Tested: PlayStation 4 Hard Drive vs. SSD vs. Hybrid Drive
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ย. 2024
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The PlayStation 4's built-in storage drive is more important than ever, but the 500GB hard drive included with the next-gen console is slow to install and load games. Good thing it's easily replaceable. We test the benefits of replacing it with an SSD and a hybrid drive (SSHD) to see what difference a $100 upgrade can make.
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SSHD is the clear winner for cost, size and speed.
+FredEFuego I can't believe any company even thought of this crap. The sole reason for SSD was not speed. It was efficiency. The HDDs fail due to simple physics - wear and tear. SSD's do not have that issue. So, any hybrid is still falling short of the efficiency of an SSD. It will inevitably have the same fail rates as the HDD, just be a faster disk in the meantime.
TGBoleyn SSD's have a life span of so many write cycles that is trumped by a HDD's so the SSHD takes the strength from each format and works them in tandem canceling out both platforms weaknesses. Thats what makes SSHD so popular and it helps that they are cost effective for the speed they provide.
A 1TB 5400 RPM 8GB NAND Cache has around a 160-200Mbps read and write speeds and cost about $86 USD. A SSD that size can cost you from $500-$1,000 USD and a 10K RPM HDD will cost you around $170-$300 USD for that same size and give you around 170-250Mbps depending on the setup if you use a RAID. Most SSD's use Trim which the PS4 can't use so that will also cut the life span of the SSD in half. Now factor all that in and you can easily see which one the winner is cost per performance and lifespan SSHD in a PS4 or Xbox One. Oh not to mention both consoles use old out dated SATA II connectors lol.
+FredEFuego SSDs are more reliable and less heat.
SSHDs are absolute shit, unless you pay $100+. An HDD+SSD combo for $100 can give you 1TB+128GB which you can cache yourself. You will have increased longevity and a backup drive in case a drive fails.
For the hybrid, if you're playing a multiplayer game where you load maps frequently, you will have to wait for the other players to load the map as well (so the game can start), which would yield no benefit. The benefit would only be provided when you load a game-in-progress (where other players have already loaded the map), but not the next game or any thereafter. The only benefit to the hybrid I can see are games-in-progress or single-player games where you revisit maps often. I could be missing some scenarios.
Great comment
I think I'd rather just wait the extra 5-7 seconds to load
yeah, I'm planning on upgrading my HDD due to lack of space, so I'm probs gonna go with the hybrid, just because its 1TB and it's a bit faster, not to mention it costs about the same as a regular 1TB HDD, so why not, really? but I have to agree, the SSD is completely out of the question...way too expensive.
sobekflakmonkey
i might do that as well in the future
sobekflakmonkey I would probably consider fast HDD.
Here is why: ssd or flash memory does not last forever. Flash allows each flash memory cell to change information few thousand times and then that it (data in flash becomes unreadable). If you go hybrid drive with low flash capacity and drive has to either constantly change flash information or stay at regular hdd speeds. If it stays at regular hdd speeds then whats the point, and if it burns flash memory fast by constantly changing the information.... well i dont know what happens. Best case you have normal hdd after that and worst is that you have expensive brick. I would suggest to either go fast laptop hdd until ssd prices come down enough for you to justify buying one for ps4. Hybrids are usually terrible idea, and get you cons of both technologies, like in cars i have heard that battery replacement for hybrids can cost around 10 000 dollars.
I just recently replaced my PS4 hard drive with a Seagate 1TB SSHD, i think the faster boot time is worth having it alone. I'm also seeing faster times from games i played before i upgraded. I'm currently playing Assassins Creed Unity which has considerable load times, i saw a favorable decrease when i started playing it on the SSHD. The SSD might not be worth the price vs performance but i can tell you the SSHD is. Once you see and feel how it performs you'll be extremely satisfied, just make sure you get it under warranty.
I believe the bottleneck here is the SATA2 interface on the PS4 which won't be able to maximize the speed of an SSD like a SATA3 PC can. I'm surprised Will didn't mention it.
Good point here. Why buy a super fast SSD drive that is going to be bottlenecked down to the speeds of a hybrid? SSD prices would need to come way down for me to consider them for a console.
I'd like to see the comparison when loading GTAV.
Me too!
yeah because seriously it take long time
1 minute on ssd and 1.30 on standard
HDD 7200rpm took 1 minute and 17 seconds on Xbox one. Internal took 1 minute 34 seconds.
luftisbollen i managed to do a 38 second loading on gta v with a sshd with 64gb ssd and 936gb hdd
WOW WILL GREAT JOB IM SO GLAD Ive been listening to you and the crew for a few years now. I didn't even know about hybrid drives, 1tb Samsung sad is over $550. Pshh. Hybrid all the way.
Hybrid drives have been out for a few years now. You haven't heard of them, because they still have the inherent flaws of platter drives. When I got my 1st SSD in 2009, 80 GB was $400! An extra $150 gets you a TB these days. Prices will keep going down. They (SSDs) don't produce heat, no noise, and no data loss if it (PS4) gets knocked off the table. Mean-time to failure is ove a million hours on an SSD, 300,000 hours for a traditional drive.
The Hybrid is the way to go. It's worked great for me so far. Doubles your space and isn't that different from the SSD speeds for a fraction of the price. You get about 849 GB of space from the drive.
