Xbox 360 games will load faster than PS3 games
Ozymandias has found out that the PS3 will use a 2x BD drive, which is 72Mbits/second or 9MB/second. The Xbox360 uses a 12x DVD, which should give it about 16MB/second. “That is significantly faster for games and will result in shorter load times.”
Faster load times are good. Will we really see the difference? Also, Ozymandias has in it’s article links to another forum where his friend the former head of Sony Developer Relations Mark Deloura makes his case for the reason of requiring a Blu-Ray drive in a PS3. Remember, this isn’t an interview, it’s just a blogger’s comments on what Mark Deloura said.
Mark:
My good friend Ozymandias has been going off lately about the decision to put a Blu-Ray drive in the PlayStation3. Aside from the fact that he works for Microsoft, I really don’t see how he could argue that the Blu-Ray drive is not exactly the right move for games on PS3, when it comes to capacity. Here are two reasons why.
Ozymandias:
Mark goes on to list a historical perspective discussing how games have grown over time, as well as a content perspective where he gives some hypothetical numbers to illustrate why he believes games will need significantly greater capacity in this generation than afforded by DVD-9. I won’t quote his entire article here - it’s worth reading for yourself - but I’ll say that we’re in a bit of an argument bind in that the numbers we have to play with are a bit apples to oranges. Here are just a couple of examples:
Mark:
The texture resolutions have increased closer to 16x, which would push us to 32GB if all that data was texture. Yikes!
Ozymandias:
Resolutions have increased, but so has compression technology - especially over what was available five years ago for the PS2. Add to that the greater real-time decompression capability of today’s more powerful hardware, and that it’s really not possible to compare the two without a great deal more sophisticated side-by-side testing on common assets. And that’ll be tough, unless Mark has an old PS3 devkit he might want to bring over for an afternoon?
Go read it all and let us know what you think.
“Remember, this isn’t an interview, it’s just a blogger’s comments on what Mark Deloura said.”
“It’s a good interview. Go read it all and let us know what you think.”
Lol get it straight
I read both blogs over when Major posted them the other day excellent read on all three parts.
Fixed. Thanks.
Basically, I think the load times on the 360 are totally annoying already. Am I correct in assuming that when loading 9 GB at 16 MB/second is already a pain, then 32 GB at 9 MB/second will be even worse?
Or am I missing out on something?
you got it right, although load times will always get better after time on the xbox 360, and PS3.
It would be approximately 4 times as annoying probably.
You lot obviously don’t remember the wonders of the old days when we used tapes as the prefered media. Only took 5-20 minutes to load a game, that is, if it went without a hitch.
Yes I do remember that. And I also remember that that was 1984 and 22 years we have a right to expect better
Now, I might not have a clue what I’m talking about, but I would suggest to this theory that the read time at 2x for a blu-ray drive is plenty enough at 9mb/s. I believe it’s not how fast the data gets off the disc, but how fast it is processed at the CPU that matters these days.
Besides, did any of you see Sony’s press conference at E3 this year? Gran Turismo HD loaded extremely quickly, apparently because it had a hard drive to depend on. My point is, disc read speeds don’t appear, to me, to be very important in this day and age.
Please don’t accuse me of being a Sony fanboy, I’ve bought an Xbox 360 and I think the PS3 is impractically priced for the majority of gamers. I won’t be buying one until 1/2-2 years after release (providing it’s successful as a console).
16MB/s is Xbox 360’s maxmium read speed. It only applies to a tiny minority of the discs data on the outer edge of the disc. This is because DVD drives use a technology called Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). Data is read slower and slower as you move towards the center of the disc. Also, there is a read speed penalty when reading a Dual Layer disc, which is what most 360 games will be.
In constrast, PS3’s Blu-ray drive uses a technology called Constant Linear Velocity. So while its maximum speed is slower, it is constant for all data on the disc, and for dual layer discs.
It’s easy for someone like Ozymandias to spread FUD based on 360’s maxmimum rate, but it doesn’t nearly tell the whole story.
