Eurogamer tests NXE game installs: some better, Halo 3 worse
by Richard Mitchell 
{ Nov 11th 2008 at 1:30PM }
Among some of the most improved games were The Orange Box, which saw load times nearly cut in half (44.5 seconds vs 22.5 seconds for Half-Life 2) and Fable II, which saw not only improved load times but improved performance, particularly in the menu screens. Other games saw little benefit, including Gears of War 2, Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, and GTAIV. Curiously, Mass Effect did see overall better performance, but the infamous elevator sequences saw no change at all.. The most interesting title tested is definitely Halo 3 which actually fared worse when running from the hard drive. Eurogamer theorizes that the longer load time are the result of a heavy amount of caching.
Finally, it appears that installs running on a 120GB hard drive fare no better than those on an older (and heavily used) 20GB drive. The overall verdict, performance will vary on a game by game basis. Imagine that.
[Via Joystiq]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Robb @ Nov 11th 2008 1:51PM
Faster load times are nice, but I'm most interested in the decreased disc reads. It will be nice to play a game without my living room sounding like a helicopter taking off.
wargamer17 @ Nov 11th 2008 2:04PM
The sound isn't that bad. I hardly notice mine and it's on the floor beside me.
Nick @ Nov 11th 2008 2:54PM
Wargamer - I think you're in the minority with the sound.
I have mine set higher above me and it sounds like a jet engine, especially during "quiet" parts in game and such.
I look forward to that being gone. I really don't care about load times, I figured they wouldn't be much better. But less time spinning a drive that heats the system up more = awesome for me
Tony @ Nov 11th 2008 3:14PM
For me the CD noise isn't so bad. It's the high pitched whining of the fans that never stops at all. I doubt this will lessen that.
I've honestly considered rigging everything up so the 360 itself is in another room.
ObiBen @ Nov 11th 2008 2:02PM
I'm used to the noise from sitting near our server at the office, but the more I read about the install the more I start to notice the sound of the 360. I'm definitely looking forward to quieting my 360.
firerock @ Nov 11th 2008 2:11PM
Yes, it's not about load time, but making x360 quieter and provide longer life time to my dying dvd drive.
xenocidic @ Nov 11th 2008 3:34PM
no doubt, i'm on my 2nd 360, frst was sent in with unreadable disc errors and the refurb has been starting to experience the same.
Mazrael @ Nov 11th 2008 2:19PM
It seems to me that newer games are quieter disc reads anyway..
as different games are found whether they perform better on disc vs install.. will we get a notification (like the achievement blip)..?
ChuckJ @ Nov 11th 2008 2:29PM
Just so everyone knows, it seems Microsoft has brought out the BAN hammer on consoles over the last day or two. Seems some innocent people have been taken down as well. Go over to xbox.com and look in the Live forum. Or check xbox360iso.com It indeed happening.
I sent this as a tip to X3F but as usual they didnt post anything about it. I think X3F is usually about a week late on everything for the most part.
Richard Mitchell @ Nov 11th 2008 2:49PM
Microsoft bans people with modded consoles all the time. It's nothing new.
ChuckJ @ Nov 11th 2008 2:57PM
Not necessarily. They do them in sweeps. This time, it seems dozens if not hundreds or more, got hit at once. Last 24 hours or so it happened.
My question is why are some innocents getting caught up in it?
rewind @ Nov 11th 2008 2:33PM
Halo 3 load times:
Bungie optimized alot of their stuff already for local caching, and app specific design will generally win performance wise as opposed to generic across the board caching schemes.
Heather @ Nov 11th 2008 2:39PM
Guess I know which 2 games I'll be importing to my hard drive...
kyle @ Nov 11th 2008 2:42PM
That totally disappoints me. I never cared about the dvd drive noise, just about faster load times. Glad to see fable 2 did great, too bad gta iv didn't have much difference. Still excited for it anyways
Carl @ Nov 11th 2008 3:36PM
Hang on - the article says they left only enough room on the hard drive for the disk image. So if halo 3 needs a decent amout for caching, what they were really testing was:
DVD, lots of cache available
vs
HD, almost no cache available
So if you had a reasonable amount of free space, halo 3 would still be as fast or a tiny bit faster. Seems like a stupid test case.
joeybeast @ Nov 11th 2008 4:23PM
How do you think an arcade run Halo?
It doesn't use hdd for caching.
West @ Nov 11th 2008 5:50PM
Right, but on the Arcade's some games suffer performance losses because they don't cache, I remember this being a problem with Oblivion, and I think Halo did it too. I wonder though, if some of the reserved space on the hard drive is for cache; now that I think about it, I think it may be, since you can go into system settings and actually clear your cache, and then have to re-cache all the data...hrmmm...
Timerider @ Nov 12th 2008 10:38AM
Maybe I should get a bigger hard drive. I love Orange Box.
ryan @ Nov 12th 2008 12:50PM
In Mass Effect's defense there are times where your character's do talk in the elevator, giving more background to the story etc. And there are times where you'll enter an elevator, have it go dark for a quick load, and then you're on the next floor. (tho, the long elevators aren't any less annoying. x_x)
I like installing my games. It's ALOT quieter now (like my PC) and games benefit from 3-5 secs shaved off their loading. Plus I don't have to worry about the disc scratching anymore (there's reports of this happening even if you don't move it).