Again, no, desktop is different, like the other guy said, these hybrid drives have 8gb of hardware controlled cache, which is great for caching windows and some browser stuff and what not, but masses of game data? I see that 8GB filling and overwriting all that useful stuff with junk like texture data in no time at all, 8GB cache is not enough for a game console, its a different usage pattern than desktop, running a game for a couple hours then another game for a couple hours, the cache will be wiped of useful data very quickly, you have to realize the drive controller has zero knowledge of drive systems, it only keeps track of what blocks of data are accessed.
francis chow I know your comment was from 7 months ago, but someone may find my reply useful. Here is a Seagate 1TB Hybrid hard drive, with 64MB cache for $97 from amazon. www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B99JUBQ/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
There is a good review. Thanks a lot! It's very demonstrative. My friend changed his regular HDD on his laptop to SSD year ago and he's happy. It works 2 times faster. Actually he installed both: SSD's for the system and HDD's for data.
Lol all works in 2 times faster. Are u Chinese? Take that white mans photo down.
i miss the old days when u could just swap discs and enjoy playing without updates or installation bullcrap.
The old days didn't have fixes to glitches or bugs. "But that's because games nowadays are broken when they are sold and they patch them later!"
No, old games were buggy as all get out also! Heck, many games you could abuse those glitches.
But some of them were just completely game breaking.
Also consider that with online multiplayer, (where you mostly play with strangers) people want to have some reasonable expectation of fairness. There always have been, and always will be people cheating in games...but patches can help with this...
And then you have balance updates...many multiplayer games really do end up needing balance tweaks months afterwards. "But they should just balance the game well to start!"
Yeah, because they REALLY have a way to know what 20 million people are going to actually do in their game....hah...
I forgot the biggest reason why your logic is flawed though...
You CAN have it like the old days. Don't patch the game. It won't let you sign in to be able to play online multiplayer with a stranger....
But you are probably already thinking, "I couldn't do that in the old days!"
Cirkustanz I see your point, but I also remember a time where games HAD to work at launch...not like now where the devs can lollygag and release day one patches or dlc...
Michael Powers Day one patches are in the EXTREME majority of cases, not required for play. This is just one example of a completely innocuous day one patch situation...
Game release dates are very loosely enforced...but due to review copies, the need to ship games out to retailers before the release date, etc...many publishers end up in situations where multiplayer patches (ie: to the server or lobby) are required after the game has been pressed.
Here we go back to the "blah blah blah they should test games better" Again, this relates to the impossible nature of completely testing utilization in large scale.
A person that chooses to not patch that, is presented with the option of playing offline. (Again, this is just like yester-year)
As far as day one DLC is concerned...sometimes you have a "point" but often you don't. Capcom for example, is really known for this, I can think of a game or two where you bought the DLC that was already included on the disc...did that make a person feel slighted? It sure did...
However, there are numerous examples where the "day 1 DLC" is not content that is marketed as being included with the game. Seriously though...
You can't even really talk about DLC in a negative light without also considering its benefits. Obviously in many games it can extend the fun factor of a game. Man....I'd GLADLY pay $100 for just another chapter in my favorite game (Castlevania Harmony of Despair). To say that just because DLC is ready at the time of release, doesn't mean it should be included... Sometimes things are good for the gamer, (using my favorite game as an example, PS3 players got chapter 7 with the base game, where xbox people did not, since it came out much sooner) and some things are not. (They didn't exactly give xbox people refunds for chapter 7, and they never implemented local multiplayer on xbox, which was a default feature for PS3 users)
I mean...if DLC didn't exist, what we would have? Oh yeah...we'd have dozens and dozens of unecessary sequels.
I'm 100% in favor of modern game systems being able to patch games, and to offer DLC. There is no downside. If you don't like patches, and you don't like DLC...great, you buy games and play them, just like we did in the old school days...offline.
Heck, even patches are done automatically for most people. I won't fault a person who lives somewhere such as Australia who commonly have bandwidth caps for not liking the patches because of chipping at their cap...but come on now, they are playing a game on their internet connection.....their game patches are always going to be a small portion of their download. (But I don't see them embracing buying ps4 or xboxone games from the digital market)
Also...I'll point out that I used to play Everquest. Obviously this is an online multiplayer game. When patches happened (which were frequent) it was MUCH worse. You couldn't even play the game at all, and some times the servers would be down for DAYS. Personally I had started in 1999. That was before even the PS2 was out. (which had no patches, except for FFX11 which was....oh snap, an online multiplayer game!)
Some of the points you made are pretty valid, and while I agree with some patches being 100% percent beneficial, some games are so terrible at launch that they try to recover with aforementioned day one patches. The point that I was getting to is that if some devs (I'm looking at you, DICE) would fix the core game instead of working on DLC, I feel like everyone would be a bit happier.
I also agree that patches now vs old methods have gotten much better, quicker and seamless (Unless you're on last-gen consoles, updating is gruesome).
As for the on-disc DLC, I have never and probably will never like that. For one, if its on the disc, I should be able to use it. Otherwise, use that precious space for something like better textures or another class.
I have been playing games for a VERY long time, since the first elder scrolls game. Patching those games SUCKED. Outright. Many of the patches were manual or needed a command line tweak that many end users were not comfortable with, and I'm really happy to see that those times are gone.
However, I still feel like the way devs are going about some games is an awkward allocation of time and resources.
To the point of the dozens of unnecessary sequels; This unfortunately still happens, its just that many DLC's are a setup for the next game in the series. Sometimes this is executed well, other times it feels like a cheap cash in on the desire for a continuation of a story you like.
I still firmly believe that a lot of the issues faced at launch with many games can be resolved by huge open beta tests, that are actually tests, and not a cheap demo as it feels like today. If that data was actually used to its full potential, I feel like those issues would be far minimized.
But, I'm not a developer, and I really don't get the implications of huge large scale testing, so I don't know how feasible that is.
It's actually a pretty nice test. But if you guys ever intend on doing a 2.0 version of this, you might want to consider the fragmentation on those disks.
