Thinking of getting a new PS3 and throwing a SSD in one. Now that I have Playstation Plus, and more Retail games are being released on PSN (along with their Disc counterparts), I'm curious if those big games like Borderlands 2, Dishonored and Fighting games like Street Fighter 4 AE or King of Fighters 13 would load faster if I put one in.

@cloudyimpulse: Yes from my experience they load faster.

I seem to remember a video of somebody doing this and it actually not making that big of a difference, but that was years ago now.  Might work.  Almost certainly not worth it though.

@mikey87144 said:

@cloudyimpulse: Yes from my experience they load faster.

Did you put in a SSD Sata II or Sata III? I assume the new model doesn't add Sata III support... does it?

It was a few years ago so I assume it's a SSD SATA II

I have never tried a SSD, but my guess would be that the PS3's load times has more to do with the software then the hardware.

Even if it did have to do with the hardware, upgrading the hard drive will probably not give you much of a boost. Because the PS3 is still limited by the memory.

I don't think the load times would be that different. But hey, if you got the funds, why the hell not? On a new slim PS3, that console would be pretty damn quiet.

@GrantHeaslip said:

I don't have any actual experience with SSDs in PS3s, but my gut feeling is that it wouldn't make as much difference as you'd expect. I just can't imagine you'd see any kind of dramatic difference in loading times -- I've heard that SSDs don't do all that much in PC gaming either compared to general PC stuff like starting programs and booting.

Don't get me wrong, I swear by the SSD in my laptop, but this seems like a misguided idea.

SSDs make a huge difference for PC gaming, especially the bigger games like Battlefield 3, my load time was reduced by 75%.

SSD for a PS3 however...no don't bother. There's not enough games out there that install a lot of data to even begin to justify it, and the ones that do don't load much faster. (I didn't factor in retail PSN games because they are a rip off most the time)'

@Spoonman671 said:

I seem to remember a video of somebody doing this and it actually not making that big of a difference, but that was years ago now. Might work. Almost certainly not worth it though.

Yep. Digital Foundry tested it.

There is an article somewhere, somebody tested with GT5 and they difference from a regular 2.5'' 5400rpm hard drive to a SSD was minuscule, if you have PS+ you gonna need a big one thus it is better and cheaper to get a big ass hard drive.

@cloudyimpulse: You would get the same benefit by buying the Seagate Momentus XT, which is an HDD with multiple gigabytes of flash memory as cache. You would have more storage, it would cost you less and you'd get the same benefit. Don't buy an SSD; buy the Momentus XT and buy the new 750GB model as it uses newer technology and is faster and more efficient than its older 500GB counterpart.

I read up on it in June when I switched my drive out, 90% of the games they tested loaded within 1-2 seconds of each other comparing 5400 to 7200 to ssd.

There was one game that had massive improvement going from 30 seconds down to 15 seconds (think it was FF13 but I can't remember, may have been GT5), but overall didn't look like it was worth losing capacity for a minor load time boost on a few games.

@AuthenticM said:

@cloudyimpulse: You would get the same benefit by buying the Seagate Momentus XT, which is an HDD with multiple gigabytes of flash memory as cache. You would have more storage, it would cost you less and you'd get the same benefit. Don't buy an SSD; buy the Momentus XT and buy the new 750GB model as it uses newer technology and is faster and more efficient than its older 500GB counterpart.

i have that in my ps3 it is faster but any game that uses the slow disc drive is still slow. the speed is nice but it is not day and night. Might be worth buying a slower drive and getting more space.

I was talking to somebody who said he tested an SSD in a PS3 and he said it loads faster for sure, but for online matches you'll find you have to wait for the other players to load up.