Now now… it’s easy to call Ozymandias’ story FUD ofcourse, but your posting as much FUD as he is by implying your story makes a world of difference. The effect of CAV is measurable, but nowhere in the regions of a factor 2, plus that DVD optimalization techniques do make sure that the most frequently loaded items are in the faster regions of the discs, where the slower ones contain the one time loads such as intro movies. Also, Dual Layer has no significant effect on transfer speeds.
The difference may not be an absolute 16-to-9, but it’s also nowhere close to 10-to-9 either: the average read speed achieved on 12 speed DVD is approximately 13, not accounting for optimizing layouts.
And before I forget it: DVD has much lower seek times than BluRay because it does not have to compensate for making the disc spin faster or slower when looking up random data. On random data access DVD thus starts reading its results much faster than BluRay.
Whooo weeeee, you just got schooled by someone that clearly know more than you about DVD’s, LOL.
well said
Lark is absolutely right. Comparing a CAV drive to a CLV drive results in quite a weak and useless comparison. When reading data off the inner side of the DVD, it probably results in a throughput lower than a 2x Blu-ray drive, which could be somewhere in the region of 5 MB/s.
Besides, you guys seem to intentionally forget that all PS3s will have a built-in, standard HDD which will be always there to help with loading times, caching, streaming and whatnot, and will also let developers take advantage of it every time they want, unlike with 360, since not all units contain an HDD because it’s not a standard feature, but an external optional component (no matter it’s included in the premium pack, it’s still not fully integrated in the system, unlike PS3’s HDD).
Bullshit. The inner ring of DVD is still faster than 2-speed Blu-Ray.
Click for proof
And the HD argument is bollocks as well. If it’s there, it’s extensively used for caching. If it’s not there, the user decided to save $100. PS3 doesn’t give that choice now, does it?
I think all of these PS3 vs Xbox360 discussions should be closed with:
At least we can agree on one thing. That we disagree.
The gamespot article uses theoretical figures. It is not representative of real world performance at all. I still remember people proud of their brand new 32x CDROM drives, when the truth was that they performed, at best, like 18x drives.
The HDD argument is valid because this article talks about loading times, not price. D’oh!
And because price is not an issue, we can assume everyone to have spent the full amount on their 360, thus having an HD
And the Gamespot article was actually written by a Sony-advocate, missing out on several key advantages of CAV such as lower seek times.
I like it when nerds argue
I say, screw the load times mumbo jumbo. It’s all relative..I know one thing for sure; Whatever the speeds are, the 360 will load a max 9GB game faster then the PS3 will load a 20GB game due to bad programming (resistance: fall of man).
It’s useless to calculate 360 speeds using 12x values, because with dual-layer discs this slows down to 8x. Yes, it’s still faster than 2xBD on the outer edge of the disc, but who cares. On the average I’d say they’re both pretty much just as slow when put to the real use instead of theoretical figures. While the amount of memory to fill has increased eightfold the disc speeds have increased only twofold.
Also, most of the loading times isn’t just transferring data from the disc. If it was, no PS2 game would have loading times longer than about 10 seconds, or Xbox game longer than about 20 seconds.
Who cares?
Well if you guys actually read the links posted at the majors site, you would have known that the Sony dude (he worked for sony) even says that the X360 dvd is faster all around..
He also has some good points abour Blu-ray. It’s just the way it is, blu-ray has more space but is slower and DVD in X360 is faster and has less space.
The effect of CAV and the rate of slowdown as you move toward the centre of the disc is dependent on the drive. All I’m saying is that 16MB/s is a maximum figure applicable to only a minority of data on the disc. I can’t claim to know the rate of slowdown on the 360 drive, just that it is there simply because it’s the nature of the technology.
“plus that DVD optimalization techniques do make sure that the most frequently loaded items are in the faster regions of the discs”
That’s the hope, but if you’re tight on space, some of that frequently accessed data isn’t going to fit on the outer edges. It’s very likely given the capacity constraints of DVDs that a lot of data needed frequently won’t be on the fastest parts of the discs.
“Also, Dual Layer has no significant effect on transfer speeds.”