Besides the disk itself, what makes hard drives really slow is the fact that, over time, with putting and deleting stuff out of it, your content is spread all over the disk, so it demands more reads and writes. And we all know that pretty well because this happens with our computers: the moment we get it from the store it's really fast, but as you download stuff and delete stuff and download stuff and delete stuff and repeat this so many times, it gets slower because your content is not so well organized in that disk.
While that also happens with flash-based disks, that's when its read and write rates really show their power. So the gain in performance is more noticeable over time with the constant use of the drive.
But anyways, the SSHD is really worthwhile getting (not so expensive, good capacity and still gets some flash memory).
I liked this review! It was very informative but there's kind of a big aspect you guys forgot to look at: This will not help at all in online multiplayer games. Every other system will have to load the same level before the game begins, and you'll still be stuck waiting on them. A hybrid drive looks like really great price/performance for single player and split-screen multiplayer games.
In MMO games such as FF Realm Reborn, the world textures and art assets should load up on the screen faster, leading to less popping. In addition, zone loading does not wait for other players as it is persistent gameplay. This of course does not matter to a good number of players who aren't interested in those HD-reliant games.
That's where you're wrong. Games like Battlefield will load you in as soon as possible. Back on 360 the people with the game installed to their harddrives were in the game a solid 30 seconds before anyone else.
Also true. I was thinking more along the lines of gears of war where everyone gets dropped into the map at the same time
Ricky Nelson Agreed with Gears. I think it is best to look what what game you personally tend to play before making your decision!
Are you sure that's always the case? In BF3 my mate would always load up faster when loading between maps, by the time I spawned he was already up in the sky in a chopper.
Can anyone confirm if the PS4 can detect NTFS extrenal hard drives? i own a Seagate 3 Terabyte HDD. Would be awsome to play all my movies directly off that!
Another thing worth pointing out is that a higher capacity HDD (or hybrid drive) will be faster than a lower capacity one, because of increased areal density of the data on the platters. Just getting a drive with a faster spindle speed and higher density will yield improvements (and I'd wager that much of the improvement seen with the Seagate hybrid was due to that.)
Also, the hybrid drive only assesses what should be read from the SSD portion **after a reboot**, so you have to play your games and then restart the console to see any substantial gains. This could take several cycles of "training" before the hybrid figures out what assets to actually keep on the SSD. The filesystem shouldn't matter, because the controller is making assessments at the block level, which the filesystem sits on top of.
HDDs should work better with these new consoles than they did with old ones, because game assets have gotten larger and so there will be more sequential access. Sequential access is where HDDs excel, and a fast, high-capacity HDD can often achieve faster sequential reads than a cheap, low-capacity SSD.
Finally, it's currently inconclusive that the PS4 has a SATA 3 controller, which means using a crazy fast SSD might mostly be wasted due to the limited bandwidth of the interface.
Just my 2 cents.
The hybrid seems like an awesome bang for the buck.
Yes!!
People at my work kept saying there isn't a difference between SSHD's and normal HDD's.... god I hate when people think they know what they are talking about but are wrong lol
Hey Tested, this is great. Are you considering or could you consider another test where you use the following six hard drives:
- Original HHD with system
- Fastest HHD drive
- The SSHD used
- The fastest / largest flash memory SSHD
- The SSD you used
- The fastest SSD
This will show if a fast mechanical drive is a good option, if SSHD with a larger flash memory provides a better benefit and if the fastest of SSD's actually improve performance or are limited by the SATA 2 controller.
These same drives could be used in an XBox One test and complete a very thorough upgrade test for both consoles because at the moment if leaves 3 unanswered questions regarding hard drive upgrades.
Thanks.
6:55, Where can I buy a hybrid drive with 64GB of flash memory? The most I've seen from Seagate is 8GB and maybe 16GB from Toshiba or WD. Thanks.
Also hybrid drives top out at 1TB of mechanical space, whereas the Hitachi Travelstar 5K1500 stores 1500GB and the Samsung M9T stores 2,000GB, though they are slow 5400RPM drives with slow access times. Not an issue with a PS4 (yet) since 1TB ought to be plenty for most people.
My major concern with using an SSD in this situation is a couple things, one is TRIM support, what looks like great performance at first could become a major problem down the road, when all the data cells have been written to, and if you are running a lot of games that could be quick. It helps speed up data read / write performance significantly by clearing out cells of data during idle time so that they can be written to quickly. It is loosely to blame for some of the smartphone slowdowns because up until android 4.3 it didnt exist. Next up is drive wear. I dont know how much data is being written / moved around on the drive. But the cells do have a finite ability to accept a charge thus storing data and could reach their limits rather quickly if the PS4 OS isn't coded to prevent some of the mundane computer related stuff. In a computer you NEED to turn off things like defragmenting, swap space on the ssd and if possible move all of the recovery images to another drive, etc. Take this from an expert on PC's / Servers, with next to no working knowledge of the actual system the PS4 uses for cell wear / trim.
Hybrid seems like the best price performance choice.
It is, not seems, it is.
Hakan D I wouldn't be able to tell you because I don't want people trusting my word about something I'm not 100% sure about myself. I suggest asking around at your local computer/electronics/gaming store.
Only you if you play the same game the whole time... that harddrive only has 8GB SSD memory... it won't even fit most games on the SSD partition. Only real difference would be in boot time. Coming year SSD will become even cheaper... I'm hoping the 512GB versions will drop around to the 250 dollar mark.
micglou I hope you are right because the prices of them now is out of the range I'm willing to pay for a hard drive lol.
micglou you can get that some hybrids up to 64gb cache....
I have just put a 1 TB Hybrid drive (5400rpm version) in my PS3 slim and it does run quite a bit faster. Booting up etc. I mainly did it for the extra space though, because my old 149GB drive was full.
Be warned: The 7200 rpm drives DO run a little hotter and Sony themselves DON'T recommend using them because of the overheating risk.
