How does DVD/CD read speed affect Gameplay?

is there a big difference between 32x and 48x for CD?
or 16x and 18x for DVD?

when i put Far Cry 2 in, will I game slower because my drive read speed?

Only if the game actually uses the DVD during gameplay for something else other than ownership verification.

Depends on the design of the game of course. "Pong" wouldn't need to be moving very much scenery into RAM. Just to get an idea of the rates involved there is table of DVD drive speeds:

Source: http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html
See section 4.2.


Mike Ramsey

I agree that the best plan is to fully load the game onto the hard drive. Where that isn't possible there is this:
http://users.telenet.be/erik.deppe/cdspeedfaq.htm

"Some games crash with my new high speed drive.

All high speed drives will spin down after a while. This is done because letting it spin at high speed all the time would dramatically reduce the life of the drive.
If the game (or other program) wants to access the drive again, the drive has to spin up. This will take a few seconds and might be enough to cause trouble with some games.
However there is a utility which will allow you to change the spindown time.
It can be found at:http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aa571
Some drives (Plextor) allow you to select the spindown time.
The spinup/down time can be measured with CD Speed 99."

A non-gaming consideration is data backup to a DVD.

Mike Ramsey

That's not true. It's only disingenuous; not a bit more.

I agree that if you have the disk space, load it. If you don't, what are you going to do?

Mike Ramsey

Now, now, you don't know what my intention was. It would not be correct to say that I was intentionally misleading.

I have come around to your point of view. Load the whole game and buy more storage if you have to.

I do plan on buying a blu-ray burner but not for gaming. I want to use blu-ray discs for off site backups.

Just so you guys know, I'm not thinking of getting Pong.
I might get Far Cry 2 though.
D'you think Far Cry 2 is used only for ownership verification? Or does the game need the DVD?

None of my game s use the disc for anything other than copyright crap. And for the copyrighted games i have disc images mounted to virtual drives, which would be the fastest way to assess a cd or dvd.

I do I do the whole mounting images business. Do I need special software like Alcohol 120%? Is anything free?
Do you think this looks reliable?: http://www.slysoft.com/en/gamejackal.html

I've used Jackal in a trial - about 75% at the time, so I let it go.

Instead, from the same site you could use:

http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvdhd.html
http://www.slysoft.com/en/clonedvd.html

and this free one:
http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

They work well.

love it, it's what vista should have been

yes it checks that you have the dvd for copyright bs. It has nothing to do with game performance. I only use images so i don't have to look for discs.

I have never used clonedrive you would have to read the manual

So then how do I make the image?