(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Can SSD's Help Speed Up Your PS3?
Sources: You must login or register to view this content., You must login or register to view this content. // By: Chaz-Angus // Date: February 20, 2012

You must login or register to view this content.

Nowadays, regular hard drives are old news. SSD's (Solid-State Drives) are in style, and in fashion.
That was the thought process of tech specialists, Digital Foundry, decided to try out
a series of tests with a standard PS3 hard drive, a hybrid drive, (half regular drive and
half SSD) and a Samsung SSD.

SSD's are exceptional performers and have notably better Read/Write speeds than regular
hard-drives. They are faster, and more efficient. This is achieved by SSD's lack of any moving parts.
Mind you, this isn't a bad thing, as it is what gives SSD's their enhanced performance. Without any moving
parts, they can access any file virtually instantly.

Through these tests, and depending on the game, Digital Foundry have found out that
there are some major improvements in a PS3 game's loading times and other associated
things.
You must login or register to view this content.

Two examples the company tried out were RAGE and Skyrim. Those who have played
RAGE are probably aware of its problem with texture pop-in and rendering. With the SSD,
these problems were resolved. And for the PS3 players of Skyrim, the game got a noticeable
boost in performance and reduction in the lag that plagues the game.

However, you won't be getting these major improvements across the board. Tests were also
done on Battlefield 3, which didn't see any enhancements in performance. The series of tests
reportedly only made slight improvements on a slew of other games as well.

Below you can find a couple videos that help portray the speed comparisons side by side.

You can skip to about 5:25 if you want to get past all the technical stuff they guy talks about.

Here's a video showing installation/load times of some games.



So, the question still lies if SSD's can help improve performance on your PS3.
I still feel some more research needs to be done before any conclusions are made.
Perhaps if the speed improvements can become universal across all games, Sony could
look into including Solid-State Drives in their next console. That is, You must login or register to view this content.

Thanks for reading and share your thoughts on this with me! I would love to discuss this with everyone.

Chaz-Angus :fa:

Great idea bro i would love to speed up my games

Agreed. Now that SSD's are becoming more prevalent and affordable (to an extent),
I strongly feel that Sony would be making a fatal mistake if they don't include one
in the next console.

Yea that would be great to look forward to in the playstation 4 but it will raise the price lol

Indeed that would be a downside. Price would surely go up as a result of including one of these drives.
Sony has another 4 years to think about it though, so hopefully they get it right.

Yea its awhile off there still going good at the moment im ready for grand theft auto 5

People started doing this when GT5 came out to help speed upload times not all ssds will work and the performance will depend per title as to whether or not it draws from drive speed some games do some games don't the performance increase imo though from what i've seen in videos is fairly neglible to compensate for the high cost of a deciated ssd for a ps3. But I can confirm that you will if you have amazing eyesight see slightly better performance differences with some titles and obviously faster load times.

I heard that users would do this before. And me and another user were discussing the cost earlier
and somewhere down the line SSD's will become more prevalent and affordable. For now, it would
be extremely expensive to have dedicated SSD's for consoles. But hopefully, for performance, companies
will start to make SSD's standard.

I completely agree eventually both storage limitations and speed improvements as well as stability will get better on the sod's and they will become viable options. I was just confirming for the moment its not worth it for the price vs. Performance/storage limits. But you DO see a performance improvement I and a friend tested this when he got his sad we just decided to put it in his ps3 before formatting it and you do see an enhancement slightly.

I agree as well. Plus, the slight enhancements and improvements (and the lack
of these effects being universal across all games) is something that will hinder this
from ever happening. If Sony does include SSD in the next console, they have to be
certain or implement something in a way for all games to have increased performance.
Then again, that task could probably be handled by the console itself. But lesser load
times is still beneficial.