GT5 SSD - my experience

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burratha

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Colonel Fecker
Hi

This may have, no - most likely has been done before, but I wanted to share my own findings in relation to improving console performance in GT5.

The Playstation3 hardware is pretty much finite, with PD squeezing almost every ounce of performance out of the electronics in the little black box.

The only thing we can probably change or upgrade as users is the Hard Disk. I decided to stick my hand in my pocket and buy a 256GB SSD.... And to say I'm pleased with the results is a bit of an understatement!!

I've created a simple YouTube video with me starting from a PS3 dashboard view, and clicking through various menus in the game.

This video has not been altered in duration. All I've added is a bit of fade at the end, and a title at the beginning.

I'm interested to hear others' thoughts, and findings if they've also gone down the same route. Also, if anyone's able to post their speeds from stock hardware I'd also appreciate it.

The link is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UTYd3FSLrk&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Cheers,

Steve
 
While the improvement is not as big as I expected, it is still noticeable. Can you give a step by step guide on how you did it? I am interested in following the same route. I especially like the speed with which your garage loaded.
 
Basically, I used the built-in system backup utility to back the whole system up to a USB hard disk (FAT32 formatted). This took about 2-3 hours in all.

Took the old HDD out, put the SSD in and used the system restore utility to recover the data from the external HDD.

I then made sure the game data was installed and I was off. My PS3 is an old 80GB fatboy and used to take an absolute AGE to load anything on GT5 - so my own personal thoughts are this is bloody awesome! lol
 
I own an old 80Gb fat too, and compared to what my load times are that is a huge difference! Thanks for forcing me to place my hand into my wallet :p
 
I have considered it, but it's still a bit expensive if you want one big enough for more than a few games. But even a 60GB drive would be plenty for GT if you don't load it up with media.

I really hope that the PS4 doesn't go to a proprietary drive, as a SSD is getting to be a very viable option.
 
I could clearly say that the thing that takes player's time is not loading but mostly that quirky menu system :nervous:
 
I have a 80gb fatty and put in a spare SSD I had knocking around, a Crucial M225 64gb. The difference was quite drastic in GT5 (not so much other games), the biggest difference being when loading into a race.

If you have to spend a few hundred quid on this... i'm not sure, but if you're like me and have an SSD hanging around spare, it's worth doing.
 
Mine was out of a NetBook. The NetBook needed more HDD space, so I swapped the drives. I'm happy.
 
What's your read and write speed?

I tried a semi-crappy 64gb SSD a while back and it really didn't speed up my loading at all. The only thing that seemed to load a bit faster were replays.
 
No idea tbh.... it's a stock drive, that's now in the PS3. Don't know how I'd check it, unless there's a make/model lookup chart on the internet

**edit** It's a Samsung MMDPE56G5DX-0VBD1 256GB MLC SSD
 
Well I can't find that exact model anywhere, but it seems to be from around 2009?
How is it a "stock" drive unless you bought it with a laptop? Bought it bare/no box?
 
Wardez
How is it a "stock" drive unless you bought it with a laptop? Bought it bare/no box?
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Came out of a Dell. It's my definition of stock, anyway.

I appreciate that it's not going to be as quick as the latest generation stuff, but it's plenty quick for me!
 
Thanks for the description on how you did it ...I might just give it a shot. I wish they would give us specs and timelines for the PS4 ...I want to do the SSD thing but not if PS4 is less than 2 years down the line. Anyway, thanks for the info.
 
JohnyPiston
Thanks for the description on how you did it ...I might just give it a shot. I wish they would give us specs and timelines for the PS4 ...I want to do the SSD thing but not if PS4 is less than 2 years down the line. Anyway, thanks for the info.
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No problem. The PS3 should recognise the new drive when it's installed, and will want to format it. This shouldn't take very long at all. Once that's done, just restore everything.

Another option could be to use the data transfer tool - however, I didn't use that; I just used the backup/restore method and all seems to be fine.
 
I put in a new OCZ SSD @ 60GB. I only really use my PS3 for GT5 and Dirt series so size is a non issue. The load speeds is immediatly noticable and well worth the money if you play more than occasionally.
I spend far less time waiting for loading. I would say about 10 minutes less waiting when sitting down to play. Easier to get in a quick lap of Nurburgring.
Another thing to help load times is getting a mixer or a radio to play your music through and turning off the game music. I think this trims the loading down, when the game does not que up mp3's. If you do this, put the sound on theater... I love the sound with these settings!
 
