NCAA 11 Hard Drive Evaluation

Continuing with the series of Xbox 360 hard drive installation evaluations I’ve gone through and compared several aspects of the game based on loading times from the disk vs the hard drive. The NCAA Football series has been especially plagued by long loading times, laggy menus, and tedious menu navigation and installing should help with some of that. Unfortunately the loading times for NCAA Football 11 remain abnormally long compared to other 360 sports titles and there is still some noticeable lag when moving around the menu screens.

Install time- 10:10
Install size- 6.1 GB

Loading Times
Boot to main menu- 59 seconds disc vs 50 seconds HDD (9 seconds)
Load into “Play Now” game- 49 seconds disc vs 31 seconds HDD (18 seconds)
Leave “Play Now” to menu- 17 seconds disc vs 13 seconds HDD (4 seconds)
Load into “Play Now” with Teambuilder- 59 seconds disc vs 38 seconds HDD (21 seconds)
Load into Saved Dynasty – 7 seconds disc vs 6 seconds HDD (1 second)

These load times have actually worsened from last year which is disappointing. Despite that the benefit seen from loading from the hard drive is noticeable not only in the shortened load times but also in the smoothness of the movement through the menus. Last year I wrote that I hoped they’d find a way to cut down on load times in the future and though that is not the case they did streamline the navigation which makes up for some of it.  As always installing to the hard drive is recommended not just for load time improvements but also for the reduced noise and wear and tear put on the system.