The Escapist Show: Episode 40: Putting a SSD in a PS3
- Thread starter Team Hollywood
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Excellent incentive but sadly flawed execution. Using install times as a benchmark for the hard drive doesn't work since the limiting factor here, is the speed of the blu ray drive.
To test the hard drive speed, you should test the load times of PSN downloaded games, or games that installs fully on the hard drive, such as Valkyria Chronicles and Grand Theft Auto 4. Until you do so, this video review proves nothing, more than that you don't have a clue how PS hardware works.
I am very interested to see you update this video with some proper benchmarks.
To test the hard drive speed, you should test the load times of PSN downloaded games, or games that installs fully on the hard drive, such as Valkyria Chronicles and Grand Theft Auto 4. Until you do so, this video review proves nothing, more than that you don't have a clue how PS hardware works.
I am very interested to see you update this video with some proper benchmarks.
Plug the parts that fit into the holes that are vaguely labeled in a complementary fashion. It's actually way easier to do, than it is to think about doing, or for that matter, the research that should go into any self-built PC.Danny Ocean said:
As far as the video goes, I don't think I was expecting much improvement, but was admittedly surprised that the results were even below my expectations. I'd chalk it up to Sony putting the bare minimum necessary hardware in to support their planned speeds, or as someone else suggested, an enforced cap on transfer speed to keep hardware performance consistent despite the ability to swap out drives.
We did, though it didn't get spelled out in the final cut of the video. I'll check with Tom and the video crew and see if we still have the final results of all the different things we did to post, but here's what I remember that we actually checked:Joos said:
1) Install time from Blu-Ray (to see if there was any change, good or bad)
2) Load time for non-installed game (Killzone 2, to see if caching speeds were changed)
3) Load time for installed games (MGS4 and Rise of the Argonauts, to see if HDD load times were changed)
We expected 1) slightly worse to no change, 2) slightly better to no change, 3) significantly better. The times on all three showed so little difference in the end that we felt it wasn't worth running even more tests. Especially the third one - if load time for installed games wasn't better, there really wasn't much point. If we had seen improvements there, we might have sat there all day just swapping the drives and "testing" things
Sadly, you also missed out on Tom and I's comments about the games as we were testing them. Maybe they'll be in a clip in the future
Very interesting. I think both theories are possible. If it is a software/driver coded thing, you could over ride it perhaps, but that would likely void the warranty with OS modding through patching. Although like you also said, if the bus speed is limited due to the hardware, it will never matter what you put in there. And I seriously doubt anyone is going to want to invest the money to reverse engineer the ps3 and try to build a new motherboard from scratch had hardware to support the newer stuff. Although, I don't think it is impossible.
I like the last comment at the end:
"Don't do this" Nice
(although the IT tech guy probably knew all along it might not work, but now he gets a new fast arse HD to play with at work)
I like the last comment at the end:
"Don't do this" Nice
(although the IT tech guy probably knew all along it might not work, but now he gets a new fast arse HD to play with at work)
*sigh* Almost there, chief.Kross said:
The ps3 usually will have something called "scheduled reads". It means that while the loading times on the disk might actually have been faster within the assigned time- slots, the other calculations that actually take time in between do not. So the loading time diagram is not advanced.. towards the left of the screen very much no matter what.
Also, an SSD drive typically has faster seek times (no movable parts, mechanical delays). But has lower average data transfer speeds. So what you're really testing is a drive with about the same data transfer rate as the other one. So even if there was a difference, you wouldn't find it in loading times.
Still, there are probably games that are programmed in ways that *wave* that do for example stream textures off the disc when there is free processor- time up towards some critical section. And in those cases, increased HDD transfer speed, and also seek times, might make the time before the critical section can be completed shorter. And then you could possibly get better flow in the game. But that's difficult to test, of course, and not interesting except for specific multiplatform games that use this type of loading model.
You could probably also point out that the SSD drive uses less power and will produce less heat (and no noise).
Honestly, though - I was about to congratulate you for stopping people from buying expensive drives in the belief that they would get increased performance on their ps3s. But then you have to go and make yourselves look savvy. Congratulations with today. But surely there are thousands of real, and very questionable business- practices Sony has employed lately that deserves the attention of the masses more than their latest scheme to hate superior hardware that costs a fortune?
