The Mess Hall

I now have a lovely OCZ Vertex SSD 60GB to play with in my PS3. Also, I have changed over to the newer PS3 Slim for this test.



I will not be doing a temperature comparison for this test. We all should know the answer to that one. I will also only be using a stock 5400rpm drive against the SSD for practical reasons. So no results from my 7200rpm drive are included this round.



Although I am not the first this time around, there are two notable HDD vs SSD comparisons already. The first one from Extreme Tech. Very well done as a whole. They used test that actually used the drive. However, then we have this one from The Escapist which was poorly done by a couple of amatures. They only test load times from the BD drive and install times, again from the BD drive. This only shows the limits of the BD drive and NOT the SSD.



For my results, I will have a side by side comparison video for you to actually see how I got the results for yourself. They are h.264 within mp4 container and are playable by the PS3.



Now on to my results.

Boot Times - Video


HDD - 10.2 seconds
SSD - 9.6 seconds
5% faster load time



Not much of an increase on this one. I was kind of expecting more since the firmware is now kept on the drive for the Slims. Sony seems to have a done a good job optimising it for fast startup.

Demo Installation - Video

Batman demo used

HDD - 129.6 seconds
SSD - 99 seconds
24% faster times



This is quite a bit of improvement. Definitly a heavier improvement then what my old 7200rpm drive could do.

GT5 loading - Startup Video, Track Loading Video



Startup

HDD - 25.9 seconds
SSD - 22.9 seconds
10% decrease in load times



Track Load

HDD - 14.1 seconds
SSD - 11.6 seconds
18% decrease in load times



Not bad. Definitly seeing some better times then on the 7200rpm drive.

Wipeout HD - Startup Video, Track 1 Load Video, Track 2 Load Video



Startup
HDD - 44.1 seconds
SSD - 24 seconds
45% faster startup (Impressive).



Track 1
HDD - 14.2 seconds
SSD - 9.9 seconds
30% faster load



Track 2
HDD - 13.3 seconds
SSD - 8.8 seconds
33% decrease in load times



This was the most impressive of my tests this round. Being a game that is kept 100% on the PS3 makes it an ideal for testing the HDD and it certainly benefits from a faster drive.

Conclusion

A lot of people are going to say it's not worth it to pay the price for an SSD drive for the results, but that is not the point of this comparison. My objective is to show the kinds of performance increases you can expect to see. Whether or not you want to do this is entirely your choice.

I must say though that the results from using a good performing SSD are certainly better then a 7200rpm drive. I think I will keep this drive in my PS3 permanently.


Another thing to note about the OCZ Vertex is they have whats called GC (Garbage Collection). This is a feature on the drive itself that allows it to clean itself up so that you don't get the performance drop that you normally see on SSD's without Trim. While the drive idles, it get's cleaned up on it's own.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope it has enlightened some of you all.

Also, other things seem to be a little zippier. Like going into XMB from within a game seems to be a tad quicker.


http://community.us.playstation.com/thr ... 0&tstart=0

interesting stuff mate ill have another read through a bit later, just having a quick read before i pop out for an evening shift. ive considered getting a SDD HDD for a while, maybe when im more flushed i will do!

that review was written 2 years ago, I'd imagine that the drives are even faster now.

IMO
It would be waisted on the PS3 anyway,

Fair enough Read and Write speed is much faster, but you need Hardware to cope with this,
And the PS3 is my no means a meaty machine, its a bare bone basic machine when it comes down to its Standered tasks,
The only time this outdoes it self is the single cores handling there own tasks,

So read, write, copy etc i would expect to be shit based on the machine itself.

Do the test on a PC thats when you will notice the difference, I wanted to get one for my MAC but the prices are too High!!
I have had a play with one from One of our suppliers, and i have been pretty impressed with the Speed of the machine after. But the price is just too much, as i would be looking for atleast a 500gb drive!