How well does a 1TB SSD Performance work in the PS3? 

I responded to a Reddit thread years ago of someone asking if an SSD would speed up their PS3. I was down voted because I said it would, but brainlets on reddit said the SATA speeds would make it not be any faster. Go figure then a non moving drive is faster than a moving drive. Who'd thunk that. Great video!

Worth it alone for how snappy and responsive it makes the XMB & MultiMan menus. Especially if you have a ton of ISO's archived.

2006...My God, that seems like a lifetime ago. Though it was at the tail end, I so miss the sixth console generation.

Why does RU-vid NOW recommend this?? This is what I’d like to see day of.

One thing I saw when I upgraded to a ssd on my ps3, when using heavy titles like GTAV or metal Gear 4/5 and black ops 2 was instant texture pop in. Where all the game assets loaded properly and quickly. Also load time diminished.

Ps3 is such a great console even today so many great games to go back and play

If you have a backwards compatible, especially an A01 or B01, this makes the most amount of sense for loading up a BUNCH of PS2 games to the internal storage! Makes it where you don’t have to go look for discs or worry about wearing out lasers!

Another benefit of the SSD is the thermals. Mechanical drives generate a lot more heat which the console has to work even harder to dissipate and cool. By using an SSD, you're keeping the internal temps down and prolonging the life of the console and reducing YLOD.

Two things to note about the installation of fear 3. It's either a limitation of the BluRay drive or a limitation of the SATA generation that both HDD and SSD are connected to. It's likely that it's a little of both. Even HDDs saw an improvement in performance shifting from SATA 3 gbps to SATA 6 gbps

Not too bad, but you can see that the console is unable to fully utilize the SSD.

Thank you for making this video to compare, I have always been curious on how well an SSD will work in a PS3. Now I have to change my drive out lol

What lots of people dont talk about is the fact that while the PS3 has a SATA port its actually converted from USB 3.0 So you are getting really slow speeds from that SATA slot. Maybe a PS3 Slim fixed it giving native SATA but i doubt it. Second, one of biggest benefits of using a SSD is going to the PS store and navigation everything is smooth as butter while the HDD takes forever to load stuff up and menus are chugging alone. Lastly what no one online talks about is Textures. Look at a game like boarderlands or something that is trying to stream data. You will have things loading in late. With an SSD everything loads in clear. The PS3 was an interesting system that quite frankly got cut back to save money that it really hurt it in the end. Im more excited to see emulation in the next 5 years making these games run like they should have.

I fitted a cheap 256GB one years ago, when prices got so low they were peanuts. All modem SATA SSDs would saturate PS3's SATA interface, it was always the random read and write that made PS3 so much faster in XMB. It sped up installation and loading in several games, helping out MGS4 and Gran Turismo 5 in my own tests. GT6 had several infamously huge patches that could crash PS3 if you didn't install one at a time- with an SSD it could manage it all at once.

Good video, informative and concise. Also, thanks for the timestamps.

I had a spare HDD and SSD (both 1tb) laying about and put the HHD in my PS3 slim because I heard that unless games were digital or very hard drive bound, the results are negligible. Granted that was before I got games like GT5 and GT6. Thanks for the video to show differences!

Even in online gaming on SSD is crazy..

Good video! I really liked how you showed and told some information about each game!

I installed an ssd years ago the added benefit is that you have a ton of free space. Remember guys games were a lot smaller (storage) than they are today! I still have the PS3 today and it still works great.

I installed an SSD in my ps3 super slim in 2015. At that time, I suggested that it was worth it. The SSD I used was a cheap lower end one. The SSD is still in there, working like a champ. Still no issues after all these years. Granted, this all was published on a website that shut down nearly 5 years ago. I'm glad to see that people are trying new things with the devices they have.

I’ve had an SSD in my ps3 for a while now, the ssd REALLY helps with LittleBigPlanet 3. LBP2 also gets helped out with the SSD

I have a PS3. Thank you for the video. I will go ahead with the SSD installation now. subscribed

Very well done video : straight to the point, with summary at the end. Thanks Sir!

Exactly what I was looking for! Great video mate!

I recently upgraded my PS3 with an SSD and although it only makes a marginal difference to load times due to SATA 1 speeds, it makes a MASSIVE difference to both the snappiness of the XMB and level streaming in game. When playing GTA 4, it used to take about 7 seconds to load in everything around me and nothing would load in when travelling at massive speeds, now everything loads almost instantaneously and traversal stutter is completely gone

Nice work! I have a 480GB SSD in my PS3. Load times are good (and the XMB is very snappy). I might try to copy the data into a 2.5-inch HDD (either with the backup utility or Acronis) in order to compare loading times. I don't plan to compare install times thought.

I recently had this question. I vaguely remember finding an answer but I'm glad I was recommended this video. Thank you!

