hotpocketdeath from the playstation forums decided to test the difference between the ps3's oem 60gb 5400rpm hard drive vs a new 100gb 7200rpm upgrade. His conclusion? Get the 7200rpm hard drive.
We don't think it's worth risking the reliability of the PS3, by raising the internal temperature of the hardware, for the sake of a few seconds. Plus we just ordered this 250gb 5400rpm drive, no 7200rpm 250gb models yet.
We don't think it's worth risking the reliability of the PS3, by raising the internal temperature of the hardware, for the sake of a few seconds. Plus we just ordered this 250gb 5400rpm drive, no 7200rpm 250gb models yet.
hotpocketdeath writes:
Well. I purchased one of these drives and decided to test it inside the PS3 because there were to many flaws with all the other tests I have read. Like this one (ign link). Whoever the person was that did the test showed a complete lack of knowledge with testing the drive. He tested how fast data can be transfered to the HDD from the BD drive. Well, the BD drive interface doesn't run as fast as the HDD's can, so it was the bottleneck. No surprise he didn't find any differences. Then he checked transfers of a CF card. Well, most CF cards can't transfer data more then 20MB/s. Tho some can, but they are few and far between and they were not available at the time of the article. So same result. He tested the HDD with a bottleneck restricting the results.
I approached this a little differently and came up with a few contradictory results.
First, This is the drive I went with.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145181 to replace the 60gig 5400rpm drive that came with the PS3. The drive I got showed the best bang for the buck @ only $1 per gig. Lowest of all the 7200rpm drive I have seen. And capacity is not a concern to me since I have a machine with 2TB of storage space already.
First the Tempature Test. This one has been WAY overhyped.
I attached a temperature probe to both drives while they were inside the PS3. Now I did the test in Faherenheit. These temps were the highest temps noted w/ room temp of 78.
5400rpm - 111 degrees
7200rpm - 116 degrees
Yep, only a 5 degree difference between the two. I can safely say there is no risk of using a 7200rpm from the heat. Maybe some of the older 7200's got hotter. But the newer ones don't seem to produce enough heat for this to be a concern.
Moving along to actual performance. I did this the most acurate way I could. I recorded the PS3 using a tuner card so that I can compare timestamps in the video to get a clear timeframe. I will post all the videos I used at the end of this thread.
First. Install times. I used 4 games for this. And it tested how fast to install the game after downloading it from PSN. I went min:sec.ms.
Note: they were not donloaded in order so their arrangement on the drive was unknown. Yes, this can play a factor in the final numbers. Also dealing with such large files. The cache of the HDD doesn't play as big a part as one would think.
GT-HD
5400rpm - 1:42.636
7200rpm - 1:32.993
Almost 10 seconds off the install time. About 10% increase in speed.
Jericho demo
5400rpm - 2:08.629
7200rpm - 1:58.685
Again, about 10 seconds off install time. And about 8% increase in speed.
Tony Hawk demo
5400rpm - 4:11.184
7200rpm - 3:32.045
Almost 40 seconds off it's install time. Coming in at a nice 16% increase in speed.
DiRT demo
5400rpm - 1:29.289
7200rpm - 1:25.385
This one had 4 seconds shaved off. Not as good, but still about 5% increase in speed.
All said. The installs averaged about a 9 - 10% increase in speed. Not bad really.
Now let's look at a file transfer. Although it still has the USB bottleneck of 480Mb/s and I am aware of this bottleneck. The results were different. I tested this with an external 7200rpm HDD.
188MB file transfer
5400rpm - 16.316
7200rpm - 14.882
That was 1.5 seconds off the transfer rate. Coming in at about 9% increase in speed. Again. This is not a bad increase in speed.
Moving along to game loading times. I used 2 Demos and 1 full game for this part.
Jericho level load
5400rpm - 17.417
7200rpm - 16.650
Shaved off almost a second. With almost 5% increase in speed.
Tony Hawk startup load
5400rpm - 18.285
7200rpm - 17.351
Same, almost one second off load time and about 5% increase in speed.
Now this last test I used Oblivion since it keeps a large amount of data on the HDD. This is a good way of seeing how games might act if future games incorporate the same abilities. I did 3 loading tests on this one.
Oblivion
Initial load
5400rpm - 21.355
7200rpm - 19.253
Just over 2 seconds off loading time. Close to 10% increase.
2nd load (map change)
5400rpm - 10.244
7200rpm - 09.543
Almost a second off load time. But a 7% increase in speed.
3rd load (another map change)
5400rpm - 12.479
7200rpm - 10.110
That one was nice at almost 2.5 seconds off. And a wopping 19% increase in speed.
Conclusion:
Honestly, from my findings, a 7200rpm does show an increase in performance. Some only a little, some a lot. But every single test the 7200rpm drive beat out the 5400rpm in speed.
From this, I would say that a 7200rpm drive is safe and effective inside a PS3. Though being more expensive, the cost difference isn't really a whole hell of a lot. And if you are like me and you want speed more then capacity. By all means. Get a 7200rpm drive.
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[Source: Sony PS3 Modding - Homebrew, Upgrades, Mods, and Hacks]
