PS4 and SSD's

[Dave3000]

I was thinking about upgrading to a Samsung 840 EVO 500GB SSD for my PS4. I'm getting long load times in MLB 14 The Show and when starting Watch Dogs. Would an SSD make a noticeable improvement in these situations on the PS4? What about a hybrid SSD? If I get a hybrid SSD and can get a 1TB for less than a 500GB SSD. I don't see myself needing more than 10 games installed at a time in my PS4 and even on a 1TB it will eventually fill up if I don't delete games as I buy more PS4 games. I also have a spare 750 GB 7200 rpm hard drive 2.5-inch but I accidently dropped it on the floor and I don't trust it anymore.

 

[hans030390]

There are a few benchmarks floating around on the internet that will answer your question. Long story short, the PS4 does benefit from faster hard drives.

 

[Arkaign]

This thread has a ton of feedback on that, including specific results with PS4 + SSD + MLB The Show 2014.

http://www.dayonepatch.com/index.php?/topic/106571-anyone-put-an-ssd-in-their-ps4/

Looks like the difference was substantial for that title.

Hybrids are not that great TBH, there's nothing about them that really benefits much over a standard hard drive. Some of the comparisons I've seen between stock HDD and Hybrid HDD/SSD drives forget to account that the stock drives are 5400RPM, and many of the hybrids they're looking at also have 7200RPM drives.

IOW : a 1TB 7200RPM HDD vs. a 1TB + 8GB Hybrid HDD will perform virtually identically in most respects (as 8GB is almost nothing, and there's not a lot of cross-loading going on with small library files as in Windows). Even in Windows PCs, if the most-used stuff isn't being stored in the SSD cache, or if the PC has so much ram that it seldom hits the HDD for general OS activity, once again hybrid drives don't do much.

I just feel it's somewhat misleading to even call them 'SSD' in any major way. They're just standard hard drives with a teeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiny SSD cache on them. Eg : in your case 500GB Samsung Evo with 500GB of SSD space, all of it deadly fast, vs 500GB Hybrid Drive with 8GB of SSD space. 500 vs 8.

But yeah that price. SSD have come down a ton, but 500GB will still set you back. Up to you if you think it's worth it.

 

[mnewsham]

I haven't used my PS4 WITHOUT a SSD pretty much since I got it so I don't really have much to compare it to, but it is solidly fast at loading games and I don't really have any complaints. I download my games though and save them directly to the SSD so that may effect it as well vs. disc based games, haven't seen any testing in that regard however.

 

[zerocool84]

If you have money to burn then yes, if not then every comparison I've read says it's not worth the cost of the SSD since at those sizes they are really expensive.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PlayStation_4_Hard_Drive_Speed_Test_Comparison

 

[mmntech]

If you have money to burn then yes, if not then every comparison I've read says it's not worth the cost of the SSD since at those sizes they are really expensive.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PlayStation_4_Hard_Drive_Speed_Test_Comparison

Yep, performance does seem to be hit and miss. I've seen people put SSDs into the Xbox One as well, and the results are pretty similar. Cold boot and loading times might improve by 5-7 seconds. Though when you're dropping $300 or more on a drive, it's not worth it. I just don't think the firmware is optimized to take advantage of the increased performance of SSDs.

 

[mnewsham]

Yep, performance does seem to be hit and miss. I've seen people put SSDs into the Xbox One as well, and the results are pretty similar. Cold boot and loading times might improve by 5-7 seconds. Though when you're dropping $300 or more on a drive, it's not worth it. I just don't think the firmware is optimized to take advantage of the increased performance of SSDs.

Has nothing to do with the firmware, just that most of the game data is stored in RAM, vary rarely do you have to have loading screens anymore at all, but when you DO have a loading screen the PS4 with the SSD will generally be 20-60% faster depending on how much data it is loading. If you have a game like MLB which requires a good bit of loading than the SSD will save you a decent chunk of time. But MOST games currently released don't have as much loading time as MLB, so for the moment not too many games will see huge advantages. But the games where there is lots of loading to be done you will see a significant decrease in load times with an SSD over HDD.