One tip: Do make sure to do the basics. Like save your game save data to flash drive, sync your trophies to the server and do a full backup of your PS3/PS4 to an external (FAT 32 formatted) HDD drive before you start!
I have a PS4 also but it only has 'Battlefield 4' (don't get me started, grrr...) on it. So I'm waiting till I actually need the extra space before I replace that drive. :)
***** Really? Ah well, I just played safe and followed Sony's guidelines. But as you say, the newer 7200RPM models probably are okay to use.
As an addendum I have to say my 500GB PS4 Hard Drive is now surprisingly approaching the limit - In fact I'm about two game installs away from filling it and having to upgrade...Oh man, where does all that space go? : )
Stand by does work - what doesn't work yet is stand by state from running game, allowing user to go back directly into one. You can still put console into low-power stand by (orange light I believe), that will allow for remote downloads and such.
as a PC gamer, the difference between SSD and HDD are massive, especially performance wise. load times are a faster by a little bit with SSD yes, but for HDD (PC maxed out graphics/resolution etc) and let's say you get around 40fps and spikes down to 25fps during very intense scenes. when the equivalent hardware, but the game installed on a SSD, with same settings, you can get a constant 60+fps (from experience with a laptop). for PS4, in game frame drops, menu loading/swapping, plus in game quality/performance would be genuinely better with a SSD.
I'm sorry but that is not how things work, I have no idea how that happened for you but that just doesn't happen
+riley jensen all game files are on either a HDD or SSD, a HDD has a limited clockspeed, meaning there is a limited amount of information that can be sent to the CPU then GPU from the drive. these files (lets say, texture packs) some texture files are 4k resolution (again, example) as well as the rest of a map, wireframes, animations, other small icons that load as well etc. are all loaded at a limited speed. well the Hard drive speed is slow and limited, as for SSD its nearly instant. thats how things work. Its like running the game on your RAM, although (with enough RAM) a full game may fit on your RAM, but thats not how things work. (unless you dedicate files to your RAM with third party software).
+Calixen yes but your hard drive does not make the game perform any better, and definitely not to the likes of 20+ fps gains, and textures are loaded into your vram. I don't know too much about the technical sides of this stuff but everywhere I've seen there is no mention of a hard drive giving more performance in game other than loadscreens
+riley jensen in order for the these files (textures, animations etc) during ingame when loading it's first initially loaded from your HDD to your CPU sent to GPU etc, then stores it in RAM if it deems it worthy to be placed in. then can be loaded again from RAM to CPU to GPU. initially the CPU would take the files at a limited speed from a HDD. and assuming the RAM doesn't overwrite these files later, it can load faster than HDD rip. but SSD is initially better than a HDD for loading more multiple files at a higher rate. this can have a huge advantage for SDD on performance in games because the entire game isn't put into your ram. on average HDD bandwidth is 125-200MB/s and SSD are 500MB/s, I/O Performance: HDD 100-300 and SDD at 100k. Response time: HDD 12-6ms and SDD at 0.5ms. and depending on the game there can be a huge difference. and seeing as tho PS4 game framerates are locked at 30fps (unless im missing a game that can go 60fps) games still drop to 25fps, an SSD would keep this at a constant. its not much, but thats my point.
source: ocz.com/consumer/ssd-guide/ssd-vs-hdd
if you have money to burn, buy an SSD to shave off around 30 seconds every day
You'll get some of your money back (assuming your job is £6.00 per hour) if you use your PS4 enough. 6 seconds per load, you load 100 things per week, 600 seconds = 6 minutes, 5200 per year, 26,000 in 5 years.
5 years: 433 minutes = 7 hours across the life of the console, this isn't including file transfers, installation, boot-up, shutdown, patching process etc...
Hahaha!!! Just had an Xbox one ad before the video. Well played Microsoft, well played :D
The main reason I'd swap out the hard drive is for size, It would of been good if you'd included a faster rpm 2tb hard drive for it's results aswell.
This guy slipped up. The SSHD has 8MB, not GB, of onboard cache memory that can be upgraded up to 64MB. The flash or ram memory that is the actual SSD-like component is only 8GB. You cannot find SSHDs with 64GB of ram memory, they do not make them. The highest I've found was 16GB of ram memory on the WD Black drives. Lol, I'm not even an expert, I just did some basic research on SSHDs. I wanna know if there is any noticeable difference between 8GB and 16GB of ram in terms of load times, especially on something like GTA V.
True that, the cache is 64MB, SSD part is only 8GB on 90% of them.
Firstly: www.scan.co.uk/products/1tb-wd-wd1001x06xdtl-black2-dual-drive-sshd-hdd-120gb-ssd-1tb-hdd-25-sata-iii-6gb-s - SSHD with a 120 GB SSD, a simple Google search yielded the results.
Secondly: he was right about taking about the OS caching the common files onto the ssd, it gets the most commonly used files that are used by the system and copies them onto the ssd because an ssd is many times faster at reading and writing files that are small and in different sections of the drive (random R/W not sequential) than its hard drive counterpart. Using the term "RAM" (random access memory) to refer to the SSD is incorrect because the very nature of RAM as a form of secondary storage; meaning that it only stores data that needs to be stored for currently running programs, once the computer is turned off or the program has been closed the tempory files will get deleted or dumped, the files that are "cached" onto the ssd are kept when the sysetem is turned off. It is an ssd not a stick of ram thats just how it works. There ARE 8 MBs of CAHCHE on some SSHDs (there can be more) and also most (if not all) HDDs. This cache is form of secondary storage that is a buffer where data is kept in when the CPU is asking for data to get precessed, without this the hard drive I believe (I'm not sure) would be much slower / not work at all.
