Will External USB drives be OK for gaming?

[Reven]

Hi

I had 2 questions regarding external USB hard drives. The first is simple, if installed a game on it would it lag considerably? I know that USB has a max bandwidth of 480mbs, would that be enough? Where is the 'cut-off' range? ( I.E I doubt it'd be fine with Crysis but I could easily run Starcraft 1 on it just fine. Where does it start to become a bottleneck?)

Working off of that, is it possible for 2 people to simultaneously access a game installed to a USB hard disk without any issues? For example, could my brother and I access the same game at the same time? Could we play on a LAN with each other? Also, would it matter that the laptop was XP and the desktop Vista?

( If you're asking how we could both access the hard disk, the new AirTies routers/modems allow normal USB hard disks to become networkable so my idea is that I could just have us both connect to the disk wirelessly.)

 

[yh125d]

Older games should run fine. I used to run Halo off of an old kingston 2GB drive at school. I wouldn't expect anything in the last few years to play very well though

 

[ilkhan]

I play sins of a solar empire and demigod off one of my flash drives often (go over to a friends to play and his laptop doesn't have enough free space to install them on it.) Works just fine, albeit a bit slow. But both of those games are pretty much self contained, nothing extra that isn't re-created at runtime. If the game relies on preferences or the registry to load it'd have to be installed *TO* the flashdrive and run on just that computer.

 

[coolVariable]

Originally posted by: Reven
Working off of that, is it possible for 2 people to simultaneously access a game installed to a USB hard disk without any issues? For example, could my brother and I access the same game at the same time? Could we play on a LAN with each other? Also, would it matter that the laptop was XP and the desktop Vista?

( If you're asking how we could both access the hard disk, the new AirTies routers/modems allow normal USB hard disks to become networkable so my idea is that I could just have us both connect to the disk wirelessly.)

then you are talking wifi/LAN lag.
That probably will not work except for games 10+? 15+ years and older.

 

[Reven]

coolVariable, the wireless modem is an 11N 300mbs router. So I'm guessing thats the real bottleneck?

It should be noted that the desktop would be connected to the modem via ethernet, its the laptop that'd be connected wirelessly.

 

[SickBeast]

With USB you're capped at 30mb/sec. A new internal hard drive will average around 100mb/sec. So, essentially, your games will take 3X longer to load, depending on how good your hard drive is to begin with. If you can, go with eSATA and you will get the same speed externally as you would with the drive inside your computer. :beer:

 

[Shmee]

^ what sick beast said. If you use esata, you should be fine as long as the HDD in the enclosure is decent.

 

[Reven]

OK... I dont think the modem has esata, but I'll go and check.

Just to confirm, however, its just the load times that will be worse right? Once the game starts it should be fine?

Also, theoretically we can share 1 game install right? I know then load times would be just horrible, but is it possible to share a game?

 

[pjkenned]

Games via a USB drive are OK. However, map loading times get hurt badly versus internal drives. Also, I wouldn't do any competitive FPS game unless you have a ton of RAM and have all textures sitting in RAM (aka you've been playing for a few hours). Any time you hit a USB drive, flash or mechanical, you will notice the huge latency hit and low bandwidth compared to eSATA.

 

[coolVariable]

He's not asking about hooking it up via USB.
He's asking about hooking it up via USB to a wireless router.
Performance will be HORRIBLE.
If the game requires ANY disk activity, it will probably be unplayable.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: coolVariable
He's not asking about hooking it up via USB.
He's asking about hooking it up via USB to a wireless router.
Performance will be HORRIBLE.
If the game requires ANY disk activity, it will probably be unplayable.

+1, absolutely terrible idea.

Actually what he is saying is hook up a drive via USB to a wireless router and run it via TWO computers at the same time ... which I am not sure will even work (because the game will likely lock certain files, meaning the other game instance cannot access them)... even if it could, they will be competing for the already pathetic bandwidth.

And a,b,g, or N, wireless is pathetically slow compared to wired. It also takes more CPU, has much higher latency, etc etc etc.

why can't you just put the game on a local drive?

 

[Reven]

So even 11N wont cut it? Damn...

Why cant I put the game on a local drive? Well actually, I can. Its just I wanted to test this idea out. I'm a little low on internal HDD space (yes I have already moved over stuff like music or documents onto the external drive) and I wanted to see if this would be playable via USB. Its just a theory I had.

Why would I want to share the game? My brother's laptop has a 160gb hdd, so it should be good enough to load a few games. The reason I'm asking is that say a friend came over with his laptop, I'd want him to be able to run the game off the external HDD so we could all play. Essentially make a private internet cafe of sorts.

I'm not too worried about CPU usage, as the the laptop my brother has is severly GPU bound. (2.0 ghz Core 2 Duo with a Mobility Radeon X1400). My desktop could spare a few cpu cycles.( Q6600 @ 3.5ghz)

 

[taltamir]

1. a single copy of the game will not be runnable from two computers at once.
2. you will also need to crack the game to have this sort of mobility. without cracks you will need each computer to put in a disk, and install it. And crack discussion is not allowed in here.

you could use an eSATA connection to get something fast... not through a router mind you, direct to PC... or something decent via USB to PC... but why bother? just install a copy on each computer (a separate copy with a separate legally purchased key of course).
If you need more space, HDD are CHEAP right now. I recommend keeping them all internal.