It runs cooler with an SSD.

wow they used Swap Meet by Nirvana in the main menu of Motorstorm Pacific Rift, never noticed that before. Very underrated song

Honestly such a cool video! Thanks for making my day, I woke up to this and took my first cup of coffee 🥰

Bro is so passionate about games and technology that got me thinking about going back to my PS3 and give it the SSD treatment along with getting a FEAR 3 copy lol Thanks for the video

Great content man! Keep it up! So many awesome details.

I've been pondering this question for years now, thank you.

Amazing work

Hey Champ, all of my ps3 videos are using the Samsung EVO 870 1tb and I use hardware upscaling too. Last thing, if you want the absolute best from the ps3, the RSX must be overclocked. Ive tried a few and the 750Mhz boost is just excellent 🥊🥊🔥🙏

My brother was an early adopter of SSDs....he had a 32GB SSD but he didn't pay $699 for it...I think he bought it when it was like $300...I thought he was crazy for paying $300 for 32GB when you could get like a 250GB or 320GB mechanical drive for about half that....but at the same time I wasn't into PC gaming at that time....What I used a PC for was very light...web browsing, listening to music and watching videos. About 6 years ago I got into PC gaming and realized how important an SSD really is...I had a laptop with a 512GB SSD and 1TB mechanical drive and put my AAA games on the SSD and put stuff like emulators, ROMs, music and movies on the mechanical drive. Now I just have an SSD in my laptop and just need more space for everything I do on it...

upgraded mine modded to 1TB SSD. love it

The best way to play Infamous is mostly in order: Infamous, Infamous 2, Infamous: Festival of Blood, Infamous: First Light, Infamous: Second Son 😊

It's a freaking massive improvement. So much so a few games actually perform better due to less loading pauses dragging the minimums down. It's incredible and totally worth it if you love your PS3. Get one with high endurance. I got a 500GB 860 Evo for mine and it should last the life of the console with care.

I enjoy how you have a little snippet of info and your own opinion with every game you use, Infamous 1 and 2 are great ways to look at the ps3 development life considering infamous 1 was a release title and infamous released near the end of the ps3 life cycle. The ps3 architecture was tricky and took longer to learn how it works compared to other consoles. I also suggest you play them in order, the story would make more sense

For a 512gb ssd for only 20 bucks I said why not? Jus last week I started thinking of updating the old 250 drive.

This was awesome thank you so much for this

5200rpm HDD really does drag compared to solid state Certain instances seem to also be limited by the CPU and ram prioritizations due to the PS3's optimization.

Great test! 15~30 seconds per load time it's great!

This is a great video, it's what sold me on grabbing an SSD for my PS3 rather than relying on the stock drive. I ended up grabbing a 512GB one and it fits every single game I ever wanted to play on it! Regarding the Gran Turismo 6 portion where the icons load in, playing Destiny on PS3 is the same way. Pressing start opens the menu, where by default on the HDD all the icons slowly load in and make the system laggy until they're finished. On SSD, they load in nearly instantly, letting me swap weapons in under a second. It's life-changing!

Big work. Thank you.

great video thanks mate

Bro is just out here doing gamer science and being a wholesome individual. Keep it up 🫡

I know this video is a year old, but I had read sometime towards the end of the PS3 lifespan that in addition to some quicker load times as you demonstrated here, that games that requires swap space for assets stored on the drive would show benefits as well. I remember the first RAGE when I played it and still had a spinning HDD in the PS3. The texture load in alone was pretty brutal in that game. But after putting in the SSD, the texture loads were almost non existent. I'be bee installing SSDs in most all of my storage based consoles since. Including one in my PS4 Pro and even my PS2. Am I getting the performance of the SSD on most of these consoles? No, but the added benefits you have shown in addition to many other mentioned in previous comments are why I did.

there's other benefits besides loading times. when GTAV released, i couldn't even properly play it on the PS3. pop-ins while driving made it unplayable. whole buildings and trees would just appear out of nowhere, because of how slow the old HDD streamed data. threw in an SSD, and i was able to play the game to completion just fine.

Great video! at the time you released it i could very well have been doing similar testing on an xbox one x with an SSD, a mechanical drive, and a hybrid which leads me to a little bit of constructive criticism (whether or not you've changed things since, i do not know, so this could be void now) and that's with the testing from booting the game to gameplay, which whilst still being a very valid real-world test (as sometimes you just want to jump into a game) i find it flawed due to the often unskippable intros, and the navigation of menus. I find it better to split it into 2 separate tasks (boot to main menu, and from clicking play to being in game) as this more accurately represents the load times which you will encounter much more frequently (e.g. you beat a level and go onto the next, or die and re-load) and as such i consider it a more important metric, and because it cuts out the unavoidable intros and shows you the actual performance difference of the drives

I cannot express enough how much I love that shirt.

