Madden 10 Hard Drive Evaluation

Now part of the routine with any new game, I’ve gone through and timed different loading areas when running off the disc vs the hard drive on the 360. Installing to the hard drive not only has proven to cut down on load times but it also reduces stress to the system and the noise it produces. NCAA Football 10 turned out to show the most improvement of any game so far but that is also a series that has been plagued by slow loading. Madden 10 hasn’t been nearly as bad with load times but lets take a look at the difference seen this year.

Install Size- 5.8 GB
Install Time- 8:14

Loading Times
Load to Main Menu- 40 seconds disc vs 25 seconds hard drive (15 seconds)
Load to Play Now Game- 30 seconds disc vs 19 seconds hard drive (11 seconds)
Load out of Play Now to Main Menu- 11 seconds disc vs 7 seconds hard drive (4 seconds)

So those again are pretty significant savings in time. Doesn’t seem quite as drastic as NCAA but mainly because that game’s loading is longer to begin with. There should be slight improvement seen to all areas of loading in the various modes. For all the games that I’ve done the hard drive evaluations on check out the tag page.