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I put an 240Gb OCZ vertex 3 SSD in my PS3 slim, an load/save times were a definite improvement. Would I consider doing it again.... yes! As soon as it gets too bad for my other console the 120Gb OCZ vertex 3 from my pc will go in it, PC will get a new 240Gb OCZ vertex 3... or a revo :sly:👍

SSD's for the win. They aren't that expensive these days, so they're well worth it.
 
Good post, I expect to upgrade mine soon to SSD.
 
GT5 + SSD = Great! :D no lag.
 
WOW! Thanks for the link!

I thought I had to get out more!! :D
 
BrLaOiOnD
I put in a new OCZ SSD @ 60GB. I only really use my PS3 for GT5 and Dirt series so size is a non issue. The load speeds is immediatly noticable and well worth the money if you play more than occasionally.
I spend far less time waiting for loading. I would say about 10 minutes less waiting when sitting down to play. Easier to get in a quick lap of Nurburgring.
Another thing to help load times is getting a mixer or a radio to play your music through and turning off the game music. I think this trims the loading down, when the game does not que up mp3's. If you do this, put the sound on theater... I love the sound with these settings!
Click to expand...

I don't care for that as much because it's not timed to the events. I like having the music start up when it goes to a menu or race.

Using a SSD would be even better if the game would let us do an installation that's closer to complete. When you "install" the game, it doesn't copy everything and you still get that "installing" notification now and then. I wish they would let us transfer as much as possible so that nothing else needs to install as we play the game.
 
I added an SSD to mine back in December and the difference in speed of GT5 is very dramatic. I'm used to it now of course, but whenever I see a video with a loading screen I remember how slow it was. Garages load much faster as well. Anyone who does not see a dramatic improvement in speed bought a poor quality SSD I would think.

I have the Corsair Force 3 120 GB in my PS3, and would recommend it.
 
can someone attest if your actual LAP times are somewhat better, with the SSD, I ask this because any small lag spikes from the old mechanical dinosaur 5400rpm drive that's in there could theoretically induce hickups in online racing,
 
I have a solid state hard drive in my PS3, it really does make a huge difference in alot of areas. It's a shame they aren't really affordable for everyone to be able to buy or Sony to be able to use them in PS3's and the next playstation.

Unfortunately they're rediculously priced still and the only reason I was able to get one was because I literally hit the lottery, lol.

The biggest difference in GT5 for me was the install time. It seemed like under 5 minutes for the full install. The load times between menus isn't noticably faster but all the other load times are greatly improved, like waiting for the field to load up.

The most impressive improvements on PS3 as a whole though come from outside of Gran Turismo 5.
I don't know if many on this site are aware of the game RAGE. But it has a major issue with slow texture loading because of iD's megatexture tech. It's present on all platforms, even PC but the PS3 version is by far the worst in terms of how noticable it was (well the 360 was the worst if you just ran it off the disc, but fully installing the game on 360 greatly improved the "pop-in").

But now that I have a solid state drive the PS3 version of RAGE has almost no noticable pop-in at all. Almost 100% of the time by the time the motion blur stops, the textures have loaded up. RAGE is by far the most impressive results I've had by switching my PS3 to a solid state drive.

Another big improvement is another game people on GTP don't care about....Dragon Age Origins. Fantastic game. One of the best RPGs ever made imo. And the PS3 version graphically was THE console version, cuz of the Blu-Ray which BioWare packed with the higher rez textures of the PC version. But because of those higher rez textures, you would get pop-in going through areas and the framerate would drop alot. With my SSD there is absolutely no pop-in and no framerate drops.

Solid State really should be the standard for HDDs, especially on consoles. But honestly, because of the pricing, I don't think even PS4 will have solid state out of the box. And the price doesn't seem to be coming down any time soon either. People have been saying "wait for the price of solid state to drop" for like 6 or 7 years now.
 
Better menu system would help for less money :-))
 
I had a SSD disk in my PS3 and it did speed things up, but it ruined my online experience as it didn't talk well with others or some stupid thing. I had disconnection going on every time I tried host a race. Got my stock disk back and the problem was gone at once.
And since I only use this game to race online I had a easy choice on what disk I use!
 
Today I put a Samsung SSD 830 64GB in my PS3 (for quite cheap: 50 euro!) and the difference in loading times is very noticeable!
However I still find that the game loads too much from the BD, often for no reason at all (no "Installing..." notification). Why couldn't PD include a really complete installation so that the game is entirely loaded from the storage drive?
 
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