Digital Foundry Article Technical Discussion Archive [2010]

[Billy Idol]

@grandmaster: are you planning a DF tech comparison of the PS3 and the Xbox360 demo, or the final game?

Would be interesting to now for us multi-platform holders

 

[joker454]

Naughty Dog has shown that it is not very hard to use streaming from BD and HDD together, and particularly use the HDD as a kind of cache for BD streaming (for instance stream textures from BD to HDD way in advance during gameplay and then from HDD to memory when actually necessary).

Some PS3 exclusive games take a really long time to boot. I presume they do this because of their caching system, maybe they require that piles of data be copied to the hdd every boot before the game can work properly. In other words, during game play they rely on their level design to delay the player from reaching certain areas and hence they can copy data to the hdd slowly in the background, but that's not possible on a fresh game boot so maybe they need to do it all in one shot during boot time. The result is really long game boot times on some PS3 exclusive games. These long boot times while acceptable on PS3, would have resulted in trc fail on 360 because such long boot times would not be accepted. The 'boot time' trc number is a moving target, starts really lax at system launch and tightens up over the years which only makes it harder to use the caching systems that some PS3 only games can get away with. So it's not always a multi platform limitation that prevents certain tech from being used, sometimes there are other reasons. Another example is black screen, you are not allowed to present the user with a non interactive load screen for very long or you will also fail trc. That is another point where some of those PS3 games would fail trc. I've played some PS3 exclusives where I thought the game had crashed because it was taking so long, but it was actually still booting. The trc's are in place to avoid that kind of perception.

 

[corduroygt]

You'd be surprised how much a high density 7200rpm improves load times on the PS3. It was substantial for killzone 2 and fallout 3.

About the black loading screens, I'm used to watching the HDD LED indicator from my PC days, so I always look at the amber HDD LED in front of the PS3 to make sure the game hasn't crashed

 

[Gitaroo]

ya, I can confirm that 7200 rpm does make a difference, I upgraded my 60 gig to a 320gig 7200 rpm drive. I remember SF4 used to have a 2-4 seconds loading even after you install, but after I swap the HDD, it load instantly after the character screen.

 

[AzBat]

Here is a rather amusing take on PS3 load times from Ars...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-a-reason-your-multiplatform-games-suffer.ars



Tommy McClain

 

[corduroygt]

Here is a rather amusing take on PS3 load times from Ars...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-a-reason-your-multiplatform-games-suffer.ars



Tommy McClain

I don't know if that's the kind of quality writing to mention in this thread

 

[AzBat]

I don't know if that's the kind of quality writing to mention in this thread

Yeah I know. Just thought it might be a fun distraction. I know I giggled.

Tommy McClain

 

[Mastperf]

Here is a rather amusing take on PS3 load times from Ars...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-a-reason-your-multiplatform-games-suffer.ars



Tommy McClain

I just bought a PS3 recently and couldn't believe how ridiculous their update and demo system is. I was spoiled by the 360 and didn't expect something so irritating.

 

[BadTB25]

Here is a rather amusing take on PS3 load times from Ars...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-a-reason-your-multiplatform-games-suffer.ars



Tommy McClain

Amusing, but true.

I have noticed an improvement in the wait times when downloading the patches although these are older games. I find that they range from between 2 minutes to 15 minutes for most of the games I have. I did have one game that required something like 4-6 files that took around 30 minutes or so, but the name escapes me right now. Those are all minus the install times when required.

 

[N_B]

What I want to know is, how does the game running on a non-HDD SKU compare to the PS3 version, which always has a HDD it can use to cache data.

The fact that the 360 can run games like RDR straight from DVD with no HDD while looking and performing better than the PS3 version is somewhat astonishing.
Because it should be quite a large handicap

In RDR's case, the game only has a 515MB install on PS3, and yet the whole game is 7.67GB. Which explains the load times, but is a bit baffling why they only chose such a small amount to install.

 

[goonergaz]

Here is a rather amusing take on PS3 load times from Ars...

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/...-a-reason-your-multiplatform-games-suffer.ars



Tommy McClain

he does realise you only need to patch when you go online?

 

[corduroygt]

Amusing, but true.

