Since no one is replying to me in the other thread, and it makes more sense to have its own thread.
lestat wrote:
mech wrote:Interesting, Blu-Ray is CLV and 360 is CAV.
So Blu-Ray is actually faster on the inner part of the disc than a 360 is, but the 360 gets faster pretty much straight away.
Basically 2xBR CLV = 12xDVD minimum read speeds. 12xDVD at max read speed, outermost edge is equivelent to 4xBR CLV.
However, because the data density is much higher, the PS3 has to spin the disc at a much slower rate - it also gets slower the further out the laser gets. The bulk of the noise in my 360 is from the DVD drive spinning up - so hopefully this means the Blu-Ray drive will be a lot quieter.
I think the max theorectical speed of a BR disc is 12x vs 16x of DVD. So at 1x rate it spins a litter bit faster than dvd, but yes the BR-ROM drive is going to be a lot quieter than the 360, big difference in rotational speed(RPM) of the disc.
Also interesting is that Blu-Ray 1x isn't actually fast enough to run movies (it's 36mbps, whereas movies require 54), so everything should be 2x and above.
Yep BR-ROM movie players are actually 1.5x speed drives.
Hmm, perhaps the Xbox DVD isn't as fast as everyone thought...
A 12x CAV drive like the one in the 360 will be 12x speed for around 15% of the outer disc, that figure is peak performance. The closer to the inner ring it gets the slower accesses get (5x speed on the inner ring) - probable average: around 8x speed. Another interesting thing seems to escape everyone is that the 12x DVD drive in the 360 only reads dual layer discs at a maximum of 8x speed. As it was in single layer, the 8x speed is peak performance. The 2x speed BD drive performs quite well in this case: a BD25 on PS3 fares better than a DVD9 on the 360. The great majority of 360 games are and will be pressed on DVD9s. Another interesting point with existing CLV BD drives is that they do not have the dual layer penalization with DVD dics. If a BD drive is rated to read DVDs at 8x, it will read dual layer DVDs at 8x as well. This is why Sony is comfortable with its choice and knows it will hold its own against MS's choice in the DVD format.
Caching thankfully minimizes either DVD or BD's shortcomings, and careful authoring on either format will help minimize speed issues. These technicalities shouldn't matter to a true gamer and any advantages in either format will in all likelyhood go unnoticed in any regard to the untrained.
My 360 drive doesn't sound like a 8x dvd drive that's for sure mech. Also on my pc, i can rip dual layer dvd's at 12x speed with no issues. A 16x drive will read dual layer discs at 12x. The drives used by the 360 are actually 16x drives, ms lists 12x because just like the original xbox all games are pressed on dvd9's and the drive reads dvd9's at 12x speed.
At any rate, I'm still not convinced there's going to be much or any noticable difference in load times between the two platforms, especially given the devs can use the HDD in the PS3.
Because mech, the hitachi/lg drives LG-8164/GDR-3120L and samsung SH-D162C/TS-H943A are actually 16x pc drives with a special firmware. Plus like I mentioned before the fastest a 16x dvd drive will read dual layer media is 12x, all 360 games are dvd9. hence why they list it as a 12x drive in the spec sheet, because no 360 game will ever be released on single layer media, even it is less than 4gb. Same thing happened on the original xbox. Don't ask me why ms insist on using DVD9's when it's not needed. Oh wait i just remembered, the special security sectors live on the second layer that's why.
In terms of real world transfer speeds i think ps3/360 will be similar, the only difference is if developers want to be lazy and put data uncompressed on bluray discs, because the bluray drive has to read more data it will cause longer load times. So ultimately to get fast load times developers need to best layout and compress the data as much as possible. On the 360, developers are forced to compress because they don't have the space to be lazy.