I'm assuming that you were talking about this. So in fact you "slipped up"
To answer your question about the difference in start time on Grand theft auto 5, the difference between 8 and 16 gigs would be negligible unless you only played GTA some of the time and played many other games more often, in which case there would be a small difference. The bottom line is that the games that you play the most will have the start data cached meaning that what ever games that you play the most will load faster.
X-PlanePilot777 I should have been more specific in saying SSHD's that work in the PS4. I am aware of the Black2 drives, but they are incompatible with PS4. Also, what I was commenting on was his description of the particular drive that he chose, which WAS a slip up. Look up the type and specs of his drive and the claim that he made about the maximum ram capacity. It is false, plain and simple. I understand the basic concept of how SSHDs work, but I appreciate you taking the time to teach me a little more about them.
***** The video just showed you how the SSHD would benefit the PS4 under the right conditions.
That's all you need if you only play one game at a time, which I do. Plus the SATA connection on the PS4 greatly limits what you can get out of the SSD and makes it not really worth the purchase unless money is not an issue.
Anyway that you could test texture pop-ins in Battlefield 4? I've noticed that after the initial level load or a respawn there's often smudged low-res textures, before the higher resolution textures loads.
So glad you did this!!!! I have the same SSHD in my labtop and my PS4. Going to replace an old drive in my labtop with the extra drive. The SSHD and SSD will get faster over time. So do "reupload" in about 2-3 months :-D awesome video guys
Don't see why SSD would get faster over time - with SSHD it's about algorithm putting most frequently used data in cache, allowing for SSD-level access time and transfer rate, but SSD can access whole memory pool just as quick/faster, than SSHD can cache pool.
SSHD gets faster when it learns which files you use the most.
So, it would be a more reliable test when it is tested over the course of months.
No, it doesn't take that long but a couple of boot ups and starting the program, doing same thing 3 times and you will see the performance of the SSHD improve.
Like every other person comparing SSD, HDD, and Hybrids, he did not mention the comparison in pop-in time. To people like me, this matters more than game-load time.
Indeed, no doubt, but again it would be nice if he addressed it. Also, these EVOs are nice, but I'm gonna go with the m500 from corsair especially if it's going into a PS3 (this EVO would be nice in my laptop). This EVO is overkill for the PS3, IMO.
Don't ignore that these benefits are also apparent during game play for games that require streaming data into the game large sandbox, or MMOs etc. The load time differences will still small but if you're able to get your very large multiplayer map to load faster you'll be at an advantage compared to people with a stock, or full drive. Sony could even include further optimization for users that have an SSD installed.
Love that kastet on a shelf in a background ! Back in a days had one exactly like that.
1 Tb seagate SSHD hybrid drive is very quite ok for the PS4, also, if you upgrade it, best is to have an USB stick in hand with the newest firmware update firstly installed before you want to install the SSHD.
Deleting a game wont delete the saved game files- doesnt take long to reinstall a game- so u dont need it for the space- but the hybrid is faster so u might get one just for that reason. Good video
Awesome video guys! I've seen a lot of "reviews" for the ps4. It's nice to see something unique.
Hey Tested, Nice comparison, but you left out some technical data that is relevant, like the model names you used. You also don't factor in disk RPM which shaves off some seconds from load times with added power consumption.
From a quick search revealed PS4 standard is a 5400 RPM disk, same as the hybrids I presume you were using, so when the SSD catch runs out it will perform exactly like the standard. Futhermore the SSHD's caching algorithms are not transparent, as it will most likely unload not frequently used cache that are not OS related, I'd presume it will then perform just as good as the standard disk if you swap games. The SSD will therefor give much more solid overall speed upgrade and noise reduction for the extra bucks you use on it.
That is true, to an extent. A SSD will provide you better performance, as was said in the video, but it is far more expensive then it's worth. A hybrid drive will give you a little boost and more storage for less then the SSD. And seriously, if anyone is that worried about performance, a PS4 (or an XBone) is not the answer anyways.
I have no disagreement on the reviews recommendation, for anyone with a budget SSHD is still a sound option. I'd just hope some more added technical data in this otherwise nice test (model, RPM, cache sizes etc.), so that people considering an update will know what specs to look for.
Why is there a difference in the visuals?
Inland Professional sells a 1tb SSD for cheap and they are really great hard drives, just picked mine up this weekend WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!
This video aged both like fine wine and milk. Obviously storage specs and prices have come way down. Also games are now over 100GB.
I would have liked to see how the drive performs with regard to load times in-game. Take Bloodbourne as one example of a game where you die a lot. When you die the load times can take a while on a traditional drive. I would have liked to know how much this would improve between the different drives.
very well done, I can tell al ot of work was put into this.
Problem is those evo drives don't perform well without the software, without that turbo boost which assigns ram as a cache write and read speeds increase and without that other feature I cant remember exactly, where you set it to configure part of the ssd as SLC memory to further increase performance the evo is nothing short of spectacular but with that samsung software the drive is perfect.
Hi tested,
I'm from the year 2018, where a 500gb SSD is only 140$ on the high end.
+PaulusAlone your tip about a higher rpm drive is actually very usefull. Without it I wouldnt have looked up info about using one in a ps4 and just gone ahead and purchased one. Thank you.
Why bother buying a Hybrid? Like Will said, it'll only matter if you play multiplayer games that reference the same set of data frequently. But note that 1) 8GB of flash is insufficient in this generation of high fidelity assets. It'll probably only cache maybe 2 maps and all of the weapon/character models and 2) multiplayer games are bounded by the host or the person who loads the slowest. You loading an extra 10s faster than the others means little in this aspect.
No point buying an SSD either because of point (2). Just stick with cheap mechanical ones.
