Improve PS3 performance with a Solid State Drive

SSD’s are a large improvement from any conventional drive. With the Ultra-Low latency on a SSD you can gain great speed improvements and with that better graphic enhancements. The moving parts in a conventional Hard Drive reduce the performance that the GPU’s are capable of. So graphics will render slower and load times will not be as fast.

The possibility of using a Solid State Hard Drive in a PS3 is realistic but are the advantages enough to merit the cost? Euro Gamer reviewed a test that was conducted by Digital Foundry to put this to the test. The results were quite interesting. On Rage a SSD made a substantial difference during game play in that the graphics were smother and you almost can’t notice the render. During their test, Skyrim saw a good fram-rate improvement with the SSD over the Hard Drive. While load times were noticeable in Battlefield 3 and the Reckoning that was where the performance halted. So not all games saw a benefit in graphical performance but the improvements seemed to carry over to decreasing load times.

We wouldn’t suggest you go run out and replace your PS3 HD with a SSD only due to the advantages not out weighing the dis-advantages. With the costs of SSD’s decreasing their still not worth the cost for this upgrade. And don’t forget that not all SSD’s are created equal. Different SSD’s have different features which inhibit or maximize the lifespan and operation of the drive. Trim support being one of those factors in which this feature  can support the life of the drive and the PS3 file system may not support Trim.

Testing found that if you wanted to get an increased performance of these natures a Hybrid drive (by Seagate) is a better way to go…for now. The Hybrid drive had a large improvement over the stock drive and still came close to comparison with the SSD.

An important note about lag times on a stock drive as noted from the test is that if you find your HD to be slower than usual. Back up your drive then re-format the original drive and restore it and you should see some improvement. The PS3 will fragment the drive over time and by a simple re-format you can eliminate the fragmentation. This will need to be a reoccurring process though, and while it’s not difficult to do it may or may not suit your needs.

The review by Euro Gamer has some great video of the graphic performance on all there types of drives used in testing. You can see for yourself the graphical differences in the performance across all three drives. Check out the link above.