HANDS ON GUIDE

Load times

To compare how quickly each system powers up and loads games, we powered each system on into its OS using its controller three times and took an average. As Call of Duty 4 is available on PC, 360 and PS3, we timed how long each system took to load a save game. For the Wii's game test, we used Wii Sports, and timed getting on to the grass for a single player game of tennis.

Both the 360 and PS3 use 2.5in 5,400rpm S-ATA laptop hard disks. The 360 takes marginally longer than the PS3 to boot, but on average, it's nine seconds quicker at loading CoD4. While the PS3's game load times were virtually the same each time, indicating that the system software isn't caching or prioritising frequently used files, the 360's final run was nine seconds quicker than its first, even though we turned it off between each run. Both consoles were far slower than the PC at game loading, but the PC obviously took much longer to load up , although Vista does feature Sleep and Hibernate modes, which enable a PC to cut its start up times. You can also optimise loading on a PC by cutting out the optical drive, too - either by paying to download the game or using a no CD tweak.

While PC games load quickly, they need to be installed, but this is no longer unique to the PC. Demos downloaded to the PS3 must also be installed.

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