- PS3 ››
- Action ››
- PlayStation 3
7200rpm Vs. 5400rpm: Does PS3 hard drive speed matter?
- October 04, 2007 14:45 PM PST
- Email this!
Does the PlayStation 3 benefit from a speedier 7200 RPM drive? According to our tests, not as much as you might think.
As we've shown before, upgrading your PS3's hard drive (HDD) is a quick and easy process. You don't need to be a master PC builder to do it; in fact, the hardest part is removing the tiny screws without stripping them.
After swapping out our first drive, we naturally wanted more, more, more!. A huge hard drive is obviously great for downloading demos, videos, and adding MP3s to your PS3 library. But speed also counts. Hard drives are comprised of platters that spin to read and write data; the faster that platter spins, the faster the hard drive can perform...leading to increased performance on PCs.
But does the PS3 benefit from a faster hard drive? And if so, is the performance boost worth the extra money?
We put two hard drives, a stock PS3 drive running at 5400rpm, and the other at 7200rpm, through a series of simple stopwatch tests to figure out whether drive speed matters to the PS3. By and large, we found that the gains were tiny.
Does a 7200rpm drive make your PS3 faster? We're about to find out
Note: both drives are Seagate Momentus drives; the 5400 RPM model is the stock option in the 60GB PS3.
PS3 startup time
- 5400rpm speed test: 15.7 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 13.5 sec
VERDICT: This one was the most noticeable; we could swear that the faster HDD allowed the PS3 to start and load the Cross Media Bar slightly faster.
Game background load time
- 5400rpm speed test: 1.9 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 1.9 sec
VERDICT: When you highlight a game icon, the PS3 loads a high-res background image. There was zero discernable difference in the delay here.
Time to load Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection
- 5400rpm speed test: 25.8 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 23.3 sec
VERDICT: Tekken 5: DR is a 555MB game, but we noticed very little difference between the two drives. It's possible that the game loaded a bit quicker, but it was barely noticeable.
Time to load first fight in Tekken 5: DR
- 5400rpm speed test: 5.5 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 4.8 sec
VERDICT: It's probably no faster, as we're talking fractions of a second here and that falls within the margin of error in our loose test.
Time to quit mid-match and return to XMB
- 5400rpm speed test: 5.6 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 5.4 sec
VERDICT: Identical.
Time to install version 1.82 update
- 5400rpm speed test: 1min 58.6 sec
- 7200rpm speed test: 1 min 54.2 sec
VERDICT: After downloading the patch, the PS3 must install the update. We were disappointed that there seemed to be very little, if any, real advantage to having a faster HDD here, as the PS3's updates take some time to install.
One somewhat unexpected discovery was that this speedy 7200 RPM hard drive was no louder (or hotter) than its slower counterpart - an impressive testament to the PS3's sound-dampening design. In other words, there's really no reason not to buy a speedier hard drive for your PS3....that is, unless you're concerned about voiding the warranty.
Based on our tests, the 7200rpm hard drive was ever-so-slightly faster, though only the savviest of PS3 owners will notice the difference...and even then, it's mostly psychological.
Where you'll really appreciate a faster hard drive is transferring or downloading full games and other media onto the hard drive. For the faster speed 7200rpm drive, you'll pay around $20 extra across the board. So if you're in the market for a PS3 HDD upgrade, it's worth considering 7200rpm if you plan to frequently transfer gigs upon gigs MP3s and videos. Otherwise, you're better of sticking to a huge-capacity, but slightly slower, 5400rpm drive to save a couple of bucks.
Comments [2]
-
- Jump To Page:
- [ 1 ]
-
- May 05 2009 at 10:16:56:PM PST
-
Hi there, I saw that there is someone selling 7200rpm 120gb drives for the Xbox 360 on ebay now as well, and a quick search about the 5400rpm vs. 7200rpm for Xbox 360 brought up this article I know, ironic). From the limited wording on the auction, the seller states you may see a 10-20% speed increase for things like playing games off the HDD, etc...but not anything noticeable that is limited by other factors, like the DVD-speed or bus-speed. That seems logical and also seems to agree with your assessment here for the PS3 (most of the speed increases fall between this 10-20% from your numbers here). Over the course of the life of gaming, that 10-20% may be a difference worth the $20, especially for larger files and longer loading games. $20 is also the price difference between the faster 7200rpm Xbox 360 HDD on ebay and the cheapest Xbox 360 120gb (5400rpm) drives on ebay, so the $20 seems like a legit price difference. Its a matter of whether we as gamers think its worth it, largely on a personal preference basis.
I know this may elicit the typical "ps3 vs. xbox 360" debate, but putting this aside, I personally think the $20 difference for the Xbox 360 HDD is a little more worth it than the PS3, since it takes considerable effort to prep the 360 drives. For the PS3, much to Sony's credit, doesn't have this barrier. Anyway here's the ebay auction I found, in case anyone wanted to throw up any comments they might have in this discussion:
Item # 230373964280 (wont let me post a link, just copy/paste it if you want to look at it)
- Vote:
- Down
- Up
- +1
- report user
-
- Jump To Page:
- [ 1 ]