It's up to you whether or not that is worth it to you, for many people it isn't and understandably, it is after all just cutting down on your waiting time.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

This thread has a ton of feedback on that, including specific results with PS4 + SSD + MLB The Show 2014.

http://www.dayonepatch.com/index.php?/topic/106571-anyone-put-an-ssd-in-their-ps4/

Looks like the difference was substantial for that title.

Hybrids are not that great TBH, there's nothing about them that really benefits much over a standard hard drive. Some of the comparisons I've seen between stock HDD and Hybrid HDD/SSD drives forget to account that the stock drives are 5400RPM, and many of the hybrids they're looking at also have 7200RPM drives.

IOW : a 1TB 7200RPM HDD vs. a 1TB + 8GB Hybrid HDD will perform virtually identically in most respects (as 8GB is almost nothing, and there's not a lot of cross-loading going on with small library files as in Windows). Even in Windows PCs, if the most-used stuff isn't being stored in the SSD cache, or if the PC has so much ram that it seldom hits the HDD for general OS activity, once again hybrid drives don't do much.

I just feel it's somewhat misleading to even call them 'SSD' in any major way. They're just standard hard drives with a teeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiny SSD cache on them. Eg : in your case 500GB Samsung Evo with 500GB of SSD space, all of it deadly fast, vs 500GB Hybrid Drive with 8GB of SSD space. 500 vs 8.

But yeah that price. SSD have come down a ton, but 500GB will still set you back. Up to you if you think it's worth it.

yeah, Hybrid drives are turning into a joke. Several years ago when 64GB drives were still well over $100 the Hybrids with 8GB SSD cache (500GB HDD + 8GB SSD @ ~$100) weren't so bad. Now we're at a point where 64GB SSDs aren't even made anymore, and 128GB drives are in the process of being phased out, and we see Seagate keep upping the HDD capacity with NAND staying the same (4TB HDD + 8GB SSD is pretty pathetic). Hybrids using that kind of capacity (64-128GB) for cache would make sense, kind of like the WD Black^2, although that's just a dual drive (120GB SSD and a separate 1TB HDD all in the same package), not a cache

 

[SpacemanSpiff46]

Never tried one of this Hybrids, it seemed way too sketchy. I don't think its worth buying an SSD for a console. Like others have said it does seem to be hit or miss and you'd have to spend a bit to get a good capacity.

 

[TeknoBug]

I picked up a 1TB 7200rpm HDD for my PS4, a noticeable jump in load times from the 5400rpm 500GB but not that big. With some big games like NBA 2K14 or MLB The Show will still take a long time to load. But games like Madden 25, Trials Fusion and MGS5 was loading a bit quicker.

Yeah I wouldn't waste time and money with hybrid SSHD's.

 

[jacktesterson]

The load times is my biggest complaint for the Show. I play it daily.

 

[exdeath]

1TB Evo ftw

 

[smackababy]

If you have money to burn then yes, if not then every comparison I've read says it's not worth the cost of the SSD since at those sizes they are really expensive.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PlayStation_4_Hard_Drive_Speed_Test_Comparison

The problem is they didn't test a real game fully installed to the HDD. Resogun is around 500mb in total size. That is easily fully loaded into memory and never touched against. The disc based games don't install everything to the HDD, just certain assets, so the load times are improved, but you're still relying on an optical drive for some data transfer.

I would be more interested in seeing disc + SDD vs pure digital.

 

[Blintok]

Jumping into this thread instead of making a new one.

I just got a PS4/The Last of Us bundle. Been looking at putting in a 1T evo SSD as i love the SSD in my computers.

One thing that occured to me about the SSD. What about garbage collection? (TRIM)
Does the ps4 support this? How will it affect the SSD performance as you use the drive
(reads / writes / deletes)

 

[mnewsham]

Jumping into this thread instead of making a new one.

I just got a PS4/The Last of Us bundle. Been looking at putting in a 1T evo SSD as i love the SSD in my computers.

