PlayStation 4 New Details: Console And Controller Weight Compared To PS3 And HDD Data Speed

How does the PS4 compare to the PS3? Find out here.

[Kayant]

New stuff ---> The hard disk speed is also revealed to be capable of speeds in the range of 80 to 100 MB per second.

[darthv72]

Isnt that the norm for SATA drives? I mean even ATA100 and 133 were capable of such speeds.

[XB1_PS4]

Yeah, 80-100 is around average. Would've liked 120+ to cut loading times, but this'll do.

Anything faster would require a SSD or RAID array.. That's a bit too expensive for this gen atleast.

[Codey47]

@XB1_PS4

a hybrid SSD will suffice...works wonders in my PS3.

[blackmagic]

80-100 is typical for a laptop drive
175-200 is typical for a desktop drive
500-525 is typical for an ssd

[spoonard]

Theoretical speeds of ATA drives were 100MB/sec and 133MB/sec. There was never any circumstance in which those drives could actually attain those speeds.

[JunioRS101]

I don't think so... I learned about SATA a few weeks ago.

SATA 1 = 1.5 Gbps (Gigabits Per Second)
SATA 2 = 3.0 Gbps
SATA 3 = 6.0 Gbps

1 Gb = 128 MB

1.5 Gb = 172 MB
3.0 Gb = 344 MB
6.0 Gb = 688 MB

Hope this clears things up.

[vigilante_man]

Sorry to all you guys above me in this thread but I have never heard such nonsense in my life.

The 80-100 MBps for read speeds is very fast for a 2.5 5,400 drive. Very fast!

I have tested over 20 sata 2.5 drives and even 3.5 HDDs and the average speed of the good laptop drives is 60-65 MBps. Most older drives have average read speeds of 35-40 MBps.

I have tested PS3 drives, new laptop 7,200 drives and more. So please, before quoting theoretical speeds you need to understand real-world speeds. What seems to make a difference with newer sata 2.5 drives is the drive cache size.

Drive cache of 8MB is small whilst some of the newer hybrid 5,400 drives have cache size of 64MB which will increase speed no end. Plus of course their are good quality drives and the cheaper ones.

So for 5,400 drives real world read speeds of 80-100 MBps is fast. Faster than the standard 7,200 laptop drives of the past few years. Thank You!!!

[thisismyaccount]

No they weren´t....

http://www.realworldtech.co...

[AsianOnRoute69]

I'm assuming that is the speed of the 500gb hard drive and not the sata throughput in the ps4?

[JunioRS101]

HDD speed is measured in RPM, not per second's.

The HDD probably spins at either 5400 or 7200 RPM.

Therefor, this IS likely the throughput speed of the HDD interface.

80-100 MBps is not fast, though, considering even old SATA 1 tech was 1.5 Gbps (gigabits, not bytes) which is about 172 MB.

The HDD is most likely an IDE or proprietary interface, for cost's sake.

[Wintersun616]

@JunioRS101,

RPM has very little to do with the hard drives write/read speeds, it's only the speed at which the HDD spins at. Two different hard drives with the same RPM can have a massive difference in data write and read speeds.

AsianOnRoute69's assumption is correct.

[Are_The_MaDNess]

you guys need to remember there is ALOT of factors that come too readspeeds of a HDD.

Allocation unit size
RPM
Buffer Size
Bus Speeds
CPU Speed

there isnt just always up to the HDD or the sata standard its using...... really guys. learn some tech before speaking.

[RevXM]

yeah, not too impressive in my opinion.
FCC documents say the console is very cool so Ill be uppgrading the drive shortly after I get it, if not the same day.

Something along the line of a momentus xt hybrid should be awesome. got that in my ps3 and all the downloaded games are a noticably faster compared to what they were on the original drive.
Just wonder wich Sata version ps4 has, I would think it uses the newest. wich would make it super fast once I can afford a SSD of a desirable size. 550-ish MB R/W will short down the occasional loading screens by quite a significant margin, but Im not that rich yet so ittl have to wait a couple more years I guess.

[Eonjay]

good call

[KingKevo]

Yeah, when you consider doing it, do it on the first day, because from that point on you'll start to put data (games, etc.) on the HDD that you'd have to transfer to the new HDD then (and I'm pretty sure we don't know how that'll work, probably like the PS3, even though I hope the PS4 will suport NTFS drives), so setting it up with a new HDD is smart and I might do that as well.

[ShwankyShpanky]

I was gonna do the same, but I figure that when I fill the 500GB in 6mos-1yr, faster/larger drives will be that much cheaper.

The harder task will be keeping myself from upgrading my 500 & 250GB PS3s.

Damn you PS+!

I know it's a pain to do the data transfer upgrade, but w/e... it's just one evening of downtime. Or start before bed and swap before work.

I'd be interested in hearing from someone knowledgeable about how the Unix/FreeBSD file system avoids the need for defragging (Sony claims PS3 doesn't need defragging), because it seems like things have loaded/installed/"prepare d for saving" a bit faster every time I've done an upgrade... feels like it's done a bit of defrag.

[rainslacker]

Not sure if possible, but can't you use some sort of disc imaging program to make a mirror image of the drive in a regular PC? Something like Norton ghost?

I thought of doing this when I upgraded my drive in the PS3 a while back, but it was only the 60GB original and I had all my saves on the cloud.

@Shwanky

From what I understand of the file system being used, it does not require defragging. However, I know that whatever Sony does with it's PS3 operating system there are sometimes remnants left on the disc which cause the file table system to get bloated. This is particularly true of bad installs or downloads, or deleting files. Over time it builds up, and is reported to hinder performance.

I only read this in cursory form while trying to fix a corrupted file system on my disc once, so I may be off in the details.