It's a good review. Something to note is that SSDs really excel at non-sequential reads. When you're loading a game, typically you're streaming data sequentially, in which case the benefits of an SSD aren't as apparent. If you want a real example of the power of an SSD, you'd have to find a game that hits the disk frequently and non-sequentially. Then you'll see an incredible improvement. Unfortunately games that access data in this way would be nearly unplayable on a typical hard drive. People tend to write games with the expectation that reading from disk is dog-slow, so they preload as much as they can into volatile memory.
Mind you that the stock HDD on the PS4 is a 5400RPM disk. If you upgrade to a decent 7200RPM disk with 16MB of cache, you should be alright (it's what i did to my laptop). Regardless, thanks for the heads-up.
The PS4 is so powerful it takes 39 seconds to load a save game even on an SSD...this is truly the next gen of gaming right here.
thanks man. For sure I'm going to upgrade with sshd. Battlefield 1 load times are horrible.
@quadstrike
You're installing the contents of a blu-ray disc. Those are 10 times larger than DVD's because they hold much higher quality graphics. So when you're playing your crisp, clear PS4 games at 1080p and 60 frames per second you're not watching graphics meant for 480p that would normally fit on a PC DVD disc holding ..maybe.. 4.7gb of data(some of which may even be compressed further). This is the unfortunate downside of next-gen gaming and super high quality visuals.
uuugh no, a blu-ray doesnt have "HIGHER QUALITY GRAAAPHICS".
resolution and FPS in a video game has nothing to do with the type of disc, sure you can have better textures, BUUUT, thats if the PS4 can handle that size of texture, and even then it might not matter because it most likely cant handle them. Publishers today use a DVD with a higher capacity (double layerd), and they sometimes split the data into multiple discs, as well as compressing the files, the only big difference you can potentially have is ingame per-rendered cut scenes, where youd get a playback at full HD, but then since you need to install all that, who knows if game devs start doing it.
And do modern games even use the entire capacity of a blu ray? because i dont think they do.
I mean if you were correct with "PS4 games at 1080p and 60 frames per second"
than how can a PC run it at resolutions higher than 1080p and at more FPS, when you installed the game from a DVD?
karambiatos graphics and textures in this case are the same thing.. when you look at a character model you're seeing textures applied to a wire frame. Blu-ray discs have the storage space to hold MUCH higher resolution textures than dvd's do. Just because you can play a game on a 1080p SCREEN does not mean all textures on screen are high quality.... I could play World of Warcraft at 1080p w/120+ fps, doesn't mean the char models and textures aren't still crap, they just move faster and you can see more of them on screen because everything has been upscaled. And a double layered DVD may go upwards of 9gb, but quad-layered Blu-ray discs go upwards of 128gb.. with technology currently underway with 1tb discs in mind. And compressing the files actually makes things worse, because no compression method that significantly reduces the size of files is lossless. You're more likely to get more space saved at the cost of much crappier textures. This is why some games like Skyrim and CoD: Ghosts on the PC require massive amounts of install space if you want the highest fidelity textures(if I remember, Ghosts takes like 50gb and the skyrim ones weren't even possible to fit on the original disc because of their size, but required downloads later)
This is super helpful, thanks for this. You guys always explain stuff so well.
According to Shuhei (via Twitter), games don't actually 'install', but rather they are cached into the drives (hence the large sizes) - and therefore doesn't require to be 'installed' to be played - unlike the Xbox One. That said, Sony probably suggests installing hard drives with similar specs as the default than SSD or Hybrid if they function a bit differently.
There is a problem that needs to be addressed. There are some rumors that state the ps4 can actually fit a 12.5mm drive. It was tested by one site (forgot the name) but I'm sure whether or not that site is reliable. There is also as other rumor that says the ps4 cannot use anything higher then a 1.5tb drive not because of the size of the drive but because of an error that will occur. These two things need to be tested. Currently there are hdd that are 12.5mm and have 2tb as well as the new seagate hybrid.
You still have to wait online for the others to load up so that is pointless Tbh. The hybrid 1tb seems like the best option but remember that games usually let you play after 45-60 seconds while installing, from the disc that is. D/loads still need a while to get enough data to launch. The PS4 has a secondary 256mb system that manages all background tasks without putting load on the main system. Its enough to handle the basic processes that call for CPU time and memory. The XB1 has a full 8gb of secondary memory tied to the expensive "audio analyser". You know that is going to be running some top-class data collection software.
Could you test it on a laptop and show speeds rendering videos which one would benefit best.
I dropped a WD Black into my PS4. 750 gigs, 7200 RPM, and SATA III makes for some pretty damn good performance for $70 total.
Greater capacity is actually way more important to me than more speed. I don't mind waiting an extra 30 seconds for my game to load. But with this move towards mandatory installs, I'd rather not have to constantly shuffle content on and off of my system in order to keep space free.
I have counted so far 10 games (Killzone, TombRaider, TheWitcher3, The WalkingDead S1/S2, Killzone, WolfenStein, BattleField4, AC BlackFlag and TLOU)
And it does already eats up around 250GB for these discs to install. So yeah 500GB is good for around 20 games I suppose.
The 2tb is about $125 and is 4 times the storage. Definitely worth the upgrade
Tested Is there documentation on whether or not the PS4 is SATA 2 or SATA 3?
I got myself an HGST 1Tb 2,5" with 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm. I'll see how it performs when I get my PS4. Sad you guys didn't test this one
Really well constructed test, good job crew.
The Hybrid will cache the most used assets, not entire levels. It will cache data common to every level, and will therefore give you a small benefit. The game Warframe shows progress bars for how quickly each player is loading the game, and my Hybrid load speeds consistently outpace 90% of the people with whom I am matched (though no by a lot). In any case, many indie games will actually fit entirely inside the cache memory.