PS. Internet cafes INSTALL A COPY TO EACH COMPUTER.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: taltamir
PS. Internet cafes INSTALL A COPY TO EACH COMPUTER.

Even worse, some game producers claim that Internet cafes have to purchase a special "rentable" version of their games, and won't even let them install just a retail version for use in an internet cafe. I don't know how they can legally get away with that, but it used to be the same deal with VHS video rental places. They had to purchase "rentable" VHS tapes, at a significant markup compared to just standard retail VHS tapes.

 

[taltamir]

well, they don't HAVE to... redbox for example is just buying regular bulk disks and rents them... resulted in the three main studies EACH demanding 40% of their total gross revenue (yes, it adds up to 120%). resulted in redbox saying no, resulted in studious telling their resellers "don't sell to redbox or we will stop selling to you", resulted in redbox suing them... it is currently in the court by every law is basically on redbox's side... however with the recent insanity as to "authors rights" bullshit there is a good chance of them losing.

 

[Ben90]

Ive ran Warcraft III on three computers off 1 hdd, game loaded faster from a network drive then from my laptops internal (it was an old ass laptop though lol), so other than the performance boost... it was the exact same (except having to mess around with the registry to "install" the game)

I really dont think its as big of a deal as everyone is making it out to be/ but im sure they have a lot more experience because thats the only scenario that ive done something like that with

 

[taltamir]

(except having to mess around with the registry to "install" the game)

which you assume he knows how to do.

 

[Reven]

OK..

First off, I know Internet Cafe's install a copy to each computer. I was just making an analogy of friends being able to play on a LAN without owning the game itself.

Taltamir, Yes, I could get an internal HDD (hell I probably will) I just wanted to know if what I am suggesting was possible. What about 3 and 4 lane 11N? I heard those chips should be out within a year and should provide close to 600mbs wireless speeds. Thats an increase by a factor of 2, which would make USB2 the bottleneck. If I used esata (hence making the 600mbs wireless the bottleneck) would it be enough?

Do all games need a CD check to play? I know that many run off the hdd and dont need the disc and/or cd key unless they play online. For example, World In Conflict or Heroes 5. Those could work, right? I'm not starting a comercial bussiness, hell I'm not even 'sharing' the game with others, its akin to doing split-screen on a console I assume. ( Sharing on a LAN). If this veers to topics not covered on these forums, I'm sorry. I know this is a grey area.

Ben90, could you be more detailed at how you messed with the registry? I dont know how to do it but I'm willing to learn. I'm assuming you're talking about XP?

Also, I'm a bit confused on 1 HDD game sharing. Taltamir said that games probably lock files but Ben90 said that he did it with Warcraft 3. So older games dont lock files?

 

[taltamir]

So older games dont lock files?

It probably depends on the game... i also could be completely wrong on this.
Anyone else knows if games lock files? or if having two users run the same instance will cause problems?
I am guessing a game like NWN1 or 2 which extracts files to a temp directory might be an issue.

the problem with the mb/s figure, is that it does not take into account latency, latency is how long it takes each signal to travel in each direction. it can add up to quite a lot and really hurt your speed.
Think of MB/s as the amount of lanes in a highway times the individual speeds of cars, while latency as just the speed of an individual car on said highway.
a 50 lane highway is very nice for transferring massive amounts of data one way over a long period of time.
But no matter how many lanes you have, a single specific car carrying an important document is going to take the same amount of time once it reaches maximum speed for its own individual rate.

The velociraptor and SSDs are so fast because they allow unbeleiveable latency. Networked drives are so slow because their latency sucks. I use a gigabit wired set of network drives in raid, they can get quite a high MB/s but poor latency, much poorer with wireless.

I just did an experiment, i have a fileserver with an internal raid array (SATA) connected via gigE switch to my computer...
I tried copying over age of wonders shadow magic (a TBS game from 2003) to it and play it. I experienced a bunch of lag at places where there should be none... but, well, if your tolerance for it is high it might be playable.

My concern however is that you also push it through the USB, and a wireless router. So your situation is a lot worse than mine. Remember that the "x MB/s" figure means very little, it is very misleading. USB and wireless are just very poor connections.

 

[taltamir]

tested battle of wesnoth (open source TBS), certainly playable, although loading times are longer they are still acceptable...

 

[Reven]

OK, well thanks for the assistance. I did get a networkable hard disk but opted for the Apple AirPort Extreme. While I'll stick with internals for the most part, having some music and videos networkable is nice so I loaded them on. Considering I'm connected to the AirPort (and hence the HDD) via 1gb ethernet though I'm guessing it should be 'playable' with some older games. (its not SATA but its 2x USB)

Thanks again for your help dude.