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Installed a 120GB SSD in my PS3

T

The Cat Empire

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 26, 2011
61
0
I just wanted to say I put a brand new Intel SSD 320 series (120GB) drive in my PS3 it so much faster now. I installed the RAGE demo and there was absolutely NO TEXTURE STREAMING POP-IN issues. Awesome!

I can't wait to play GTA IV on this thing (hopefully no more magically buildings magically appearing out of nowhere and faster load times. It has to be faster because I know a huge amount of the game is installed to the hard drive).

That's all for me.

It's a good investment. Everyone should have SSD in their PS3s!

I'll post back here if there are other noticeable improvements in my games.
 
New discovery!

I was just playing Uncharted 3 and the few spots where there were really long texture load times... there are NONE now. The textures are ready to go immediately! I thought this game loaded everything off of blu-ray, but I was watching the system as it loaded the game and it must install stuff to the hard drive while it's loading because I saw the little yellow light blinking like crazy!

Anyways... no more texture pop in Uncharted 3! YESSSSSS!

Wow, and no texture loading problems in Multiplayer anymore too!

Wait, I take that back. I started a new game and I did see some texture loading in Uncharted 3, but I couldn't for the life of me get anything to pop-in on GTA IV. So that's some good news right there.
 
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I've been looking at doing this for ages now, but I'd need a 256GB SSD which is way too much - and even that would be a drop from my PS3 having a 320GB drive.
 
I want to do this as well, but as I just recently bought an SSD for my MBP, I gotta save up some money first!
 
That's quite awesome! Wish I didn't have 1) so much PS3 content and 2) an obsession with keeping it all installed at once, so I could go down that route too.
 
gkarris said:
I have an old 40 Gig "Fat" PS3 - can I get just a cheap SSD the same size?

Which ones are compatible? Got link?
Click to expand...

You can put an SSD in the PS3 you have. It can be any SSD. Intel has the lowest failure rate so I would go with them. Another great drive is the OWC drives (otherworldcomputing.com) because they have built in performance-keeping capabilities.

Also, the PS3 doesn't write a lot of data to the drive, so the performance isn't going to decrease much if at all. The PS3 is mostly reading off the drive, and only writes to it during game installs or saves, so you'd be fine with an Intel drive. Plus, the Intel drives have built-in garbage collection, so it's going to perform steadily even without TRIM support.

I would go Intel or OWC for sure.
 
The Cat Empire said:
Another great drive is the OWC drives (otherworldcomputing.com) because they have built in performance-keeping capabilities.

Plus, the Intel drives have built-in garbage collection, so it's going to perform steadily even without TRIM support.

I would go Intel or OWC for sure.
Click to expand...

Every SSD sold today has internal garbage collection in the drive's firmware. Some, like the Sandforce controller based drives (OWC/OCZ), seem to be more aggressive about it, but they all have it. This issue is really not relevant any longer in drive choice.
 
I did this with one of my fat PS3's a while ago. Cant say it changed much in the experience for me, maybe slower SSD ? But experience between the fat Ps3 with the SSD and the slim PS3 with the bigger HDD is indistinguishable to me. :(
 
Update... apparently it wasn't making much of a difference and it was mostly my imagination.

Uncharted 3 still had texture loading (after I quit the game and replayed it from the beginning) and I even had the road completely disappear in GTA IV (I think most of that game is streaming from the Blu-ray drive as well.)

Welp, I took out the stupid SSD drive and brought it back to Best Buy.

Oh well... it was fun experimenting at least.
 
The Cat Empire said:
Update... apparently it wasn't making much of a difference and it was mostly my imagination.

Uncharted 3 still had texture loading (after I quit the game and replayed it from the beginning) and I even had the road completely disappear in GTA IV (I think most of that game is streaming from the Blu-ray drive as well.)

Welp, I took out the stupid SSD drive and brought it back to Best Buy.

Oh well... it was fun experimenting at least.
Click to expand...

was it just uncharted 3? or all the other games as well?
 
maril1111 said:
was it just uncharted 3? or all the other games as well?
Click to expand...

The only thing I saw a real difference on was Rage but I don't even like that game. I couldn't see any texture loading with the SSD but I see it very easily with the HDD.

I also play Infamous 2, but that game is so perfectly streamlined anyway... I don't see any loading screens or texture loading EVER... and I mean EVER on HDD, Blu-ray or SSD.

It's weird. I tried to go fast enough to see textures load but somehow that game loads textures ultra fast because I they're always sharp as possible. It's quite amazing actually. Very good game too!
 
I'm trying to instal an Intel 120GB SSD from the 330 series into my PS3. The PS3 does not recognize the drive. Any ideas?
 
i have an SSD laying around that i've been meaning to put in my PS3, but didn't want to deal with the trouble with transferring over all of the data. what's the easiest way of "cloning" your current PS3 HDD to your SSD?
 
Wondering if there is a difference in texture swap between fat and slim PS3's ... the slim is lower power which I want and upgraded to, is this one of the sacrifices? I don't have both at the same time so I can't check, the hardware is pretty old so of course we are going to notice things like this now. Waiting on the PS4 and hoping issues like this are eliminated so we can get down to the professionally made 60fps action scene immersiveness. With better lighting shadows and no jaggies... it's gonna cost an arm and a leg.
 
No difference, the power savings of the new PS3s are entirely due to efficiency savings on CPU/GPU consumption rather than a paring of features. BD speed is exactly the same at 2x.
 
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