In the PS3 era it was Skyrim and GT5 where the really big gains we're.
It is.. well.. you had hoped of more. But it seems that an SSD isn't really needed with a PS4. And that a Hybrid drive does gets you a performance boost against a quite lower price.
The one thing I'm curious is how much of a difference there is in 5400rpm and 7200rpm.
My main reason to upgrade the drive is for memory. Speed is just a secondary bonus.
My thing on upgrade is would I do better to get a 1TB with 7200rpm, or a 2TB with 5400rpm. Since my reason is for memory, 2TB is the obvious choice, but 1TB will most likely be enough. So does a drive with 7200rpm speed things up enough to be worth the cut in memory, or does it make such an insignificant difference that I should just go with the extra memory.
P.s. are you Indiana Jones by night? Cool whip and hat in the background bro
Load time may seem minuscule, but if you consider a long period of time, it really adds up, in my opinion.
I highly do not recommend the 7200 rpm. I had one in my PS4 for a month and after 2 hrs of continued used, I got the red light of death; which is just a notification from the heat sync that the system is running to Hot. The hybrid are good in theory, but with only 6-8 gb of cache, the speed increase will fluctuate depending on how often you do the same operation. I def go with the stock 5400 rpm or ssd if you can afford it or wait for the hybrids drives that offer 64 gb of cache. Ssd are prob the safest bet. Some say ssd will eventually slow due to lack of TRIM. Not true, most ssd controllers have garbage collection built into the chip set, since the PS4 will most likely be doing sequential reads and writes, Trim no longer comes into play. The performance upgrade of 5-25 seconds may seem miniscule, but considering how many hours you play over a year, the performance upgrade could save you about a months worth of your life every year not having to wait for loading. If your gonna spend the money, bite the bullet and go all out and just a ssd. Preferably a large capacity one. If you don't like the speed increase that it offers in your PS4, you can always put it in your laptop!!! Win, win, imo!
***** I have an 840 EVO as well, it is a real beast. It works well with the PS4, The EVO uses MLC NAND, which is a little slower but offers less latency than the PRO series, that uses SLC NAND, which is faster but has much more latency. When I tested both of the SSD on my PS4, the 840 EVO actually performed a lil better than the PRO, based on stability. On cpu is a complete other story however. All in all, the 840 EVO are the best consumer grade SSD that offer capacity and performance. From my calculations based on the operations of the PS4. The EVO SSD will offer a 18-24 year life cycle. Great investment!! Kudos!
Aleksandras K Wow! Is it that time of the month for you? Yes, I have been to this thing you called "school"!? Yes, maybe my my approximation are a bit off, but if your such a genius, why don't you go ahead and figure the math so your rudeness is justified, instead of pointlessly bantering about how dumb I am for making wild assumption! All I was insinuating is it's worth investing in a SSD, regardless of the application. There is no need to flame me. I'm not here to boost your ego. So take a chill pill and relax.
Aleksandras K I own a CPU repair store. If you read my post clearly, I suggested the stock 5400 rpm over the 7200 rpm due to over heating in my unit and if SSD was an option that is feasible, to go ahead and get the SSD. Some people are willing to do as much as possible to get a performance upgrade, regardless of price, And I later stated, if people were not pleased with the performance upgrade in the PS4, they could easily upgrade their laptop. I watched the video. I never said it would improve anything but load time. Manufactures don't even make hybrid drives with more than 8GB of cache? That is way I said wait a year for the SSHD with a 32-64 gb of cache. The SSD they tested is a mid-grade, MLC version. If they would of used a higher performing SSD, there benchmarks would increase. None the less, your assuming it not worth it based on a video. I have actually put it to the test and could clearly see the increase performance. I suggest you try it before you knock it. If you dont want to put it in your PS4, install it in a desktop or laptop!! You just dont understand. Stop putting words in my mouth,,,,
Aleksandras K You obviously don't have any idea what your talking about. Maybe you should go to Computer engineering school or watch more TH-cam videos and educate yourself before you talk and attack. Fuck it. Get whatever you want. I really don't care.
David Yu I think you just got unlucky with the 7200rpm drive. I've had one in my laptop (and I think the cooling in any laptop is quite a bit worse than in the PS4) for about a year now with no problem and I think I stress my HDD more than a PS4 would).
A month worth of time is just a fucking stupid estimation, there is no excuse for that. You would have to load about 172800 maps going by 15 secounds a map,86400 if you are going by 30 secounds. Seeing you are going to spend at least 10 minutes on every loaded game thats at least 288000 hours of gameplay. I don't see how you get anywhere near "a months worth of your life every year not having to wait for loading". It's much closer to something like 1 day if you load 10 game maps a day.
There is a point where you can count something as a blind estimation or an exaggeration, but don't flame at people because they call you out when you spat out plain BS.
Also, I'd like to see you repair a CPU.
Thanks. Was looking for a video comparison :)
4:44 Well damn
WOW! Those prices are crazy. Time sure flies. Nowdays price isn't an excuse anymore.
The white pipe in the background is just hilarious.
Those load times in killzone are really long, even with the SSD. I did notice long load times when playing Forza 5 on the XBOne too. I just can't imagine how slow it would have been to load either of these games from the bluy-ray drive.
Great review. Something that ought to be discussed is whether the PS4 supports TRIM or not. I'm not sure if it does. If it does not support TRIM, SSD performance can really suffer down the road when those deletes aren't properly cleared out.
Fantastic video! Pretty much answered every question I had about replacing and choosing a new HHD. Gonna just go and get a 1TB HHD instead.
Thanks for this test, I asked this myself for some time.
I think a 7200Rpm would be the best choice if you want more speed, but have a budget. Especially after dumping $400 already into this.