My PS3 was great until it died. Then I got it fixed, and then it died again. Then I got a new PS3, but it looked like it would die again. Great games, terrible hardware.😞

I got an SSD just so the XMB would quit stuttering, the hard drives used even in the PS3 slims are way way worse than the ones eventually used in the PS4. The loading times in games are not that bad but it's the responsiveness that really counts

ive got a 1tb ssd in my ps3 slim... been in there about 2 years, its perhaps marginally faster but its more consistent which was a bigger factor for me... and more reliable.

This is the best video about this topic

good job great work

this guy looks so friendly, i like him

Considering how inexpensive SSDs are now, it's definitely worth it. Beyond improving loading times, it eliminates the lag that occurs when populating menu lists in both the XMB and in-game. No more disk seek!

I would love to upgrade all 5 of my PlayStations. An SSD for my 3 and 5 is definitely top of the list.

It seems obvious that it should improve performance. It can't increase the maximum transfer speed limits of the PS3, but certainly the lookup speed, as there is no moving head anymore. I think the instantly loading icons in the GT menu are a perfect example for this. On the HDD, looking up every icon always takes a moment, which is why they load visibly one after another. Also the default HDD maybe doesn't even max out the possible transfer limits of the PS3, but I would think an SSD would basically max out the PS3 storage speed as far as possible.

3:19 That kind of reminds me of Fable 2 on X360. The difference between playing it off the DVD and off the HDD. With the DVD, the menus would stutter with every single item. While with the HDD, the menus were completely smooth.

I installed a ssd in my ps3 too. The big thing holding back the ssd speed is the ps3 sata controller which a sata I. The iops are way better than a spinning hdd.

Great video

Hey OP, while loading from the disc vs SSD, were you loading the disc with an HDD installed, or an SSD? Playing Payday 2 with a disc + SSD in my PS3, I still load into an online map much faster than everyone else.

One of the biggest differences for me was dark souls 2, going from disc which loaded 20-30 seconds on deaths or teleporting to about 5 seconds with an ssd

Great video.

I dont care loading times , thats when you drink beer. :)

I installed an SSD into my PS3 back in 2010 using a 128Gb. System remained cooler longer, faster install & level load times, less jaggies, & smoother gameplay. I installed an SSD in my base & Pro PS4 as well.

For GT 6 in practice you might not notice that much, the game loads the map as you tune your car, so if you are used to tuning your car before racing, it will be almost instantaneously, just try it, open the start race menu and wait a few seconds before pressing to start, it will take less time to load as it would have already loaded part of it

And this is why I've held off on touching my PS3 in terms of modding- may as well install an SSD, then go about modding it.

Never cracked the ps3 kinda, so now I guess I should do that also

If you like Infamous 2 then you should try the DLC Blood Festival. I think at time of writing it is still able to be purchased/downloaded.

This upgrade has 2 other bonuses that makes it worth it the XMB Menu works better but also games perform slightly better not just loading faster but actually playing closer to what they should've played as since the console doesn't have to allocate as many resources to loading the game anymore once its loaded its loaded

People always state “it cant take advantage of the hardware”. Those people have no clue, what they are talking about. The menu is improved, pop in is improved, and the screening tearing is gone. So the major complaints are gone. Any game that needs internal storage will see a massive difference. Far Cry for example is such a big difference. The SSD will always perform better. GTA V being installed on the SSD only huge difference in performance, and load times. Im not sure what SSD I put in my PS3 super slim. But theres not really load times. Im doing the same thing to my PS4 to increase its performance, & mainly storage.

I installed an SSD (1TB Crucial MX500) in my PS4 at the end of 2020 and have been happy with it. So last summer, when I spotted the 500GB model of the MX500 selling for just £30 on Amazon UK, I thought I'd upgrade my PS3 Slims 160GB HDD. And I've been happy with the results, like the PS4 the PS3 UI feels, for lack of a better term, snappier on an SSD. It was cheap enough where I figured it would be worth it either way, and as I run stock OS (ie not CFW), 500GB is plenty of space for me personally. When I did the backup & restore, I only had about 40-50GB of data, so was able to use a 64GB USB stick. It took about 2.5hrs for the backup then 90m for the restore. I know that with an SSD you may eventually run into issues, due to the lack of TRIM support. But personally I always keep save backups etc. so it's less of a concern and you could always do a backup to a spare USB HDD and then restore that, if/when you ran into issues. Also for those on CFW looking to maximise the storage, there's conflicting info whether the PS3 supports max of 1TB or 1.5TB. But a 1TB HDD or SSD is probably a safer bet. As for what SSD to pick, some will suggest any cheap SSD as the PS3 is only SATA 1, but I'm not so sure. Cheaper SSDs typically have no DRAM cache, which can effect performance & lifespan, and may even have slower writes than a HDD. All I can say is my PS3 & PS4 run well on the MX500 drives, so those are what I'll typically recommend.

