A round of applause for Eurogamer, which did the thankless task of testing out the NXE’s HDD Install option and comparing it to normal method of playing games off the DVD. Several games of all shapes and sizes were checked, including Gears of War 2 (or should I say Gears of Bore, yuck), GTA IV and Halo 3, and found that, on average, you’re likely to shave a few seconds off your loading time by installing a game to the hard drive.
Take Gears of War 2. Running the game off the DVD, as you do now, the initial load takes 32 seconds. Running off the hard drive—each game is installed as a disc image, so it’s one big file per game—that same initial load takes only 24 seconds. So, you save eight seconds by installing to the hard drive.
Games like Half-Life 2, which can be found in The Orange Box, fare the best, as they’re not at all optimized to run off the disc; the game loads its sections as necessary with no fancy streaming to speak of. As such, loading the level We Don’t Go To Ravenholm (presumably that’s what Eurogamer meant with “We don’t go there any more”), which normally takes 47 seconds instead takes only 15 seconds—that’s 32 seconds saved, chief.
Games like GTA IV, which Rockstar designed in such a way that it’s constantly streaming data off the disc, minimizing load times, don’t benefit as much from the HDD install. Starting a new game drops from 26.5 seconds to 25.2. Loading an in-game mission dropped from 8.5 seconds to 7 seconds.
It comes down to this: if the game streams data off the disc as it’s played you’re not going to see much improvement (the GTA IV example). If, however, the game goes about its business the old school way, loading data as it’s needed (the Half-Life 2 example), then you’ll see a marked improvement.
Interesting. What is this Gears of Bore talk though?
It’s the point of load times, where that is nice to cut it down some. Rather, i think, it is for the well being of your xbox. Have you ever noticed the different between a demo being played and a game from a disc? The amount of noise coming the xbox is incomparable, and the simple fact that the temperature ti runs out is extremely lower. Just thought i put those points in to question.
Alright, so when installing games to my harddrive, will it rip the cd, or just copy it? I would like to know, because I dont want to have a bunch of games on my xbox only to find that they don’t work by disc anymore.
To rip means to copy. There is no way a 360 could destroy your disc after copying because A) it doesn’t have a burner in it and B) the 360 games are not Rewritable.
whats the point, all i wanted was to install rented games in my 360 and play forever but thats not case becos the cd will still be required. to think i was going to £100 on 120gig xbox 360 hard drive?. screw you microsoft, eat my balls, and my cd drive or xbox goes bad from wear and tear, the insurance or a new xbox in the future is still cheaper than their bullshit hard drive. fuck you microsoft, fuck you up your uppity asses
You’re real cool
Cool as mouth herpes.
Of course they aren’t going to let you pirate thier games genius.
I was thinking, hire out a game from the store, install it to your hard drive, copy the game DVD with your DVD burner, then use that for authentication when it asks for the game disc.
eat a dick microsoft, eat a dick all day, playstation is going own your asses. i aint your male groupie bastard or your bitch or your ass technician
this is so pointless! i just installed a game on my hard drive which took up aout 7gb then i tried to play it and it asked for the disk! what the fuck is the point of doing it if you still need the disk? and dont even say loading times cuz theres like no difference whatsoever… maybe like 1 second at the most… 7gb is like a whole fuckin game! it should be able to play without any loading at all, even then i still dont think its worth it.. this is the biggest waste of time and effort ever…
ya right dude i know wat yur saying. i did the same thing with 2 games and both asked for the disk. i mean wat is the point of this crap
also, up yours nick, gears is the shit!
OH YEAH!
Its all bout my schlong a ding dong and rollin it up in yo stuff yo. No other way I roll than with a pack of syrup and a jar o jelly so you can get down and toss my salad yo. Its all bout me and how I own at Halo 3 and Gow. I can take a 5-0 win while you toss my salad followed by a deuce dropped on yo chest Frizizzles! Eat that!
Yeah, I think it’s pretty stupid to be able to install a game to the hard drive and not be able to play it without the disc, it is pointless. Microsoft messed up there, theres no point in wasting up 7 gig for a game and still needing thd disk.
I’m awesome.
Did you know you can burn 360 games in your toaster?
I KNOW RIGHT?!?!?!?!
god people are stupid
isn’t the ps install the same shit? if they let you play without the disc it’d be pirating you dumbshit
having to explain this makes me cry for humanity
There is no noticeable change in loading times for Rock Band 2, possibly because the songs are so small, the difference in the time it takes to load them is negligible. (The songs are 20-60MB apiece, but that’s individual instrument tracks and game data.)
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion sees loading times that are at best 10% faster. It’s noticeable at first (whether installing or uninstalling from the hard drive) but not for long.
GTA IV does load faster, but like Oblivion, not by much. I’d say it’s better than the author said, but I haven’t timed it. Just seems faster.
Mass Effect doesn’t improve or get worse, and the elevator rides still take way too long. That game is just badly coded, no two ways about it.
And the disc is only used for verification. After the disc is checked, it’s not needed (but you can’t eject it, either). This is to stop piracy. Console makers sell consoles at a loss and expect to profit from the games. Sony sells PlayStation 3 at a greater loss than Microsoft sells Xbox 360, so while the PS3 might be technologically superior (actually, it is – Blu-Ray takes care of that), Sony is not going to let you pirates pirate their games, either. (In fact in 2005 they put computer viruses on music CDs in a misguided attempt to sabotage music pirates, because, you know, the only reason to put a music CD in your computer is to rip it and share it online.)