On PC, once you go SSD you dont go back...
you are absolutely right, i just upgraded to ssd on my dell laptop and its day and night difference
ssd is totally worth the money
my pc only has ssds
2019 Update: On PC, once you go M.2 you dont go back...
But this is for console so... Bye
You are on the wrong video buddy
I've been thinking for soon 7 months,, that's true. To upgrade my ps4 drive.. as there not so many games. I have SSD in my stationary pc and all that. Been looking for the PS4.. Tired of the space (500GB) , This helped me alot as I found 1 I Think is good for me. Good space bla bla .. 8 MB cache.. Then it said boom! A hybrid on 64MB cache for just 5 bucks more. Ordered it already and I'm so happy.
Now to my point lol! This video did a HUGE difference for me when I considered to change my hdd. Thanks a lot of guys! Thumbs up!
Wow that is actually surprisingly poor optimizations for SSD, granted it was designed with a regular hard drive in mind, I hope we see hybrid options with better optimization for future "slim" versions. I still can't wrap my head around how a fully fledged windows PC can cold boot in 6 seconds on the same SSD and consoles which have far less startup programs take over 3 times as much and loading screens take an eternity.
Great. Now please check the physical maximum drive size that fits in there.
he failed to mention that SSD's also have a limited number of writes they can make before it will fail. so an SSD will typically not be able to last anywhere near as long as a standard HDD. this is not as much of an issue with the SSHD though so that seems like the way to go.
HDD's also have a read/write limit, its actually lower too.
I don't think you know what you're talking about. SSD's have a life span just as long as a traditional mechanical drive.
For the typical user a modern SSD will last around 10 years, far longer than your system will likely be around.
that is not true . they do have a rated number of writes given by the manufacturer , which in most cases will far exceed this, but a mechanical hard drive will not last as long because it has to deal with heat and has moving components which can fail . sshd's can fail more because you are essentially multiplying the potential things that can go wrong with them . on the other hand they can last longer because you are using the hdd less so it is subject to less wear and tear
What the hell is this? Consoles and HDD's will die earlier than an SSD because of the write limit.
Great video!
I was considering an SSD or Hybrid not only because storage capacity or loading time, can you please share your experience about heat and noise? One of the bad things about the PS3 is that is so NOISY!
You can get a 1TB SSD now for around $220 (I've heard a lot of good about ADATA's 960GB one), and it'll be much better than the SSHD if you do lots of different things, play lots of games back to back, etc. If you play one game at a time, the SSHD will probably be nearly as good.
+Seth Winfrey I was shopping for a new computer to replace my slow as butter 2012 mac mini when I discovered the real problem is the HHD read - write speed. Bargain brand SSDs are 5-6x faster but I always feared the cost. I am 50 and used to the old rule for storage which was $1 a gig for a long time. Shopping at bestbuy I screamed like a kid when they had samsung 960g SSSs on flash sale for $206. We bought 6 on the spot for less than the base price of a new compter. Now every computer and the two consoles are running better than I could ever imagine.
+Louisville UAV Flash Sale? Get it?
Would have liked to have seen them include a 7200 RPM HDD vs the stock 5400 RPM drive.
I think I would choose the hybrid too! The NAND probably won't see many problems in a games console. Also nice is that the (likely) scratch prone panel yanks away for easy replacement :D
Bare in mind folks that all PS4 games must install the whole of the game data (instead of part of it like PS3 games). Whichever type of storage you go for you should probably go no lower than 500GB because otherwise it will fill up really quickly.
As an example, I believe Call of Duty Ghosts is a 49GB install and ACIV is 30GB-ish.
After you've installed 6 or 7 games you'll likely have already filled over half of your storage once you consider other things like save data, applications, patches, etc.
Why are you reiterating what was said in the video?
Never hurts to have a visual reminder, as people (myself often included) can zone out when watching a video.
i bought this SSHD that showed in this video. Its awesome, speed and space fits the price.
Great vid guys, any chance we could get the model number the hybrid drive?
Standby doesn't work.... at what point did it become "OK" for hard/software companies to release unfinished products and us, the consumer, just said "Yea... that's cool... whenever you get around to fixing it, we'll be here." ???
It happened when the devices became connected to the Internet and they could update them easily and cheaply.
FWIW, standby works, just most of the promised functionality of standby doesn't do anything. Standby works, but the console doesn't download updates and stuff in the background while it's in standby.
When people started pre ordering games and season passes for titles that release in near future ? :P Sell now worry later !
Can we get some in game comparisions? Like loading a level in COD, or leaving a hideout in NFS rivals? These are more realistic comparisons and this is where we would spend most of our time. Not just the initial load.
2:10 when i heard that beep i thought my own ps4 turned on lool making me paranoid
I know this is an old video, but im pretty sure sony said use hybrid and ssd at your own risk since they arent fully supported. I would suggest getting a 2tb Samsung Spinpoint M9T. You can easily get one from a Seagate Backup Plus Slim and just take it out of enclosure and swap it with the old drive. Its probably cheaper, and more reliable for the long run.
People just wait be damn patient the 1tb will drop in price by the middle of this summer it always will drop price due to competition and high demand from the public.
I installed the 1 TB Hybrid Drive (~$100) and it works fantastically well. I'd wait a few years as the SSD price will drop. The Hybrid does wonders. One thing however, you get about 849 GB of space open.
I will thank in advance to so many console players that would help and possible force manufacturers to produce lots or higher flash/SSD or hybrid drives and then price drops in the future because of players upgrading their 2.5" hard drives from the start!
Great video get to watch things load
Very informative, I'll keep this mind when I get mine and swap out a drive.
With the PS3 it was even easier to swap your drive, although I didn't notice any improvement in performance with my SSD at all. I hope the PS4 doesn't end up sucking as much.