I'm playing Grand Theft Auto 5 a lot and am wondering if I'll get a performance improvement (loading speed/ rendering) if I bought the digital version off PSN.
I'm using a reconditioned PS3 Slimline 160gig model with a 250gig Samsung 840 Series MZ-7TD250 Solid State Drive.
The idea of running the entire game seemed like a no-brainer. But a bit of Googling turned up the following link comparing Blu-ray to standard hard drive performance:
A bit more Googling shows loading comparisons (but not rendering) between Blu-ray and solid state:
which shows the solid state loading significantly faster.
Long story short the more I searched on Google the more unsure I am if it is a good idea. I already own the game so spending another $100+ (I'm in New Zealand) on the digital version is a bit of an investment.
Does anyone have direct comparisons between the performance (loading/ rendering) of Grand Theft Auto 5 on the PS3 Blu-ray disc vs PSN install on solid state drive?
Would the PSN version on a solid state drive be a worthwhile upgrade?
Best Answer
I'll repeat myself again(as in the comments).
I don't know about GTA5, but in general SSD would be faster than a normal HDD + BluRay. PS3 uses SATA1, which provides a bandwidth of maximum 150 MB/s(SATA2 allows 300 MB/s and more modern SATA3 provides 600 MB/s bantwidth).
HDD used in PS3 slim reads at 65 MB/s and BluRay at around 9 MB/s(all PS3 models use 2x speed BluRay drives). That sums up to 74 MB/s read speed, which is almost a half of SATA1. If you run solely from an SSD you will achieve these 150 MB/s, which is twice as fast as HDD + Bluray.
And I say that running from an SSD will grant you 150 MB/s because of SATA1 limitations, despite the fact that modern SSDs do have both read and write speed of over 500 MB/s.
As you noticed in second video, both load speed and character switching of SSD is (more than) twice as fast as HDD+Bluray(41 sec vs. 102 sec and 8 sec vs. 16 sec respectively).
And I totally agree with Nolonar's comment.