[Rikuson1]

By any chance do you or anyone know how fast the default hard disk speed to be in the Ps3?

[ProjectVulcan]

There is no real 'default'. Different drives have different speeds and PS3 came with anything from 20Gb up to the 500gb of today- as well as flash memory as the main storage! Smaller drives are typically slower because they are older- they have lower platter densities and cache sizes, inferior seek times.

The older drives are slowest from the original machines, the newer ones will be faster. We are talking maybe 50mb/s sequential read speed for the oldest 20-60Gb drives and nearly double it for the newer machines.

The difference on games would be pretty minimal to be honest.

[JKelloggs]

5400 RPM In the debug console

[hesido]

Yes, it's typical SATA, but the information is valuable in the sense that PS3 was probably bottlenecked at the encoding decoding data phase so it didn't make much use of faster speeds (only reduced seek times could help to some extent.)

PS4 seems to be fast in that regard, but whether it will make use of a 500MB/sec ssd drive in its full throughput is still a mistery and deserves benchmarking.

[TheEnigma313]

Does anyone know if the PS4 will be able to take SSDs?

[Codey47]

Yes as long as it will fit in the rack...I've heard up to 12.5mm

[porkChop]

I think you mean 2.5", which is the standard size for laptop drives and SSDs.

[badz149]

@porkChop

he was talking about the thickness of the HDD which tends to be thicker for some >500GB 2.5" from different makers.

[Lulz_Boat]

SSDs works on PS3, why it shouldn't on PS4?

[TheEnigma313]

Really? I didn't know if the ps3 would support it. That's good news.

[CaulkSlap]

Do they improve load times or is it limited by the OS or something?

[Lulz_Boat]

yeah, you can see lot of videos on youtube.
it depends by the game. if on BD, it depends on how much it use the HDD. if 100% on HDD yeah, you can see lot of improvements, especially on games with texture pop-up / texture loading times problems such Skyrim and Rage. it totally eliminate the problem.

[porkChop]

Any 2.5" (standard size) SSD will work.

[ZoyosJD]

You also have to check the height of the drive which was the 12.5 mm that codey47 mentioned.

[Are_The_MaDNess]

most of the SDD's out there right now are smaller than that.
(the 12.5mm height)

[SnakeCQC]

in what world are people living in when they expect an ssd in every ps4 which would effectively double the console price

[Codey47]

We're not expecting it...Well, I'm not at least

But some of us are expecting to upgrade to SSD or a Hybrid SSD.

[theXtReMe1]

If you read through the posts, you would see that nobody was expecting it. They are thinking about upgrading to it.

[AllroundGamer]

I will definitely get an 256gb SSD drive for the PS4, cause i'm already used to those hyperspeeds on my PC where something with normal HDD would load about 30 seconds on SSD it loads in just 5 seconds. And of course they make no noise and don't produce such heat.

[TheEnigma313]

I've been dying to put an ssd in my pc. Is it really worth the price?

[AllroundGamer]

To me it's the best investment since many years. I've got 2x 128gb SSDs in my PC, one for Windows and one for games. Booting up Windows and running software never been faster, also transfering files etc. You just can't go wrong with a SSD (of course you should read some reviews before you buy a certain one), and SSDs are difinitely the future, normal HDDs will bite the dust soon.

[TheEnigma313]

I've just been waiting on the price to drop a bit. I want at least a 500gb but it's very pricey.

[AllroundGamer]

the price difference between 256gb and 500gb is quite big now, so you will have to wait a bit for a price drop (i would say at least a year...). But if you are only a gamer the 256gb should suffice.

[dakunclear]

I've been to cheap meh oh well, I'll stick to my 1TB 7200rpm with 64mb cache harddrive in my computer lol

[rainslacker]

If you can afford it, and your MB supports it, put 2-4 SSD drives in a RAID array. The performance gain is shocking compared to a standard hard drive. Most things load up before you have time to move the mouse to where you know you'll need to use it.

[jay2]

Erm, whats new? not a lot.

[sAVAge_bEaST]

The controller Definitely is. Greatness Awaits, takes on a whole new meaning, after you have held it.

(side note- if you use FireFox, use Adblock., to block annoying ad's from gamerbolt, and other web-sites.)

[dspx-chaos]

Guys quick question do you think this will this work in a PS4 ??

http://m.ebuyer.com/480284

[LordDhampire]

I wouldn't get a seagate or a hybrid drive, unless the ps4 is built to support them it wont see any real gains...it will all be superficial, I had a seagate momentus hybrid drive and it was garbage, it was actually slower while cold, but once it actually got going it was average nothing spectacular and it failed after about 10 months in my laptop

If I were you I'd get a 750gb scorpio black from western digital....out of the tons of harddrives I've gone through in my laptop(its a gaming laptop and gets hot) it is super fast and been really reliable no signs of breaking in sight(hard drives make clicking noises months before they actually break)

Also my desktop has a samsung 840 pro solid state in it....so I know fast and the WD is fast

[Battlefieldlover]

Yes it will work :)

[BallsEye]

HDD speed? No more interesting news? It's obvious it's faster but it's a common speed for even old SATAs so why write about it?

[kingPoS]

It's not just rpm speed that matters but cache size too. It's why I'd be willing to put seagate hybird in in a PS4.

Imagine the stock PS4 HDD is 5400rpm with a 8mb cache.
Now imagine a Seagate 1tb SSHD hybird @ 5400 with 64mb cache.

I'll be upgrading to that day one.

[Akuma2K]

1TB SSDHD here i come.....lol :)

http://www.amazon.com/Seaga...

[DivineAssault]

cant wait for launch day!.. Im saving money for a bike & a PS4 or two.. Helmet, gear, Games, accessories, etc.. I really hope santa brings me stuff i need this yr..