I don't know about that, PSN is usually fast enough to max out my 12 mbit connection, so the claims of PSN being slower than XBL shouldn't be stated as universal truth, because it all depends on YOUR internet connection. The annoyance of non-backgroundable update downloads is true though.

 

[BadTB25]

I'm not stating any universal truths here, but my anecdotal evidence as well as my other multiplat friends suggest that it's not uncommon for Live to be faster than PSN. I can only speak from my experience, but both in Kansas and now in Guam PSN is very slow compared to Live. At both locations, I had/have pretty good speeds, so I don't think it my internet connection.

Ironically I have a slower connection here (7 mbit) versus what I had in Kansas (10mbit + speedboost) and updates seem quicker now.

BTW, I found the article amusing because of how close to the truth it struck with me.

 

[Rangers]

I think I've read on some forums PS3's wi-fi driver is borked. Maybe wired vs wireless could make a difference in speed of PSN.

 

[patsu]

ya, I can confirm that 7200 rpm does make a difference, I upgraded my 60 gig to a 320gig 7200 rpm drive. I remember SF4 used to have a 2-4 seconds loading even after you install, but after I swap the HDD, it load instantly after the character screen.

Does it heat up easily ?

I think I've read on some forums PS3's wi-fi driver is borked. Maybe wired vs wireless could make a difference in speed of PSN.

May depend on the wireless router also.

It's easy to measure now. There is a built-in network test under the Settings icon.

FWIW, my office PS3 updates in seconds (thanks to the corporate network). My home PS3 updates in minutes. Your mileage will vary.

EDIT: I remember in some cases elsewhere, it's much faster to download the firmware from Sony's website using a PC. Then update via a thumbdrive.

 

[Arwin]

There is a discussion about a similar topic at Neogaf, and one of the things argued there is that patches aren't allowed to exceed 5Mb on the 360. Is that true? Surely there are games that have been allowed exceptions here (Burnout Paradise, I guess, would be one?)

Apparently this also means that sometimes in online games, the PS3 version patch will patch in all new content even if it is optional, so that in online play everyone can see every different costume and so on, whereas this is not typically the case on the 360, because of that 5MB limit.

I have some big questionmarks about this here and there, but I've never heard about that before and thought one of you could shed some light here.

In general I must say that games are getting much better on the PS3 - these days most games have good, small patches (between say 16MB and 50MB, still quite a big larger than on the 360 if the above is true).

As for the firmware though I don't expect too big a change there. The 360's firmware is 32MB to begin with, versus a max of 256MB on the PS3? (typically seems to be 150MB or so?). So that's a big difference right there if true. There's a rumor that the latest Firmwares can do patch updates, but I haven't seen any evidence.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In general I must say that games are getting much better on the PS3 - these days most games have good, small patches (between say 16MB and 50MB, still quite a big larger than on the 360 if the above is true).

Dunno that I agree with that. I don't take games online that much, but Uncharted 2 is a monster for patching. It'll download patch after patch, all of which seem to do nothing. Then there's the syncing of LiveData or whatever they call it, which does what exactly?! I remember they said they could change server parameters on the fly, but the reality seems ot be epic delays if you haven't taken the game online for a while which make no changes to the game.

 

[Arwin]

Dunno that I agree with that. I don't take games online that much, but Uncharted 2 is a monster for patching. It'll download patch after patch, all of which seem to do nothing. Then there's the syncing of LiveData or whatever they call it, which does what exactly?! I remember they said they could change server parameters on the fly, but the reality seems ot be epic delays if you haven't taken the game online for a while which make no changes to the game.

At least that's been my experience. But I'll try Uncharted, haven't tried it in a while. Will be an interesting test-case as apparently PSN+ is also supposed to update some of your games automatically at night. I don't know if it notifies you of this (apparently it looks at your 10 most recent games and then goes down the list from there), but it's been a long time for Uncharted 2 for me so I'll pop it in.

 

[Gitaroo]

Does it heat up easily ?

not much, probably only 1-3 degree C.

 

[corduroygt]

The 360's firmware is 32MB to begin with, versus a max of 256MB on the PS3? (typically seems to be 150MB or so?). So that's a big difference right there if true. There's a rumor that the latest Firmwares can do patch updates, but I haven't seen any evidence.

The 32MB is the memory footprint of the 360 OS, not the size on disk, which went up to about 150MB with the NXE update.