Naturally, I know I am asking a lot of you, in that you would perhaps be held to some sort of standard the next time another company did the same thing. Unlike now, when you're simply dissing Sony apparently out of sheer stupidity, and therefore don't have to have this admirably critical attitude towards faceless corporations as a rule.
But I still think you should do it.
Oh I know how to do it, it's just to dispel the myths about the difficulty.Geoffrey42 said:
[HEADING=3]How about a gaming Mythbusters episode?[/HEADING]
Aside from the extra storage space. As someone who downloads games and tv shows/movies off of PSN quite frequently, 250GB would be much nicer than 80GB.Earthbound said:
Of course I'd never pay 600 bucks for it though...
A 250Gb HDD in the PS3 really is an advantage. I picked one up for $20 though I'll keep my sources secret for now lest the place get swamped, heh. I am glad to see this experiment attempted, however. I have been considering SSD for my PC which is being built into quite the monster. If you fellows in the video there aren't planning to use it, I have a place for it. Hint hint.
The PS3 has a SATA controller. Most SATA II devices are backward compatable, but will obviously be limited to the lower throughput. Current generation SSDs may not reach the max transfer rate of SATA II, but they definitely are well beyond SATA.
The HDD is encrypted with a Sony proprietary format. Last I heard this was done by the PS3's OS or possibly the HDD controller, so encryption is done before transfer and could be a limiting factor.
The HDD is encrypted with a Sony proprietary format. Last I heard this was done by the PS3's OS or possibly the HDD controller, so encryption is done before transfer and could be a limiting factor.
Not sure what you're basing this off of. Where exactly are we 'dissing' Sony? Where was a 'scheme' mentioned?nipsen said:
Wow - if I hadn't read the forum posts, I would've assumed you guys were idiots, as the only tests mentioned were all tests that were hindered by the blu-ray.
I guess the limitation on read speed is a memory streaming thing. I know the PS3 tends to stream most of its data, rather than just dumping things into memory and reading it from there. As the developers designed the system with hard drives in mind, there would be little point in making the internal streaming any faster than a 7200rpm hard drive can read.
I guess the limitation on read speed is a memory streaming thing. I know the PS3 tends to stream most of its data, rather than just dumping things into memory and reading it from there. As the developers designed the system with hard drives in mind, there would be little point in making the internal streaming any faster than a 7200rpm hard drive can read.
Let's see.. Read what I said about scheduled reads. Then check this concept with your reliable source of choice. Then read about SSD drive transfer speeds. The understand why I am being an "asshat" about this.GamerPhate said:
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.paulgruberman said:
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.
While you may have been correct a year ago, SSD technology has improved significantly since then, and this drive is a brand new high-end drive. We don't do full-on benchmarking, but I did find someone else who did compare the predecessor of this drive with a 7200rpm mechanical drive - their results are here [http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=658571]. That mechanical drive is likely faster than the one in the PS3nipsen said:
Additionally, loading times in games are generally not limited by the hard drive transfer rate. Game data is typically not very large and may not be contiguous on disk, which doesn't really give a mechanical drive time to spin up and reach its full transfer rate. This is why SSDs are typically an incredible performance upgrade for gaming PCs, while they may not necessarily be the best for, say, editing video.
It was a loaner, we gave it back. Otherwise it probably would have just ended up in one of our web serversGamerPhate said:
Cool, makes me glad that I didn't bother with solid state when I upgraded my PS3 hard-drive. Though I'm little disappointed that you guys didn't test out the load times for a game running just from the hard-drive, like Wipeout or GT5 Prologue for instance.
Also, wow, so that's what The Endo sounds like, who knew?! My curiosity of The Escapist staff is nearly sated.
Also, wow, so that's what The Endo sounds like, who knew?! My curiosity of The Escapist staff is nearly sated.
Really? Because I didn't list possible hdparm parameters, or encrypted file systems that might be in use, or compare proc diskstats against other drives, or analyze the data stream between system and application and instead listed a few likely possibilities, it's anti-Sony FUD? I never claimed to know why the speeds weren't different, I was just listing possible factors that would affect I/O speeds to make the point that several factors can effect loading speed from general lack of tuning for SSD.nipsen said:
Having more information is great, and thanks for sharing it, but being hostile with the delivery is just going to put everyone else on the defensive and overshadow any point you may have.
DB server!Virgil said:It was a loaner, we gave it back. Otherwise it probably would have just ended up in one of our web serversGamerPhate said: