VF5 360 playing off your Hard Drive

The other thing to take into consideration is that even though wireless speeds can still be in the 54Mb/s range, you still have things that can interfere with getting a good signal like packet loss from the radio frequency, EMI itself from the radio frequency and the overhead produced by all encryption methods.

This is one of the reasons why frame-timed games like VF5 and Street Fighter play like ass over wireless: no matter how good a wireless connection it may be, it'll still have latency associated with it in some way(s).

But then, I've also noticed that I only ever seem to get so much bandwidth using Live or PSN compared ot my various computers, the networks themselves seem to just be a big laggy in some way or have it throttled to not let a ton through (otherwise I'd get game demos in mere minutes instead of an hour or two).

 

Yeah, like said, the thing with wireless is not the speed (which looks good on paper when measured over a large time interval) but packet loss. Which translates to sudden huge lagspikes in middle of otherwise relatively normal game.

 

Is it true ?!!! just a few seconds saved with HD install ?
I expected more spectacular improvements !
I plan to buy an Xbox 360 and I wonder if the Arcade Pack (without HardDrive) is not enough to play to VF5...

What do you think?

 

I'd say get a premium. The arcade pack is a complete waste of time.

 

Arcade Xbox is that bad ? Really?
The lack of hard drive is the black point for sure.

Ok I'll think about it.
But the perfs with an HD seems to be quite the same.

 

Yeah it's just that if you're going to be playing other games then its just better to get a premium in the long run. I think they all come with a 60 gig hard drive now too.

 

You would be foolish to buy an Xbox360 without a HDD.... trust me it's not worth it!

 

The difference is about 90 dollars in my country, but it's true that the XBox with HDD seems to have much more functionalities.

My budget very limited and Xbox Arcade + second hand VF5 would have been a good compromise.

But I agree, the Premium would be a smart solution... if I had the money!
I will wait until I have enough to buy a premium.

 

If you play VF5 off of your HDD doesn't the 360 spin the disc less? That's the only saving grace I can think of to installing my games. I know the 360 is notorious for scratching and eating discs so reducing the amount of time the 360 is reading the disc would surely be a good thing.

 

It doesn't spin the disc and as a result there is much less noise from the xbox.

 

ya, it's completely worth it to prevent wear and tear on both your disc and your console. the disc spins a bit at the beginning of console start up to read what game it is, and that alone is enough to act as a "key" for you to be able to play the game. it's spins absolutely zero during play. i couldn't care less about load times whereas a few seconds are either gained or lost. i don't want my second hand xbox to rrod.

the only games i play for extended periods of time are vf5 and halo3, which are the only two games i have installed on the HDD (i only have a 20gb.) it sounds so lovely humming away with no disc noise. it also runs cooler, no matter how long you play it. so ya, it's a win win situation.

 

Playing VF5 from your hard-disk drive won't prevent an RROD, though. Sooner or later - whether you run a PS3 or Xbox 360 as your home console - there will be the huge breakdown. Due to massive heat emergencence with too little space in the console itself to cool down both consoles suffer from a short life cycle - two to three years at max.

Better, more profound insights gives Richard Leadbetter here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-system-failure-article

 

http://kotaku.com/5359971/virtua-fighter-5-fifa-street-3-join-xbox-360-games-on-demand

For those that wanted it