Can Sony's entry-level PS3 load games faster than the hard drive models? Hands on, it is clear that this is not the case - any drive that isn't specifically married to that particular PS3 is going to be wiped before it can be used. The Slim introduced a new HDMI controller that added a very mild noise to the output - something we noted a while back when we used it for gaming performance analysis. A 5400rpm drive at 500GB spins at the same speed as the basic launch PS3's 60GB drive. It's a 7mm-high 2.5-inch Hitachi Z5K500-250 drive ready-installed into a mounting bracket, which slots right into the new PS3. Other elements of the new model remain identical too. However, its read speeds were competitive, clocking in at 12.5MB/s. We're going to deal … Of course, the elephant in the room if you've watched the video through to it conclusion is the dog-slow deletion speeds. SONY PLAYSTATION 3 SUPER SLIM 500 GB EDITION WITH BUZZ QUIZ TV GAMES BUNDLE. Our final two games occupy two extremes. There's nothing really remarkable about this product in itself. So you feels as if the hard drive space on your current ps3 is not enough well in the tutorial i show you how to upgrade that. All the ports and sockets remain as they were, so in areas where Sony might have been tempted to make cutbacks (removing the Toslink audio output for example), we find that the firm has commendably restrained itself. The 12GB model addresses all of these issues: it replaces pricey mechanical drives with flash memory that, conversely, has seen prices plummet in the last couple of years. This shouldn't be a problem, as of July 2013, there are plenty of SATA drives on the market as one of the currently dominating technologies for these drives. As we noted in our 500GB Super Slim hands-on, this is a more simply designed PlayStation 3 using lower-grade materials than its predecessor. You can get this file and instructions on Sony's Website. Sony's PlayStation 3 gaming console enables the player to upgrade the console's hard drive. Install and deletion tests of the 12GB PS3, up against the 250GB upgrade, a 500GB Super Slim and a 128GB SSD. Indeed, in some cases performance may actually be improved. On top of that, Sony's plans for cost-reductions were thwarted by a flooding disaster in Thailand which crippled drive production and doubled prices worldwide within weeks - to this day, hard drives are still significantly more expensive than they were prior to the crisis. From what I can tell, the Super Slim will take regular 2.5" SATA hard drives, but they take a specialized mounting bracket to install properly. id's Megatexture technology thrives on fast seek times - the faster the better. PlayStation Online Assistant. No part of this site or its content may be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder. SATA drives come in a few speed variations that denote the transfer speed of the drive. Our thinking here was that the 2D art and flat colours found in the game should highlight any kind of visual difference, while using the photo viewer ensured that both consoles are outputting a mathematically identical image, reproduced in exactly the same way by the system software. Is the flash storage fast enough to keep pace with a hard drive? All Rights Reserved. Never miss a thing. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small commission. New 500GB 8MB Cache 5400RPM SATA 2.5" Internal PS3/PS4 Hard Drive -(For PS3 Fat, PS3 Slim, PS3 Super Slim & PS4 Game Console) 1 Year Warranty. The hard drives and SSD came back with similar results - 12MB/s write, 13.5MB/s read. The Inquisitor's full story is not yet told. You can look at the results above yourself. The new console is call the Playstation 3 Super Slim and is identified by the model number, CECH-4000. "With no storage device in the hard drive bay, we took apart the 12GB PS3 to unearth its secrets - like the fact it actually has a 16GB flash chip.". Despite slower read/write speeds, the 12GB model performs fairly well - until it comes to deleting data. You simply buy the mounting kit, screw in any 2.5-inch hard drive and insert it onto the Super Slim hardware. It's a little disconcerting to find a digital video interface not transmitting its output losslessly, and some members of the more hardcore AV fraternities believe it is visible to the human eye, something we didn't agree with - so we put it to the test. Much like a computer in this aspect, if you find your PS3's drive too small for your needs, you can easily upgrade it with a hard drive designed for a laptop. Whether you've got a PS3 Slim or an older model, there are a few specifications, limitations and requirements to keep in mind when shopping for your new drive. In terms of write speeds, it is significantly slower than the hard drives, but it has the benefit of zero seek time - the mechanical hard drives need to move the writing head about on the surface, whereas the flash chip moves onto the next write immediately. A multitude of tiny files are transferred across en masse, making it perhaps the sternest install-based workout available. Your PS3 Slim uses the same size hard drive a laptop uses, so shop for a 2.5-inch drive instead of the larger 3.5-inch drives found in desktop computers. using state-of-the-art capture systems and bespoke software to show you how well