General / Off-Topic Solid State Drive

[Old Duck]

Back in my PS3 days, I updated my hard drive to an SSD. It obviously didn't improve framerates, but it did improve load times, scene transitions, and it reduced texture popping.

I've not done this yet on the PS4, first because it will need to be much bigger (and thus more expensive) drive, and second, the games I play are already pretty fast. Even ESO, which is likely the "biggest" game I play, loads fast enough for my needs, and I've not noticed slow texture popping like I did on some PS3 games. I suspect this is due to 8G RAM in PS4 vs 256M in PS3.

A recent thread about ED on XBox has me wondering if texture popping (the transition from low res textures to high on planetary descent) and load times (ie - hyperspace) might be an issue that an SSD could help alleviate. Does anyone here run a PS4, or an Xbox for that matter, with an SSD instead of the default spinning drive? If so, please share your experiences with other games. If you have an Xbox with an SSD, do you see an improvement in ED? Also feel free to speculate - it wouldn't be a Frontier forum without a healthy dose of speculation

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

I have an external USB3 SSD for my Xbox One, which I run all of my games off.

I do see a noticeable improvement in performance compared to the internal drive, although not significantly greater than the boost from using an external USB3 HDD or SSHD.


Eurogamer's Digital Foundry has done tests on using the standard internal HDD, an SSHD, and an SSD with the Xbox One, PS4, and PS4 Pro.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-xbox-one-external-hard-drive-upgrade-guide

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-should-you-upgrade-your-xbox-one-with-an-ssd

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-is-it-worth-upgrading-your-ps4-with-an-ssd

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...pro-ssd-upgrade-does-sata-3-make-a-difference

 

[Airwave]

I would go for a fast HDD with mass storage. Its a shame many places not longer list the read/write speeds any more in the specs. but a SSD is just over spending for a console.

 

[Asp Explorer]

I've been happy with the 1Tb Seagate hybrid drives in our PS4's.

I did try a pure 256Gb Samsung SSD, but while there was bit of improvement in load times, there wasn't enough of an improvement to justify the loss of space.

 

[cheesenbiscuits]

I've been happy with the 1Tb Seagate hybrid drives in our PS4's.

I did try a pure 256Gb Samsung SSD, but while there was bit of improvement in load times, there wasn't enough of an improvement to justify the loss of space.

And the last thing we want in this particular game is loss of space

 

[willowfan]

I also have a hybrid drive in the PS4. Boots up lightning fast and load times are perfectly reasonable.

 

[stormyuk]

From what I've read on a few sites which have done comparisons it's not really worth upgrading the stock drive to Hybrid or SSD for performance boosts. It's all very marginal.

 

[shadragon]

From what I've read on a few sites which have done comparisons it's not really worth upgrading the stock drive to Hybrid or SSD for performance boosts. It's all very marginal.

Then never go back to those sites again. The difference is dramatic, at least twice as fast, typically 3-5 times faster.

An SSD will boost your load times significantly and make the whole game smoother. SSD's operate with no moving parts, are quieter and have no vibration. The only serious down side is a working SSD can go dead in a millisecond. Make sure you keep nothing on an SSD you need without at least one backup.

The Samsung 850 Pro is the one I would recommend. You can get them up to a TB in size.

A PCIe SSD is even faster, with NVMe / M.2 drives faster again, but I doubt you could make them work inside a console. There could be hacks out there to do it though.

http://www.storagereview.com/ssd_vs_hdd

http://www.fastestssd.com/featured/ssd-rankings-the-fastest-solid-state-drives/

 

[stormyuk]

You are talking PC yes? I agree. I have an SSD in my PC and it makes a massive difference.

All the reputable sites that have done tests on PS4 Pro shows it's marginal at best. You save a few seconds at best with boot up and games on the PS4 Pro.

 

[Old Duck]

From what I've read on a few sites which have done comparisons it's not really worth upgrading the stock drive to Hybrid or SSD for performance boosts. It's all very marginal.

I think it has a lot to do with the game itself. A game like Overwatch would see very little benefit from going to SSD. I think a game like ESO might benefit somewhat. On the PS3, Skyrim benefited greatly, particularly going in and out of buildings. The SSD practically eliminated the texture popping in Dragon's Dogma, which made the SSD a worthy upgrade. However, the PS3 had ridiculously little RAM, so it is very likely the PS4 won't see the same ROI with an SSD.

When ED comes out, I hope some of you with the hybrids and SSDs on your PS4 will revisit this thread to tell us how ED plays for you. I'm still also curious about Xbox and even PC performance differences between HD and SSD.

 

[Mr Cynical]

I picked up an elite xbox console when they were clearing them out and it has a 1tb hybrid ssd.

Prior to having that I ran elite on xbox via an external 2tb seagate expansion 2.5inch.

To be honest, I haven't really noticed any better performance from the internal ssd hybrid, and pretty much all I play on xbox is elite, so the drive is not being confused with lots of different games going in the cache.

Still, the controller is nice

 

[CMDR Lukas Vance]

From what I've read on a few sites which have done comparisons it's not really worth upgrading the stock drive to Hybrid or SSD for performance boosts. It's all very marginal.

That's what I got from reading the links above. Load times improved (would have really helped with FO4; they were terrible!) but the 'snap' of textures loads is not going to be affected at all.

I'll let someone else try it first with their dollars =]

 

[Old Duck]

I've recently came into possession of an extra SSD drive, which I popped into my PS4 this evening. I've been waiting for ED to download (feels like June 25th all over again), so once it does I'll try it out and let you all know if it makes any difference. I'm guessing it will make a small difference, but probably not enough to warrant buying one new at full price.

 

[CMDR Lukas Vance]

I've recently came into possession of an extra SSD drive, which I popped into my PS4 this evening.

Does this mean you got it for free? Or have you become one of those kids who throws their money around!?

 

[Old Duck]

Does this mean you got it for free? Or have you become one of those kids who throws their money around!?

Technically it was not "free", but it was acquired via very thrifty means (no, I didn't steal it). As for it's effect on ED, it shaves off some time at the "loading" screen, and I think it gets rid of some stutter in some particular places, but it's definitely not worth buying at cost IMO just for ED. It seems that the places that cause delays and most stutters in ED are either server related or computation related. For example, the galaxy and system maps still take time to pop up, and they cause that stuttering while doing so. The initial preload screen where the little boxes spin is still kinda long, as I assume this is where ED is negotiating with the server about our accounts. Of course, popping out of supercruise in a busy open system still is a long wait, as that's all server wait as well.

I've only played a little bit since installing the SSD, so I need more time to really get a feel for everything like texture popping the other temporal artifacts. The PS4 itself feels snappier (the OS, menus, etc), and I'm hoping to see noticeable improvements on games like ESO that have long load times between certain scenes / zones.

Ironically one of the best performance improvements is free - playing in Solo mode, especially anywhere near busy systems. Hopefully someday that will change, as I normally like playing in open. Perhaps it's different for you guys with FTTH Internet.

My final thought is that Frontier still has room for optimization, and I'm not talking about turning graphical settings to low under-the-hood to give us higher FPS. I would like to see more consistent FPS and some improvements in graphical quality (things like blurry shadows and textures). As someone who has played HZD, you know what PS4 is capable of when developers take the time to implement hardware-specific optimizations.