If the PS3 winds up with a 1.5X - 2X BR Drive, What does that mean for it's Games?

[BenQ]

Based on transfer speeds it is my understanding that the PS3 would need a 4X Blue Ray drive to just barely edge out the 360's 12X DVD drive.

But what if the PS3 doesn't have a 4X drive. What if it has the bare minimum of 1.5X ( Blue Ray movie playback ), or even 2X.

Wouldn't that put the PS3's drive transfer speeds at roughly half of the 360s?

And that makes me wonder about the speculated "standard" PS3 HDD. If the PS3 does indeed wind up with a slow BR drive wouldn't the HDD essentially be needed, by and large, to control the longer load times associated with such a slow BR drive?

 

[rounin]

That makes sense. I think you may be on to something.

 

[BenQ]

In the past people have speculated about games on blue ray discs having slower load times, it was also speculated how many games would actually come on BR discs anyway.

We were expectig games to come out on DVD's first and then slowly over time if and when extra storage space was required, more and more games would ship on Blue rays.

It was generally thought that a PS3 game on DVD would have faster transfer times because the PS3 would be able to read DVDs at 12X, and the trade off for moving to bllue ray was more space but longer loadtimes.

Since the conference a few days ago it was revealed that ALL PS3 games will come on bluerays, weather they require all that storage space or not.

So now the issue of the PS3's BR drive speed is all the more relevant.

I'm REALLY hoping for a 4X's drive but the little voice in my head is more than a little sceptical.

 

[Inane_Dork]

And that makes me wonder about the speculated "standard" PS3 HDD. If the PS3 does indeed wind up with a slow BR drive wouldn't the HDD essentially be needed, by and large, to control the longer load times associated with such a slow BR drive?

Given that the data has to come off the BR disc at some point, it would only be a partial solution. And only some developers would really utilize it effectively.


As for the first part, I think there's some intrigue about sustained bandwidth or max/min bandwidth between the two formats that makes a 2x BD drive not terribly worse than a 12x DVD drive. But I also could be totally wrong.


EDIT: I just wanted to add that one might hypothesize that part of the delay is due to getting the proper speed of BD drive in mass quantities.

 

[Acert93]

I am not sure how accurate this is overall (the blogger does not touch on access times and makes an assumption about how authored DVDs are pressed) but overall it covers CAV and CLV and how it relates to Blu Ray and as 12x DVD. If accurate, the general idea is that a 3x Blu Ray drive is, on average, in the same league as a 12x DVD and a 4x Blu Ray drive is superior.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek

 

[BenQ]

I am not sure how accurate this is overall (the blogger does not touch on access times and makes an assumption about how authored DVDs are pressed) but overall it covers CAV and CLV and how it relates to Blu Ray and as 12x DVD. If accurate, the general idea is that a 3x Blu Ray drive is, on average, in the same league as a 12x DVD and a 4x Blu Ray drive is superior.

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek

It's a nice graph, but is that really true that Blue Ray's don't have any fluctuations in reading speed during gaming? I don't see how that's possible.

I am also wondering if it's fair to draw a line inbetween the green and red line and say thats "the average." Would a DVD drive stay closer to the max read speed most of the time?, or would it stay closer to the bottom most of the time?

What situations whould cause a DVD drive to read slower than it's maximum?

I am also interested in a seek times comparison if you've got the info handy. That is just as relvant if not more relelvant than transfer speeds.

 

[StefanS]

Given that the data has to come off the BR disc at some point, it would only be a partial solution. And only some developers would really utilize it effectively.

I am going to quote Kutaragi himself on this:

Concerning Games and Software I/we would like to make the installation on the HDD a prerequisite (a requirement)"

IMO they sure would like to reduce load time by relying on the HDD.

 

[Farid]

There's a lot more factors to consider than just the maximum rotation speed and transfer rate of an optical drive.

Simply because of the mechanical nature of optical drives, those high max speeds can't be reached in all cases, nor immediately.

For instance, to get the maximum transfer rate of a 16X DVD Drive, the it take a few seconds of constant rotation, read with no seek times, just to read a part of the disk surface, located in the outer periphery, at full speed.

 

[Gholbine]

I don't see the drive being any less than 2x. There's already 2x Blu-Ray writers on the market at a reasonable price. This of course, includes large markup as well as a more powerful laser for writing. In 6 months when Sony has to worry about manufacturing a read-only Blu-Ray drive, 2x will be cheap and easy (in comparison to now). Of course, this would leave the PS3 at a disadvantage to the Xbox 360 in terms of optical disc transfer rate, leading to difficulty in porting games designed for a 12x-DVD to the PS3. For this reason, Sony will opt for a 4x solution, in my opinion.

They did stress that they were supporting the format to its fullest. To me, that suggests the drive will be of a decent speed as well as conform to all the Blu-Ray standards, etc. Hopefully we'll hear more at TGS.

 

[Guden Oden]

If PS3 ends up with a harddrive mounted as standard and it being mandatory that games take advantage of it, I don't see why it would be a problem with even just a minimum speed 1.5x drive. Sure, first-time loads would be way pedestrian, but from then on things would be much quicker. At least until that 60GB (or whatever) drive fills up.

