a bang-up job optimizing the experience, copying to the HD may indeed make things better.
Posted by CrazedOne1988 on November 11, 2008 at 1:35 pm
*Ding Ding Ding*
We have a winner! DVD!
Posted by D taktics on November 11, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Lame. This was going to be the first thing installed to my HDD to.
Posted by Mike on November 11, 2008 at 1:41 pm
sooo… is this because the NXE is flawed or because of the age of halo 3 compared to games that may be set up to accept some kind of downloadability?
Posted by Aperture S. on November 11, 2008 at 1:59 pm
@Mike: The latter.
Posted by mendicantbias00 on November 11, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Loading times may be a bit slower but you xbox will be MUCH quieter. Thats why I am doing it!
Posted by Queen 0f Blades on November 11, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Meh, not worth it. Some games just weren’t meant to be “installed” I guess.
@mendicant- Fah, who needs a quieter Xbox when you’ve got the volume blasting? Drowns that lovely grinding sound right out. :P
Posted by Qix on November 11, 2008 at 2:06 pm
@xorlan
Makes a lot of sense.
Especially since i’ve seen videos of it drastically improving the horrible loading in Fable 2. Like you said, it wont help games that are especially optimized. But will for others.
This more proves that Bungie really has their shit together, not that NXE is bad in any way.
Posted by Xor1an on November 11, 2008 at 2:12 pm
Exactly.
I like explaining what I’m thinking thoroughly and unambiguously… but maybe I just have a bad habit of using too many words to say what I mean.
Posted by AT-AT on November 11, 2008 at 2:31 pm
From the linked article, it definitely looks like Developers optimized for the disc load model. Hopefully newer games will have optimization coding for both disc loading and HDD loading.
Posted by beloved22 on November 11, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Why not do both? Switch to the better one for certain levels.
Posted by HammerShot on November 11, 2008 at 5:04 pm
…..and how much campaign to you all play?
It does run quieter, ridiculously quieter. So, far I haven’t noticed any adverse effects to multiplayer. If I do I’ll say something.
Keep in mind though that loading the disk to your hard drive doesn’t make things any more convenient. They tend to leave out the nugget that you have to have the game disc in the drive or it won’t start the game.
Posted by rowboat 000 on November 11, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Biggest reason to load to the hard drive is going to be that it will hopefully save my DVD drive in the long run. I’ve yet to see those dreadful rings and hope to keep it that way. Maybe this will help. And I too can’t help but think that all the disc rattle and spinning can’t be good. Now I’ve just got to go buy a damn 120gb HDD.
Bungie worked their asses off when they had to fit everything on the DVD. There’s an old podcast in which they discuss this decision, which really wasn’t there’s. They had to use the DVD because Microsoft made them in order for all Xbox 360 users, with or without a HDD, to be able to play the game.
People still play the campaign? I wonder how it will help with multiplayer. Though I doubt it won’t help much unless all players in a game are doing it.
Posted by rowboat 000 on November 11, 2008 at 5:47 pm
edit
“Though I doubt it will help, unless all players in a game are doing it.”
Posted by stupidpower on November 11, 2008 at 7:34 pm
At lease the disk won’t get scratched any longer…..
Posted by Tortacular on November 12, 2008 at 8:31 am
Achronos addressed this in the Bungie.net forums.
[i]The Xbox 360 hard drive has limited bandwidth. Any game that is heavily optimzed to use the hard drive for caching (like Halo 3) is going to see little to no gain for “installing” it using the NXE. Our tests show Halo 3 usually loads assets slower when you use the NXE install feature.
This isn’t a bug – it is a consequence of Halo 3 already utilizing the hard drive to its maximum ability. It doesn’t need the NXE to load faster, as it is already doing everything it can to speed things up.
In short, don’t use the NXE to install Halo 3 to your hard drive. We already did the work to make the game use the hard drive in the best way for Halo 3, a generalized solution in the form of the NXE installation feature is not required.[/i]
Taken from this topic: http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=27899265
Posted by Neo X Alucard on November 19, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I have been play H3 just about everyday since I got it back in march. Today I have been playing H3 on my HD all day, I’m not experiencing these “longer load times” that bungie is complaining about. I’ve had about 7 er 8 matches in the last hour, it’s working great. If it is longer it certainly is not noticeable at all.
I wonder if there is more to this story than meets the eye…