Will a solid-state drive speed up the PS3?

by Alan Tsang { Oct 15th 2008 at 2:00PM }

Tired of those slow installs the PS3 is so famous (or infamous) for? The guys over at ExtremeTech came up with a solution that will partially solve that problem, albeit at a heavy price. They replaced their 60GB PS3's hard drive with one of Intel's 80GB X25-M solid-state drives. The retail price for one of those babies is $598 ... about the same price as a launch PS3, and 50% more than the current 80GB SKU.

Unfortunately, the results were a bit of a letdown. Installs off a Blu-ray disc were as slow as ever, due to the the limitations of Blu-ray drive speed. Downloadable titles and demos, however, were a different story. Installation speeds of that variety received a significant speed boost, about 40% faster. Startup and load times for games became 25-40% faster.

So is it worth it? Probably not at 600 clams. Swapping out the PS3's hard drive is relatively easy though, so it might be something cool to do if you've got the cash to burn.

[Via Engadget]

Tags: playstation-3, ps3, solid-state-drive, solid-state-memory, SSD

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

francisco @ Oct 15th 2008 2:09PM

NEVER!

sumierp @ Oct 15th 2008 2:10PM

um, gamespot already tried this months ago and had the same results. So, awesome for extremetech, but too late.

ClarkyCat @ Oct 15th 2008 3:24PM

Not only that, but the results were published HERE too!

http://playstation.joystiq.com/2008/06/09/solid-state-hard-drives-offer-little-gain-in-ps3/

I mean come on, the amount of double articles on this blog is getting irritating.

adolson @ Oct 15th 2008 4:46PM

Give poor Alan a break. I don't think he was working here back then, was he?

Dartmerc @ Oct 15th 2008 6:40PM

Yeah, but you'd hope he was at least reading the site.
These are good results, but obviously the price is a killer at the moment.

The_Icon @ Oct 15th 2008 2:17PM

I rather buy a normal 7200 - 10000ROM HDD with bigger capacity.

MakaiOokami @ Oct 15th 2008 3:25PM

That would be a bad idea for the PS3. The PS3 can only support 5400RPMs. Putting in a faster hard drive is literally like spending extra money putting a car engine in a go cart.

It may seem like it will speed things up, but it won't. The PS3 is only capable of handling the 5400 read write speed on a normal hard drive. A solid state hard drive is a different story because it doesn't have to worry about speeding up and reading, and seek time on the hard drive. It's not physically moving arms back and forth across a hard drive it's just storing the data like a flash memory card.

In fact, the reason why I compare it to putting a car engine inside a go cart, is because the chances of you messing something up doing that is higher than if you just left it alone. Just like a go cart, isn't made for a car engine the PS3 isn't meant for a hard drive that spins faster. You might accidentally draw too much power and then you're SOL and just wasted a lot of money.

The_Icon @ Oct 15th 2008 4:12PM

Actually, Gamespot ran some benchmark and 7200 RPM, especially 10000RPM HDD does improve HDD loading times.

Aaron @ Oct 15th 2008 4:12PM

MakaiOokami: Do you have any documentation to back up this claim? From what I understand, the PS3 is fully capable of handling a 7200 RPM drive.

Lars @ Oct 15th 2008 4:27PM

I use a 7200RPM drive in my PS3 and I've got no complaints. There has been a slight speed increase in certain situations.

But really, to be honest, I don't mind the installs (maybe 'cause I'm a long time PC gamer). I haven't even run into very many annoying loading screens, except for two exceptions. Heavenly Sword had lots of long loading times, which only really became frustrating to me when trying to beat the same scene over and over. And secondly Rock Band... I hate how the game starts up and then pauses on the menu for like 10 seconds while it loads "additional content," meanwhile I'm trying to access the menu --gets me every time.

I just have one issue with the article:
"...due to the the limitations of Blu-ray drive speed..."
That's just wrong. The BDD is quite fast, but the games are often transferring much more content than we're used to.

It's kinda like driving a Lamborghini @ 100 MPH for 800 miles and driving a Pinto @ 30 MPH for 10 miles and saying the Lamborghini is a slower car because it took longer to get to IT's destination.

ryan @ Oct 15th 2008 2:18PM

that looks sexy!

Kevin PSN: Keviseg15 @ Oct 15th 2008 2:31PM

your comment makes no sense.

ryan @ Oct 15th 2008 2:51PM

which is why it was sarcasm. Taa-daaa!

rgoff31 @ Oct 15th 2008 2:54PM

Technerd humor I'm guessing.
Sliding the drive in and out of the drivebay slot = sexy.

The_Icon @ Oct 15th 2008 2:18PM

Sorry meant RPM

DigDug @ Oct 15th 2008 2:45PM

Are all bloggers here tech cretins?

"Installs off a Blu-ray disc were as slow as ever, due to the the limitations of Blu-ray drive speed."

I think they need a crash course on drive speeds. The PS3's Blu-ray drive is faster than the 360's DVD and Wii's DVD drives....

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=42157

Please stop your clueless PS3 hate...

davebo @ Oct 15th 2008 4:01PM

They didn't say it was slow compared to xbox or anything of the sort, just that bluray installations are slow. If the only comparison in the article is to downloaded content installing from the hard drive to the hard drive, then of course it's slow and they're not out of line to say so.

borland502 (SDF Macross) @ Oct 15th 2008 3:16PM

Did you just copy and paste that response on every forum in the joystiq family? I just came from browsing engadget and here those silly words greet me again.

Jesus man, they didn't generalize to optical drives, but a reasonable person could infer that point.

Lars @ Oct 15th 2008 4:36PM

Well, Robotech guy, I would agree with you if that was the case, but it clearly seems like they're trying to call out the BDD explicitly, not optical drives in general.

Especially since you hear this all the time in reference to BD and the PS3, but hardly ever hear people saying something like "install times for WoW to a solid-state drive did not decrease, due to the the limitations of DVD drive speed."

Topsu @ Oct 15th 2008 2:56PM

Do I see scratches on the top of that PS3? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuu....

DarthSpooky @ Oct 15th 2008 3:50PM

@Topsu: Yeah, scratches and dust and what appears to be some form of goo. That PS3 gets no love, the Console SPCA (the SPCC?) should confiscate it and give it to a nice family! =D

mercurywa @ Oct 15th 2008 4:04PM

I don't mind the "install time" as much as I do the "download time".

My next upgrade will be a larger HD.

DavidJuaquin @ Oct 15th 2008 10:14PM

Anybody try the "new" 500GB drives on their ps3 yet?

fiziks @ Oct 16th 2008 12:06AM

I got a friend with a 500 gb disk on his ps3...

NeCrom-X @ Oct 15th 2008 4:50PM

So if the SATA on the PS3 is a 1.5Gbit SATA bus and 1.5Gbit SATA laptop drives maximum output is 1.5GBbit for data out at that speed how would having a solid state hard drive speed anything up if the SATA bus is only going to send and receive data at a maximum of 1.5Gbit/s no matter what?