 

[Npl]

Nothing hinders Blu-Ray Drives to support CAV and/or CLV. Is there any indication the PS3-Drive will be CLV only?
So far CLV is primary used for burning and DVD/Audio-Players ( as its the slowest and therefore quietest rotation-speed ). DVD/CD-Roms for Computers and Consoles which need Random-access tend to use CAV.

 

[Inane_Dork]

I am going to quote Kutaragi himself on this:

IMO they sure would like to reduce load time by relying on the HDD.

I've already addressed this clearly with my previous post.

Load times are a factor of developer talent and resources spent on optimization. Hardware helps but takes a back seat to software. Let me ask you this: do the two platforms that require HDD have significantly better load times? The PC does not (unless you have a really nice setup), and neither does the Xbox.

While it sounds reasonable, it just doesn't happen that way. The standard for quality doesn't go up when they rely on the HDD. It stays constant.

 

[!eVo!-X Ant UK]

I thogut about this ages ago, but then i found that it could be a 3x or 4x drive

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28517

 

[StefanS]

Load times are a factor of developer talent and resources spent on optimization. Hardware helps but takes a back seat to software. Let me ask you this: do the two platforms that require HDD have significantly better load times? The PC does not (unless you have a really nice setup), and neither does the Xbox.

While it sounds reasonable, it just doesn't happen that way. The standard for quality doesn't go up when they rely on the HDD. It stays constant.

I am sorry, but are you telling me that load and seek time of a HDD are not better than those of a optical drive?

 

[Megadrive1988]

Based on transfer speeds it is my understanding that the PS3 would need a 4X Blue Ray drive to just barely edge out the 360's 12X DVD drive.

But what if the PS3 doesn't have a 4X drive. What if it has the bare minimum of 1.5X ( Blue Ray movie playback ), or even 2X.

Wouldn't that put the PS3's drive transfer speeds at roughly half of the 360s?

And that makes me wonder about the speculated "standard" PS3 HDD. If the PS3 does indeed wind up with a slow BR drive wouldn't the HDD essentially be needed, by and large, to control the longer load times associated with such a slow BR drive?

good points, I've been wondering basicly the same thing myself.

EDIT: It all makes me HOPE that the successors to Xbox 360 and Playstation3 move away from optical disc technology, and something closer to solid-state media of some kind. I don't care about incredibly massive storage space. a few gigs are more than enough. I want SPEED. I want no moving parts, or as few as possible. I want durability like the 16-bit cartridge generation. my year-1990 Genesis has outlived my PS1 and two of my Dreamcasts, and will no doubt outlive my PS2, Cube, PS2, Xbox 360 and PS3.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The advantage to optical media is price per storage. Nothing else even comes close. If games are 20+ GB in size in 5 years, solid state is going to cost too much. The only alternative would be downloading to an HDD with solid state caching instead of reading directly from the HDD, which would add cost for negigable marketable gains, or a totally different system that is rotating disc based + moving head base, which I doubt will exist in cost effective form by then but you never know.

 

[dukmahsik]

so if it comes with a 4x drive, ps3 will cost way too much

 

[scooby_dooby]

And that makes me wonder about the speculated "standard" PS3 HDD. If the PS3 does indeed wind up with a slow BR drive wouldn't the HDD essentially be needed, by and large, to control the longer load times associated with such a slow BR drive?

Playstation has always had longer load times than any other consoles out at the time, they obviously don't consider it a huge priority. It's never hurt their sales that's for sure.

I expect them to go with whatever is most cost effective & reliable, with little priority placed on load times.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I've already addressed this clearly with my previous post.

Load times are a factor of developer talent and resources spent on optimization. Hardware helps but takes a back seat to software. Let me ask you this: do the two platforms that require HDD have significantly better load times? The PC does not (unless you have a really nice setup), and neither does the Xbox.

there's too manyy variables to compare different games across different platforms and try and judge the impact pf HDD's on load times.

The only fair way to eally judge the impact is to take a game built to take advantage of the HDD, and see how it runs with and without the HDD installed.

Best examples we have now is Oblivion, and according to the developer you will get much quicker load times with the HDD installed.

 

[zidane1strife]

good points, I've been wondering basicly the same thing myself.

EDIT: It all makes me HOPE that the successors to Xbox 360 and Playstation3 move away from optical disc technology, and something closer to solid-state media of some kind. I don't care about incredibly massive storage space. a few gigs are more than enough. I want SPEED. I want no moving parts, or as few as possible. I want durability like the 16-bit cartridge generation. my year-1990 Genesis has outlived my PS1 and two of my Dreamcasts, and will no doubt outlive my PS2, Cube, PS2, Xbox 360 and PS3.

holo-optical media is said to be quite good in both the storage and speed department. edit: as for durability with emus and backward compatible consoles it really is almost a non-issue(also you can always buy a few new/used spare consoles for $30-40 near the end of a consoles lifespan, and keep them as backups just in case.)

As for ps3, I guess 3-4x will likely be it, but it should fare quite well given data, especially in smaller games will be closer to the edge as opposed to 360 were it obligatorily needs to fill the inner layers, keeping it from max speed, due to format capacity constraints. Add an hdd(even if optional it should receive far more support given a release in the early lifespan of the console.), and load times should be a breeze.