Xbox 360 HDD Installs

[JimBlob]

Very interesting article on Eurogamer comparing loading times or various games.
There's a few interesting one's in there like the Orange Box and Halo 3 but other than that not that surprising. It'll be interesting to see the difference it makes in future releases, when developers start working it into their code.

There's also a video here comparing the difference in noise. Again, not surprising that without the DVD drive there's little to no noise.

I wonder what the 360 would be like today if MS had made HDD installs optional. This would no doubt have limited or even removed any "Red Ring" issues.

 

[lbartley]

I know the biggest game I was curious about was Crackdown. As my 360 was obscenely loud while playing it, so the game was obviously constantly loading.

So, when I got NXE, I figured I'd install it, and see if it reduced the painfully long initial load before the title screen.

To my surprise, the install wasn't supported with Crackdown. Looks like this feature will be a lot less awesome than advertised...

 

[grandmaster]

The only mainstream games not supported are Crackdown and Dead or Alive Xtreme 2.

I'm not sure how installing to hard disk would've impacted RROD as that's a GPU issue. That said, isn't the optical drive directly above the GPU or the heatsink? In that case it could've been a contributory factor.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

I wonder what the 360 would be like today if MS had made HDD installs optional. This would no doubt have limited or even removed any "Red Ring" issues.

Surely you don't think it was the noise that caused them?

 

[Scott_Arm]

Surely you don't think it was the noise that caused them?

What exactly is the RROD? If it's cold solder joints under the BGA cracking, vibration could be a contributor. My 360 actually vibrates quite a bit. I can feel it when I put my hand on my desk while the disc is spinning up.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

What exactly is the RROD? If it's cold solder joints under the BGA cracking, vibration could be a contributor. My 360 actually vibrates quite a bit. I can feel it when I put my hand on my desk while the disc is spinning up.

Yeah it's possible that the DVD drive adds to the problems, but it's hardly accurate to say that optional installs could have erased the RROD problems altogether. X360 launched with the core and 20GB unit, so everybody installing every game would clearly not have been an option. Imo the vibration is not that substantial, that it's a valid reason for the problems, if it causes them, then the damage appears too easily.

 

[Scott_Arm]

Yeah it's possible that the DVD drive adds to the problems, but it's hardly accurate to say that optional installs could have erased the RROD problems altogether. X360 launched with the core and 20GB unit, so everybody installing every game would clearly not have been an option. Imo the vibration is not that substantial, that it's a valid reason for the problems, if it causes them, then the damage appears too easily.

Obviously the vibration is not to blame. You can get solder cracks because of vibration, but usually it's because of really poor joints.

It seems to me like there were cracks in some of the BGA joints because people were doing that blanket trick for a crude home re-flow, which is a really really stupid thing to do.

 

[eastmen]

Obviously the vibration is not to blame. You can get solder cracks because of vibration, but usually it's because of really poor joints.

It seems to me like there were cracks in some of the BGA joints because people were doing that blanket trick for a crude home re-flow, which is a really really stupid thing to do.

Also at the time they had just switched over to the lead free soder I bielive which could have also caused problems

 

[user542745831]

The only mainstream games not supported are Crackdown and Dead or Alive Xtreme 2.

Is there any official reason why some games don't/won't/or whatever allow/support/whatever HDD install?

 

[DJ12]

Might be because some games expect certain read speeds from the disk. I used to use HDLoader on my PS2 for the convenience of never putting my games in and of course quicker loading times and a few games didn't work for this very reason.

 

[user542745831]

Might be because some games expect certain read speeds from the disk. I used to use HDLoader on my PS2 for the convenience of never putting my games in and of course quicker loading times and a few games didn't work for this very reason.

So, you actually suppose, that the HDD speed could be too fast for some (older) games?

If this would be true, than it should be certain, that every game that will be released after the NXE launch should support HDD install, shouldn't it?

 

[grandmaster]

You'd think that it would be part of the technical requirements when the game is submitted yes. As there's a grand total of five games in all that are not compatible, I don't see it being a big issue.

 

[TheWretched]

Might be because some games expect certain read speeds from the disk. I used to use HDLoader on my PS2 for the convenience of never putting my games in and of course quicker loading times and a few games didn't work for this very reason.

Wasn't there an option to emulate the PS2s DVD read speeds in the HD Loader menu? I remember one being there. For me, most games worked really well AND faster AND with less strain on my already more or less broken PS2 DVD drive^^

So, you actually suppose, that the HDD speed could be too fast for some (older) games?

If this would be true, than it should be certain, that every game that will be released after the NXE launch should support HDD install, shouldn't it?

This was supposed to be the case with the PS2. And with the PS1 emulator on PSP, you can adjust read speeds from "normal" to "fast", which breaks many games. So there might actually be something valid to it.

 

[grandmaster]

Well, the Crackdown demo had approximately 25% to 33% of the entire game world in it and ran just fine from the hard disk.

 

[nintenho]

Crackdown might not work because of the Halo 3 beta.

 

[AlNom]

Crackdown might not work because of the Halo 3 beta.

How do you mean? The beta is not on the disc, just a key of sorts that allowed users to download it from XBLM at the time.

 

[nintenho]

How do you mean? The beta is not on the disc, just a key of sorts that allowed users to download it from XBLM at the time.

Well the system already had to do a check back during the H3 beta to make sure that the crackdown disk was inside the system. Combining that disk-check with the installation disk-check might cause a problem..somehow.

 

[AlNom]

Bungie has an explanation for Halo 3's slower load times:

http://www.bungie.net/News/Blog.aspx?mode=news#cid16252

(Only just started reading so I may clip some relevant bits)

Halo 3 doesn’t actually know where it’s running from, so it always assumes it’s running from a DVD. This is an unfortunate consequence of new features (namely, install to HDD) being added to the Xbox 360 after Halo 3 shipped. And as a result, it means that even if Halo 3 is already installed to the HDD, it will still copy maps to the utility partition.

 

[grandmaster]

Yup, basically what I suspected - they're caching to hard disk, from hard disk. I still can't help but think that the loading times in Halo 3 are phenomenally long whether you're running from DVD or HDD. I can only think that tons of small files are being streamed over as opposed to one pack.

66 seconds to load a level (78 from HDD!) is pretty insane.

It's the same reason why DMC4 takes so long to install on PS3... and indeed why it takes so long to delete.

 

[AlNom]

How long does the installation/deletion of Halo 3 take compared to games of similar size It might be worth checking out some of their publications regarding streaming and level loading too to get an idea on their struggles (check the footnotes as well).

http://www.bungie.net/images/Inside/publications/presentations/Loading___done_gdc_2008.pptx