Here, upgrading to SSD absolutely transforms the experience, minimising the texture pop-in effect and significantly improving the look of the game. On the Xbox 360, once a game or demo is downloaded from Live, it's instantly accessible. Having trouble with your PS3? Matt Koble has been writing professionally since 2008. The PlayStation 3 Super Slim may not have hugely impressed us when we took a look at it in its 500GB incarnation a couple of months back, but we were excited by its future potential - specifically, the ability to offer a full PS3 experience at a very low retail price. Fioka za proširenje memorije za vaš PS3 super slim od 12GB, u ovaj drzac stavite bilo koji 2.5` SATA hard disk ili SSD, ubacite u predvidjeno mesto na vasoj konzoli, i to je to. The 4GB Xbox 360S allows players to retain access to the flash memory and use it simultaneously with the hard drive, and we would have liked the same function with the PS3. The power consumption of the initial PlayStation 3 units, based on 90 nm Cell CPU, ranges from 170–200 W during normal use, despite having a 380 W power supply. // Leaf Group Lifestyle, PlayStation Knowledge Center: Upgrade the Hard Disk Drive. Despite slower read/write speeds, the 12GB model performs fairly well - … Alex Grimm/Getty Images News/Getty Images, Advantages & Disadvantages of a Manual Typewriter, Problems With a PS3 Disc That Is Not Spinning, How to Play My PS3 on My PC Through a HDMI Cable, Copyright 2021 Leaf Group Ltd. All Rights Reserved. After removing said screw, the Hitachi TravelStar Z5K320 2.5" SATA II 3.0Gbps 250 GB 5400 RPM hard drive comes right out. Form factor is obviously reduced though - an important element for many. Avalanche's Just Cause 2 offers a small, light, intelligent approach to HDD access while Tom Clancy's Endwar is the precise opposite - hailing from an era where many Ubisoft devs simply copied the entirety of the Blu-ray disc onto the hard drive to avoid the more challenging scenario of streaming from the disc. The PlayStation 3 Super Slim (CECH400x) is the third version of the PS3 video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment. Initially, it was believed that Sony had simply gained access to an inventory of small capacity SSDs and would ship them in the PS3's traditional hard drive bay, where it could be replaced with any other 2.5-inch hard drive, so perhaps the biggest surprise upon receiving our 12GB unit was the complete absence of anything in the expansion slot. In case you weren't keeping track, that's a single Phillips and no more than 5 or 10 minutes for a hard drive swap. If you've not got the will or the interest level to watch our time-lapse video above, here's all the data in one big table. Digital Foundry presents its in-depth review. It’s more expensive than past Slim models, and today you can find older model PlayStation 3 … Sony PlayStation 3 Super Slim (12GB) Infinity 2.0: Marvel Super Heroes Bundle 3000473 $599.99. Thanks for taking part! We noticed our new PS3 super-slim came fitted with a 7.5mm, 500GB hard drive. In short, with our line-up we cover the length and breadth of Sony's official offerings, facing them off against the theoretical max in read/write performance that the PS3's hardware set-up is capable of. PlayStation®3. Other games that aggressively stream data through the cache may see similar unforeseen issues emerge. Type: Memory Card; Parts: 1 Year Warranty from Reseller; Labor: 1 Year Warranty from Reseller; Model #: WL500GLSA854-PS3; Item #: 9SIA4RE9NH6419; Return Policy: View Return Policy $ You don't even need an 80GB one either - which will be pretty wilard to find nowadays. We ran tests on several games: Gran Turismo 5's install is the stuff of legend, the kind of unoptimised dumping of data that is entirely at odds with the level of technological achievement found elsewhere in the game. The PS3 Super Slim's hard drive bay cover pops right off and reveals a bright blue Phillips screw. However, elsewhere, with more prolonged writes, the flash chip came off a little worse, albeit not disastrously so. The redesigned version of the PlayStation 3 (commonly referred to as the "PS3 Slim" and officially branded "PS3") features an upgradeable 120 GB, 160 GB, 250 GB or 320 GB hard drive and is 33% smaller, 36% lighter and consumes 34% (CECH-20xx) or 45% (CECH-21xx) less power than the previous model, or one third of the original PS3 model. It's the same story in the Super Slim too. Indeed, for those using their consoles as media streamers and BD players, the 12GB PS3 is an obvious choice. You won't find any such hidden partition on your 4GB Xbox 360S and performance will be hit as a consequence if you don't install a hard drive. Read our policy. games and hardware run, visualising precisely what they're capable of. Sony Playstation 3 PS3 750GB Hard Drive Kit Inc Mounting Bracket Caddy Cradle Super Slim with HDD Include Mounting Bracket and Hard Drive Exclusive from Limited with 1 Year Warranty 750GB. The latter are often called SATA2 and SATA3 and are capable of transferring 3GB-per-second and 6GB-per-second respectively. The PS3 Super Slim is 20 percent smaller and 25 percent lighter than the previous model. Perhaps the extremely slow deletion rate on the NAND causes a bottleneck for the id game, which we suspect makes extensive use