Nice Video

Infamous and Infamous 2 are just about my favorite games on the PS3. Yes, I highly recommend you play Infamous (the original) in addition to its sequel ! It would make more sense to play them in order for the storyline. It's not 100% necessity IMO

The main question I have is this: what kind of SSD did you purchase? Was it one with a DRAM Cache and high quality NAND? Or was it a cheap no-name SSD. Because some SSDs can perform worse than a hard drive if they’re made too cheaply.

Definitely play the first Infamous before 2.

The SATA interface on the PS3 is only 1.5Gb/s the SSD will make ALMOST no difference that a better HDD can't already offer, but will improve reliability

hm Nice Video And Good Work but how it will take long to play GTA IV in a ssd from an hdd that would be epic

Very cool. I wonder, does it affect the overall quality of life? Like in the home menus or pop in, in games? The loading times seem good when you consider how snappy we are used to modern games. Anything helps lol. I had put a ssd in my Xbox one x. I was having issues with the menus loading and overall quality of life got to be a chore. With the ps3 super slim I have, I got it off eBay but they never mentioned it was missing the hdd and the bracket so atm I have my old Xbox hdd in my ps3 and I 3d printed a bracket. Def thinking about upgrading it to a ssd.

hi, well long time ago with a slim console i made an hdd upgrade replaces with an mx500, some games like syrim had some improvment, such as graphica texturel loading better , everything sounded so smooth...:)

Using a special cli tool to hide the last 300GB I have 1.7TB available of a 2TB SSD. Absolutely worth it

These times need to be redone. You said you'll skip thru menus quick but you did only for the SSD. You chose your track @ 1:52 compared to the HDD versions you took your time clicking what you needed.

I have a sony Frankenstein backwards compatible ps3 with oc cfw and a 1tb ssd. Makes the ps3 run like you remember not like how it actually does

Can u test Modnation Racer load times? That the game that I know have really long loading times per race.

Pacific rift. Man I grew up on that game

Tekken tag 2 was pain in the ass of loading.

I think with the release of God of War 3 and how much of a technical marvel that game is, developers realized what the ps3 was truly capable of. Which is why 2010 to 2013 had much bigger games and by extension longer load times. Before it was making games with the 5200hdd in mind to be fast, but now it was understanding the cell processor and throwing everything at it. So while better games came out, loading times suffered. That's also why upgrading to a faster drive was so crucial and why you see a such an improvement in all the games shown in this video. It's why videos like this are so important because people who want to go back and play these games or mod their ps3s want to see if there's any improvement and there obviously is. Games that take advantage of the hdd to stream assets also take advantage of a faster drive. Gta 4 helps when speeding through the city, and while performance is only slightly improved, it's not a smudge of textures and the motion blur is more manageable. With Killzone 2 on a standard hdd, when moving to a new section, the game will completely stop almost like it freezes to load into a new area. With just a 7200rpm hdd, is enough speed to completely eliminate that stop and the game just becomes smooth.

On GTA games the results on the SSD are impressive

Making my prediction before the video even gets going. Yes, it will be a noticeable difference, but not enough to really mean anything special. Also, I know the PS3 came out in 2006, but my first experience with the console wasn’t until my freshman year of college in 2011. The only console I’ve ever had when it was still new was the Switch. I still haven’t gotten a PS5 yet, every time I have the money to get one everywhere I try is sold out and I have to use the money for something else before they come back in stock again. At this rate I’ll be able to get one when the PS5 Pro model comes out likely next year and it will be the first pro model console I’ve ever owned.

I have a question, which SSD did you use? Is it the one in the thumbnail, would love to know. Thanks. ( oups nevermind I just saw your previous video that answered my question )

Been thinking of getting an ssd for my ps3 for a while now ever since collecting games for the system a few years ago

Long time ago back in 2013 a PS3 super slim and internal ssd was a must back then and I used a 128 gb

I have updated my console with a 1tb hhd but the games cutscenes are glitching! Game runs perfect just cutscenes!! Do you think it's the new hhd and changing to a ssd would fix the issue?

Interesting. I upgraded my PS3 Super Slim with a 7200 RPM HDD a few years ago. I didn't have a lot to spend and I wanted more storage. Also, I found some old Digital Foundry tests that suggested you'd get most of the potential benefits by upgrading to a better HDD and an SSD wouldn't be much faster due to the limitations of the system. I'd be curious to see the SSD compared to a faster HDD.

That's crazy man

Sonic 2006 would be interesting to test.

Anyone know if it has anything to do with BC PS2 Games . I installed ssd into my ps3 . Redownloaded ps2 data utility. Now the screen goes black . If I use component cables it will chirp sound blink the screen then nothing. Put the old HDD back and same thing now .