Comments on: Halo 3 NXE DVD vs. HDD Load Times

By: Neo X Alucard

Neo X Alucard — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:37:29 +0000

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…

By: Tortacular

Tortacular — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:31:36 +0000

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

By: stupidpower

stupidpower — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:34:29 +0000

At lease the disk won’t get scratched any longer…..

By: rowboat 000

rowboat 000 — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:47:25 +0000

edit
“Though I doubt it will help, unless all players in a game are doing it.”

By: rowboat 000

rowboat 000 — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:45:23 +0000

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.