of the onboard cache. Riot "disappointed" by employee conversation with League of Legends fan project. With the PS3's SATA-150 hardware, an SSD still performs better for some tasks, even if performance is bottlenecked in some aspects. The PS3 can only read drives at the slower 150 speed, or 1.5GB-per-second, so buying a faster drive is pointless and may cost you more money. One thing we should point out is that all our comparisons were based on entirely empty hard drives - these will lose some performance over time as they become fuller and as fragmentation takes hold. The 10 most popular stories of the day, delivered at 5pm UK time. Device … The unfortunate reality here is that PSN game downloads - including most of PlayStation Plus's excellent Instant Games Collection - won't work on the 12GB model as a consequence. The chip found inside the new model - Samsung NAND identical to that used in the Kindle Fire HD - actually has 16GB of storage, but only 12GB is available to the end-user (Microsoft take note). Lag was also decreased for certain games, but the benefits of an SSD don't seem to extend to all PS3 games. Loading and texture generation in certain games happened faster using an SSD, preventing texture pop-in where the game's textures load as you're playing. Time factor aside, there a couple of minor disappointments and annoyances with the process. It demonstrates pretty conclusively the strengths and weaknesses of the entry-level unit. "The Samsung flash chip in the 12GB PS3 is primarly designed for use in mobile devices, and is also found in the Amazon Kindle Fire HD.". to show you what 4K gaming actually looks like we needed to build our own platform Technology Editor, Digital Foundry  |  Once the transfer is finished, the flash store is deactivated completely, only being used once more if the hard drive is completely removed from the system. Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. At this point, the entirety of the flash chip is copied onto the hard drive in a somewhat lengthy procedure. These components draw the most juice from the mains, so we find that overall power consumption is much the same as it was at around 70W. We think it's a small price to pay for unlimited access to The PS3 will support up to 500GB. WL 320GB 5400RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA Hard Drive for PS3 Fat, Slim, Super Slim. OS support: Windows (all). ... Specs Related Drivers 6. You also want to make sure you buy a SATA hard drive. Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. subscription fee of €5. Textures are faster to resolve and the jarring effect of watching pixellated artwork coalesce into their higher-resolution versions is less of an issue. Any 2.5" SATA hard drive, usually used in laptops, will be suitable. At upwards of £200 at launch, the new model was simply too expensive when the older Slim offered better build quality at much the same price, but in the post-Christmas sales the 12GB entry-level machine was available to buy for less than £120. In contrast, the flash module fared somewhat worse in terms of write speed with a paltry 6.1MB/s result. Our next test subject is the existing 500GB Super Slim, giving us a direct head-to-head comparison opportunity between the two major European SKUs. Will you support the Digital Foundry team? On the one hand, this was good news - upgrading to a hard drive would be fast and painless. unleashing the hard drive: There are a few different variants of the PS3 out there. Historically, it's the presence of the mandatory hard drive that has been a major factor in the PS3's relatively high price up against its drive-less Xbox 360 competitor. Our PlayStation Online Assistant can help you find the support you're looking for. A standalone 250 GB hard drive (CECH-ZHD1) is available to upgrade this model. Certainly the more detail - and textures - going through the pipeline seems to incur larger performance hits and more screen-tear. Future PS3 models will doubtless retain the same chassis but be considerably cooler, quieter and more power efficient. This was probably to be expected bearing in mind that PS3 hard drives are all encrypted with a per-unit key. "id Software's Rage is the most demanding in-game performance test we can muster and the results are mixed to say the least.". We now know that other key cost areas have seen no improvement compared to the outgoing Slim - there's still a 45nm Cell processor and a 40nm RSX. The good news is that upgrading the 12GB PS3 is a piece of cake. Unfortunately, GameOS is geared towards a single storage point and it's clear that Sony didn't want to undertake the significant development work required to support multiple devices concurrently. The flash storage reads almost as fast as a conventional hard drive, and while write speeds are very slow, the fact that it has next to no latency moving from one file to the next goes a long way to making up the difference. After the question of available space, performance is the next real issue here. First up, kudos to Sony for not upselling the 12GB PlayStation 3. Freeing up space on the flash chip takes an absolute age, to the point where deleting the Rage install took over nine minutes, with the SSD clocking in at just 16 seconds and the hard drives completing the same task in under 60 seconds.