X360 Game Installs: The Hard Numbers

• Loading a Half-Life 2 save game went from 47 seconds to a minuscule 15 seconds.
• Heading to the Dessert Desert in Viva Pinata shaved a cool two seconds off, from seven to five.
• Mass Effect's initial game load is a full five seconds faster.
• BioShock's level loads are anywhere from three to eight seconds faster, overall.
• Fable II's otherwise jerky, awkward menus get noticeably more responsive on the hard drive.

Anyone in the beta know how Too Human runs? I remember the pause menus for that being really clunky as well. Nice to know that installing them will do more than just make the 360 less loud.

Awesome.  This looks like a great addition, and while many of the improvements are small, it will speed up everything, making it obviously less painful to wait for menus and levels to load.  

Hmm, the one I would be most interested in seeing data on is Oblivion.  The load times for the 360 version were pretty bad.   Thanks for the post.

That's cool, I'm looking forward more to a quieter 360.

DAMN! Thats some good stuff. Cant wait for teh update!

I need a bigger hard drive.

Wow, Halo 3 loads slower off of the hard-drive?

I have an old 360 with a shoddy disc drive that sometimes scratches my discs and/or gets a disc read error. Some games I can't play because of it are Gears 1, Madden 09, and CoD4 multiplayer. I am soooo thankful for this feature and I can't wait to use it. It might just prevent me from needing to buy a new 360 all together.

Glad my Elite didn't burst into flames and explode like Jeff's. I heard that he pulled 3 half-naked bikini models out of his burning wreckage before it collapsed. Jeff's a regular hero, happy Veterans day, Jeff!

The Halo 3 load time comparisons were pretty surprising. The article is fairly indepth and descriptive and from what I got from it was that performance gains are dependent on the game's optimization and formating (if that's the right word to use). Still its nice to have slightly faster load times, you can appreciate having an optional feature in case you ever felt like using it. Though what I'm all up for is a quieter Xbox 360 and maybe reduce the scratching on my discs.

Like Jeff, I was just looking foward to the system not sounding like a jet engine but now I find out the loads are actually notablybetter? Sweet!

Got me a 80GB PS3, and is as fast as lightning!!!!!!!

Not enough speed up for it to matter in my opinion.  Besides I got a 20gb thats constantly full lol.

Finally, I can truly put my Elite HDD to use.

I think I may just hold off playing Fable 2 just to shut up the dvd drive, thing sounds like a jet engine, well, more so than usual anyway.

and it took me exactly 23,5 seconds reading this post

Okay Xbox, you can come back in my bedroom now. All is forgiven.

Can't wait to install Fable II

Oh son of a...now I'm going to have to get a bigger hard drive.

ya this is really nice but with all the games coming out for the next...uhhh wait when do the games stop coming out? anyway i won't be able to afford getting a bigger hard drive so i'll have to pick the games i install very carefully.

In Mass Effect i never minded the elevator rides but the constant pausing while walking across the map really broke the immersion.  Glad to see atleast that's eliminated with the installation.

I know what I'm asking Santa for.

I might get the 60gb hard drive now. Mostly wanting to install games to make it quieter.

If a game actually loads slower off the hard drive, I wouldn't be surprised if it's because that game already was doing temporary caching to the hard drive, and it's not aware it's already reading from the hard drive.  So it'd be reading and writing at the same time, causing lots of head movement, which is slow.

the first game I'm testing out is nba 2k9. That game kills my dvd drive.

I'm screwed, I have a 20gb HDD. ):

Yeah. I only got through 3 hours of Lost Odyssey because the load times were a pain. I hope I'll finally be able to finish that damn game.

I wonder how much better fallout 3 load times will be. Won't matter for me...just finished it.

Can you post how it affects GH2 and Rock Band? I could give two shits about the Activision trash though.

Also, how does this game affect Texture Pop in Mass Effect?

And how about Dead Rising?

Oblivion and Fallout 3?

I don't think quicker load times were the main issue here as you eluded to the big solution was getting that noisy disc reader to stfu

Load times in Bioshock and Mercs 2 were really annoying. Glad to hear that some of those cases will get much-needed help from installs.

ya, I am really looking for a quiet day of playing game, instead of my gf asking: honey, why you turn on the hair drier while playing games......

I wonder if this helps with the UE3 texture pop in.  Hate when it takes forever for UT3 or Gears to load that shit.

despite an install for orange box on ps3 it still loads slower than anything

I don't care as much about load times as I do noise. Fable II has load issues, certainly, but it's also the single noisiest game I've ever played on my 360. I don't know if the disc is not quite round, has to jerk the laser back and forth to load from different parts of the disc every half second or what, but it makes my Xbox grind and shudder in the most frightening manner.

Interesting results.
I'll most likely not install anything. Maybe I'll install guitar hero: wt or rock band but not anything else.

I really should get a 120GB hdd though :|

Takes 1 minute plus for mid-late game saves to load in Morrowind and Oblivion ... Wonder how much time a HDD install will save ?

Why all the talk about load times?
The big thing about this feature is the reduction of noise, not load times.

With the exception of HL2, none of those margins seem anywhere close to "whopping".

I'm more excited about noise reduction than load times, anyway.

Actually what I am most excited about is the Netflix integration, but thats just me.  The results are pretty much on par with what I was expecting, minor to negligible improvements.  A quieter Xbox is an attractive prospect, however.

Sounds good, but replacement drives are too expensive, and I hate deleting anything. What if I want to watch the 1.7 GB welcome video again? Where will you be then? SPEAK UP, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THE DVD DRIVE.

I don't know.

werent uhh.. maybe im mistaking but werent PS3 owners originally made fun of for this? And what about those of us with a measly 20GB HDD? I struggle keeping 1GB free on the bloody thing... oh well, at least itll help Fable2s menus that alone makes it worth it

I think the real test would be how much faster Oblivion's load times are when installed on the hard drive.

If installing the game to the HD prevents me from getting Dirty Disc Errors.  I'll install any game I'm playing and then delete the content when I'm finished. Mass Effect, Oblivion and more recently Gears of War 2 give me errors... not as much in Gears 2, but when it happens while a multiplayer map is loading that took me 10 minutes to get in... that's a problem.

The only thing that really matters ins that the Fable II menus work better and the 30 seconds saving time decrease in Half-Life 2 (which nobody plays anymore...).

I guess it's time for a new hard drive.

Microsoft should sweeten the deal with the 120 GB HDD though.  The 60 GB pack comes with a few months of Gold.  I think it'd be nice to get something if we're going to have to put up with being gouged $150 for a measly 120 GB.

this news is tres awesome. I'm installing mass effect as soon straight away. I'ma read that article twice. hehe