Eurogamer helps answer this question for you by conducting some ultra scientific experiments for the welfare of gamers everywhere. If you’ve been on the fence about how useful HDD installations really are, then their article will help lay your concerns to rest. As you will no doubt notice from the results, some games really make a difference with HDD installations where as others will not be worth the hassle.
I could probably see myself trying to install Gears of War 2 onto my HDD purely to shorten that initial loading screen before you reach the menu. It also looks like loading times drastically improve for Team Fortress 2, so I bet Orange Box owners will definitely want to get that installed on their HDD. Most surprising however, is the fact that Halo 3’s load times are actually worse upon HDD installation, ouch.
November 19th, 2008
3:29 pm
GoW2 and H3 are both fully optimised for disc loading where as Valve’s file system is obviously more sutible to HDD loading. The main advantage of installing is the lack of disk drive noise.
November 20th, 2008
4:18 am
I play with high volume so the noise from consoles has never been an issue for me. I still think this will work well on Oblivion since unlike Fallout 3 it’s been out for some time.