One thing that occured to me about the SSD. What about garbage collection? (TRIM)
Does the ps4 support this? How will it affect the SSD performance as you use the drive
(reads / writes / deletes)

Unless it's a much older generation SSD it wont be an issue as the controller generally has it's own garbage collection that it runs if the OS you are using doesn't support TRIM.

 

[Tweak155]

Jumping into this thread instead of making a new one.

I just got a PS4/The Last of Us bundle. Been looking at putting in a 1T evo SSD as i love the SSD in my computers.

One thing that occured to me about the SSD. What about garbage collection? (TRIM)
Does the ps4 support this? How will it affect the SSD performance as you use the drive
(reads / writes / deletes)

I didn't realize this bundle existed... after googling I can't find one for the US. Can I find this bundle somewhere online?

 

[Blintok]

Unless it's a much older generation SSD it wont be an issue as the controller generally has it's own garbage collection that it runs if the OS you are using doesn't support TRIM.

cool, thanks

So i am guessing the Samsung EVO drive will fall into the - its own - garbage collection.

Now to decide if i want to get a 500g or 1T Evo. Cant see me having more than 6ish games installed at a time. So maybe the 500 be enough. It is also cheaper by about ½ compared to the 1T

 

[Pheran]

Someone should make a 2TB hybrid with around 32GB of SSD on it, that might actually be useful. It's probably enough for the OS and most of whatever game you are currently playing.

 

[mnewsham]

cool, thanks

So i am guessing the Samsung EVO drive will fall into the - its own - garbage collection.

Now to decide if i want to get a 500g or 1T Evo. Cant see me having more than 6ish games installed at a time. So maybe the 500 be enough. It is also cheaper by about ½ compared to the 1T

I had a 240GB SSD I wasn't using on my PC so I threw that in my PS4. I only have a handful of games right now, and I only regularly play 1 or 2 so the small size doesn't effect me at all. If I had more games it might be an issue, but i doubt I will ever be playing more than a handful of games at a time. When a new game comes out I will just uninstall my least played game and install the new one.

 

[mnewsham]

I didn't realize this bundle existed... after googling I can't find one for the US. Can I find this bundle somewhere online?

Futureshop.ca would probably ship to the US. but you will be paying more for it than you would just buying a PS4 and then buying last of us in the US.

 

[Tweak155]

Futureshop.ca would probably ship to the US. but you will be paying more for it than you would just buying a PS4 and then buying last of us in the US.

Lame. Guess I'll just wait for a killer deal... they should come up soon with BF around the corner.

 

[Blintok]

FYI i got the PS4 / The Last of Us remaster at Bestbuy Canada.
I also traded in my old PS3 and some PS3 games.

 

[artemicion]

Has anyone posted data on the benefits of SSDs in PS4s? Last I read was when Tom's Hardware posted an article awhile back which concluded that the benefits are small and the overall gist of the article was that it wasn't worth it. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ps4-hard-drive-upgrade,3695-4.html) Seems like they did tests using digital versions of games as well.

 

[smackababy]

Has anyone posted data on the benefits of SSDs in PS4s? Last I read was when Tom's Hardware posted an article awhile back which concluded that the benefits are small and the overall gist of the article was that it wasn't worth it. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ps4-hard-drive-upgrade,3695-4.html) Seems like they did tests using digital versions of games as well.

I haven't seen any real comprehensive tests on whether a faster SSD would actually benefit the console. I would imagine that any game that loads from disc would benefit a good deal, and depending on how much is loading and when, depends on the game itself. It wouldn't work for games like GTA5 that stream from disc and HDD as much, for instance.

 

[mnewsham]

Has anyone posted data on the benefits of SSDs in PS4s? Last I read was when Tom's Hardware posted an article awhile back which concluded that the benefits are small and the overall gist of the article was that it wasn't worth it. (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ps4-hard-drive-upgrade,3695-4.html) Seems like they did tests using digital versions of games as well.

depends on the game, games like MLB the show which have abysmally long loads apparently benefit the most.