The Escapist Show: Episode 40: Putting a SSD in a PS3

[megalomania]

You're saying they are limiting the hard- drives to fit with the lowest standard. As if somehow Sony conspires to stop you benefiting from a new piece of expensive hardware. It's right there in the clip! It's repeated in your "speculation" afterwards on the forum! That's what I'm basing this off of.

It's easy to prove this, if you want to. Just insert a drive that actually has higher burst- rates and transfer speeds - like others have done before. But if you did that and got no change of any kind, then you would have /something/ to sustain your theory. Of course, that the bus on the ps3 only supports 150Mb/s transfer is an element - but the main reason why the increases are so small are the scheduled reads.

--

In any case - I really wish you knew why there is such a thing as a "copy- protection"/encryption/anti- piracy scheme on all modern computers (and consoles) today in the first place. Certainly, this is not Sony's sole accomplishment to create this an industry demand, nor is this much of a secret.

After that, I wish you would do some research on which systems this encryption scheme actually has an impact, where the storage space is an issue, where production of multiple discs will be expensive, and so on. And which systems has quick enough hardware to actually acommodate the "industry demands".

As well as that HDD reads and writes actually does not take up very much of the loading times between levels in the first place. There's a reason why it's possible to replace an HDD with an optic disc in many circumstances. Even though this is not done for performance reasons, obviously.

My apologies for being mad about this - but pushing pseudo- scientific stuff like this isn't very funny. Worse, it means that you are contributing to ensuring we are all screwed over yet again, when "the industry" demands that the customer should pay for yet another idiotic scheme.

Dude you are being a little aggressive here.

I think the thing that the guys were really trying to address was 'is it possible to get a performance boost by upgrading your HD to an SSD?'

This is a pretty common question in PC gaming at the moment, never mind commercial companies which have already started making changes. It seems like a logical extension to try it in a console, when you have the option of upgrading the hard drive.

Anyway they answered their question pretty fully. i.e. No.

You need to chill out, it wasn't Sony bashing, although I could start Sony bashing if you want? Maybe we could talk about the development of The Cell processor and how they basically stole Microsofts chip architecture from IBM?

To quote Johnny from fantastic four: *Flame On*

 

[Goldbling]

With the Blu-ray drive you'll always see a bottleneck in performance, but if you have DLC I could see how that would load faster, but there is still no explanation for the ridiculous load and install times on the PS3.

 

[skcseth]

Does this count as modding your PS3? If so, a college kid just arrested [http://ps3.qj.net/College-student-arrested-for-modding-game-consoles/pg/49/aid/133611] for that.

 

[johnman]

(I liked the practical theme of this episode, BTW. More!)

Gotta agree with that. There's a lot of reviews, tours and interviews, but the practicality of this episode was awesome. Definitely want to see more user tutorial stuff soon!

They should do a How to assemble a Pc so all the console fanboys stop complaining about how hard it is.

Does this count as modding your PS3? If so, a college kid just arrested [http://ps3.qj.net/College-student-arrested-for-modding-game-consoles/pg/49/aid/133611] for that.

NO where near. He was modding consoles so that they will play pirated games by chipping them. Chaging your hard drive doesnt even void your warrenty.

 

[Sisee]

I'm sorry, but this wasn't a test of the SSD at all.
It tested install times, and that's dictated by the disc read speed.
A true test of this SSD would be to play something that runs entirely of the HDD, like Wipeout HD or Ratchet and Clank Quest for Booty.

This was not a HDD speed test.

 

[Jumplion]

Well, while we're on the topic of bigger HDDs, does anyone know where to get a good sized harddrive for cheap? I've got a 60GB PS3 and I'm quickly running out of room. I've heard that you could get a 250 for only $100 or something, no?

 

[Virgil]

Well, while we're on the topic of bigger HDDs, does anyone know where to get a good sized harddrive for cheap? I've got a 60GB PS3 and I'm quickly running out of room. I've heard that you could get a 250 for only $100 or something, no?

Newegg to the rescue! [http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035915133%201035507777%201309740009&name=500GB] - under $90 for a 500gb drive, which is far more than you could use in a PS3 without doing something insane

 

[Jumplion]

Well, while we're on the topic of bigger HDDs, does anyone know where to get a good sized harddrive for cheap? I've got a 60GB PS3 and I'm quickly running out of room. I've heard that you could get a 250 for only $100 or something, no?

Newegg to the rescue! [http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035915133%201035507777%201309740009&name=500GB] - under $90 for a 500gb drive, which is far more than you could use in a PS3 without doing something insane

My god, are you trying to kill me by nerd-gasam?

 

[StuperMerio]

Good thing I didn't spend the extra money for SSD, I just upgraded my PS3 hard drive with a standard 5400 RPM 2.5" 200GB Hard drive. THANK YOU ESCAPIST!

 

[Joos]

bla bla bla

bla bla bla

Thanks for the in depth reply. It certainly sounds as if there is a software lock on the I/O transfers to keep the games consistent, much like some amiga emulators out there. Sounds oddly archaic that a modern game console would need such imposed limitations, but if it makes my games more stable, I am sure I can live with it.

I suppose this means I will be going for a 500 Gb hard disk drive as I originally planned. Cheers guys!

 

[matt87_50]

lol, given its the EXACT same times as the older drive, there must be some artificial speed regulator that may be linked to using the BD drive as apparently it does go faster for downloaded games?

in any case, install time would not change cause it will always go as slow as the slowest component, in this case the BD drive would be segnificantly slower than even the standard 5400rpm hdd.

as for in game load times, you might expect this to be faster as some of the game was installed to the drive right? again, during game loading, id say its loading from the BD drive, i'd say the data installed hard drive ould just be stuff that has to stream in and out during gameplay, such as audio and textures, in this case, the game would have been programmed to work with the standard HDD without any slow down caused by the streaming, so any faster drive is pointless here as well.

Did you try copying media to and from the drive over gigabit?

 

[Dboyz-x.etown]

I'm with matt on this one, MGS4 had a lot more data than just the ten gigs or so that it installed to the hard drive. I have to admit, that was incredibly annoying playing that game with the constant loadings every time you changed a "scene"

Anyway, I think a lot of you should check out this massive, informative article on ssd's. Who knows, you might learn something ;-)
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

 

[Fearzone]

Thank you for that info.

5:25 = SO random!

 

[the monopoly guy]

I have that same shirt that Jason Smith is wearing. And it's awesome.


Also, that seems like a mighty big ripoff, paying all that money for it to do nothing.