It does, depending on the drive. Have a look at a comparison review, most drives tend to have some slowdown on DL discs compared to SL, some quite significantly. If there’s no slowdown that’s usually because SL read speed is reduced to start with. It depends on the drive though. What is common to all drives, however, is a switch latency when moving from one layer to another, which significantly increases seek time when accessing data on the other layer.
“And before I forget it: DVD has much lower seek times than BluRay because it does not have to compensate for making the disc spin faster or slower when looking up random data. On random data access DVD thus starts reading its results much faster than BluRay.”
I’ve seen figures, and you’re correct in that DVD seeks tend to be about half of Blu-ray’s - depending on the drive. And seek times are perhaps the most crucial factor here - they’re the really costly aspect of loading and streaming. However, one issue you’re ignoring is the vast potential on Blu-ray for extra redundant data to lower seek times significantly. If you have 7GB on a 360 disc, and 50GB on a PS3 disc, that’s over 7 times more redundant data - which on average should cut your seek times by a factor of 7. Much higher than the factor of 2 advantage DVD has otherwise. So ignoring redundancy, you’re correct, but factoring that in, Blu-ray has a big advantage.
The PS3’s BluRay is single layer afaik, and thus can only hold 25GB of data, not 50GB. Apart from that I think we’re mostly agreed
PS3 will read single or dual layer discs. Maybe even beyond with firmware updates, but for now, 50GB is the limit.
Hmmmkay thnx, missed that somewhere then.
Hold on - Both machines have a maximum of half a gig of ram. Probably 256mb used for storage. i.e. 32GB / 9GB is daft arguement. The only practical measurement is the time you have to sit and wait.
Perhaps we should push game reviews to include average level load times. As this might force game writes to do better in this area.
I do include it in game reviews. When I lose interest in a game during the loading times that’s a definite con
Has anyone tried waiting for a PSP game to load? Wow.
Why should BluRay be any different?
Jesus, thats a hell of a lot of technobabble going on.
It’s Revenge of the Nerds all over again
Can’t someone just say 360/PS3 will load faster and be done with it.
Load times are going to come down to the developers more than the hardware. The gamecube has the slowest disc drive of all the consoles last gen, as far as I know, yet it had some of the fastest load times I’ve ever seen for a disc-based format, in Nintendo’s own games particularly. It’ll come down to how much care developer’s take, tbh.
yeah, metroid prime has no loading! it is a huge, beautiful game with no load times.
I forget, did Star Fox Adventures have huge load times? Best-looking game on the system in my opinion.
Doesn’t matter if it didn’t have load times you were still left with the same end product, a bag of shite.
A turd by any other name is still a sticking steaming poo.
the loading will be comparable because they both will have the software loaded into the hard drives anyway right? so who cares. this is a trivial issue.
There will be no solid proof of which one is faster until the PS3 actually is in your hands and you try it out.
That being said. I am a 360 owner, however, I feel that MS screwed the pooch on the HDD. The first Xbox laid the foundation and I wish that they would have, at least, used flash memory for caching on all 360s. I would imagine that any developer worth the title is going to take advatage of the PS3 HDD (if they partition it). There should only be load times when the game first loads. Once you start playing, the next level should be loading in the background for seamless transitions. I’m not a PS3 supporter, in fact, I really don’t like Sony’s gaming division at all, but, I think that including a HDD is a good move.
im not trolling for sony here, i have no plans of getting a ps3 and im happy with my 360. but there are a couple things that could make this not true. one is that the ps3 could have the hdd help load games faster like the old xbox did. and also because of blu ray there will be less compression on ps3 files which may help them load faster as well. but for 600 dollars it better be faster than ps1 speeds
Not at Launch but for sure when PS3 had enought games I will sell my ugly X360 and I will go for a nice PS3. of courseBlu-Ray is the thing to Go I don’t think HD-DVD have a chance in this World
Don’t see how, everyone thought Beatmax was the mutts nuts and look how that ended up.
360 ugly, PS3 pretty? It looks like a lean mean fucking fat grilling machine.
but the PS3 will have a standard HDD so that can be used for swapfile