GT6 PSN version+SSD, Optimum Setup?

[Lambob]

does the Disc offer the ability to install ALL onto the HDD/or SSD drive?

my 120GB SSD is empty and ready to receive GT6,

the time has finally come, I am super excited!

haven't touched GT5 since May 2013.

If any of you need tips on converting your PS3 from stoneage mechanical HDD , to lightning fast placebo charged SSD, on how to get your backup and restore done,

pm me, I can advise all that I have done, and it took only 2 hours.

5 minutes to swap the HDD, and 115 minutes for the backup/restore process.

you will need a handy backup drive formatted as FAT32. I recommend a VantecUSA adapter (SATA to USB) and a FormatFAT32 utility found on the internet. you're good to go. there, you don't need to PM me anymore.

p.s, you will need a very good philips jewler screwdriver to dislodge those nasty screws holding the old sata portable drive in its cage. (in the PS3) those things are torqued at over 50 pounds i think. messup your screw heads, and forget getting that SSD in time.

 

[steve30x]

This.

Off topic, have you ever played Project Torque? I might remember your name from that. I will now conclude that non-sequitir.


Telling someone he's wrong when he's actually seen results from his experience firsthand is just... silly.

Yes I was a Gamesage in Project Torque for two years.

 

[bodger]

It has been measured in GT5, so I'll withhold judgement until the same is done in 6. However, results showed that a SSD will half the initial load up of the game and speed the initial installation but it will only improve transitions between races/menus by a matter of seconds. It was deemed to be an expensive tradeoff for a minimal gain.

IIRC, it was a Digital Foundry/Eurogamer investigation.

Actually that article did find that the track loads were significantly decreased with an SSD.

The conclusion they came to, like you stated, was based on a cost/benefit subjective judgement. Probably accounting for the fact that you don't see much difference with some games. But the facts are (as they found) that GT5 is improved, and if you play a lot of GT, personally I think its well worth it.

I bought a 60Gb Kingston unit to replace the 60Gb 5400 rpm drive and it was only £40. If you need a much bigger size then the cost does get out of control.

 

[Jump_Ace]

I have the disk (BD) version of GT5 and unfortunately it reads often from it after installation, often for seemingly no reason at all even when the content you're viewing is supposed to have already been cached/installed. This is especially noticeable in the arcade mode when viewing cars and when the game tries loading a different background music in menus. In the latter case, for a split second, while the BD drive makes seek noises, user control cursor of the on screen cursor is removed for a split second, and this makes you question why you installed an SSD if the game still attempts loading data from the disk.

However, this won't be a problem anymore with the DL edition of GT6 I purchased.

Ah okay, good to know! I should have remembered that PD made use of the disc to check against hybrid cars and the like. Now I think I will buy the game on the store tonight because time is moneycredits and I have an SSD now anyways


Jerome

 

[teth75]

Ah okay, good to know! I should have remembered that PD made use of the disc to check against hybrid cars and the like. Now I think I will buy the game on the store tonight because time is moneycredits and I have an SSD now anyways


Jerome

Plus you get it on two different consoles, so if like me you would need two copies its actually cheaper!

 

[Jump_Ace]

Plus you get it on two different consoles, so if like me you would need two copies its actually cheaper!

Two different consoles? Are they gonna release it on the PS4 as well? Man did I miss that one....


Jerome

 

[Dexter55]

HDD vs SSD - While data access will be quicker on an SSD, which will aid in game on demand installs, it will only marginally improve load speeds (a few seconds at most). Why? A PS3 is not a PC and the architecture is not designed to utilise the bandwidth of a SSD drive, also GT6 coding will not be optimised to be processed any faster that the standard 5400 rpm drive in the base PS3 model allows.

I will concede that a digital copy of GT6 with a SSD will result in slightly faster access but only marginally so due to the bandwidth/pipeline restrictions that the PS3 has and there is certainly no time gains that warrant the increased cost of either the SSD and the higher cost of the PSN GT6 version.

I'm not agree.

Code it has nothing to do with loading files. I'm a programmer since 10 years ago. When you request a file load, you have to wait to the load of that file, and since then, that part of code, it's stopped. If have to load a garage with 800 cars, you have to request every thumbnail, and the data for each car. You can start showing 10, 20 cars, but you're loading in background. The sequential read access, and the seek time, are the biggest advantages with the SSD, and that loading times, are significantly faster on SSD.

BR versions, doesnt make a full HDD install. They use HDD and BR, to keep the installation size lower, that's happened with GT5. When you play, you can hear your BR seeking and reading to retrieve data, and the 8Mbps of bandwidth of the BR unit, it's not fast at all.

About the system bandwith, we're dealing here with data transfers. A 5400rpm drive, dont reach the SATA1 limits at all, in the best case, you can get 40 or 50 Mbps, a good 7200rpm, reaches near 150Mbps, but a 7200 rpm it's not adviced because it's heat under load. An SSD, uses all of those 150Mbps with almost no heat.

As i said, an SSD will be much better in certain operations, slightly better in others, and equal in other ones.

 

[yewles1]

An SSD will not improve the frame rate.

That depends on the coding...

 

[shirakawaa]

On games with continuously streamed textures and 3d models (due to lack of ram to store them more or less permanently) the frame rate might improve with an SSD.
I don't know if GT is one of those games though. Any kind of stuttering during racing would be extremely detrimental to the driving experience, while it is still acceptable in (although annoying) in slower paced games like Skyrim. Therefore I think PD tried to avoid similar programming techniques for their 3d engine.

 

[FRoSTeD]

That depends on the coding...

Skyrim was a special case, it was indeed in the coding. They would cache data to the hard drive due to ram limitations. I doubt GT6 be affected considering it's not a dynamic open-world game.

 

[Michael_92]

I literally made a account just to post this. I have 2 fat PS3 models, a 80 gig version and a 160gb version. I replaced the 80 gig hard drive with a 120?GB OCZ vertex thing last year sometime. It was a whopping 75 bucks and the best money I have ever spent.

In gran turismo 5 side by side you can save minutes. Switching the license tests to update the used car area takes a min at most on the ssd, do the same with the hard drive its minutes. I know, I have timed it. Starting races is very fast, loading races. I didn't see a frame rate increase but I don't think there is much to gain there. Even things like when you turn the PS3 off wrong and do the OS check thing, the SSD is literally a 2-3 seconds, the hard drive last time I tried was a little under 5 min. There are plenty more games where I see gains too.

However, it really depends on the game, something disk based like Final Fantasy I don't see almost any gain between the two, maybe a few seconds at most on a good day with the wind blowing SW. For Gran Turismo I have literally racked up hours saved on my loading times. Say a SSD isn't a good buy all you want but it makes a HUGE difference. I do not see tomorrow when I pick up GT6 to be any different. I'd be shocked if you didn't save hours of your life with a SSD with this game.

 

[Kludger]

Same experience here, when I upgraded my 96 GB SSD on the computer to a 240GB SSD, I decided to re-use the old 96GB SSD in the PS3 and I found that the GT5 menus and track load times were much much faster... While I know it didn't affect framerate during driving, the benefit to the game play enjoyment was huge from the faster navigation of menus or exiting and loading tracks when switching cars. And this was with a relatively old slow SATAII SSD (Kingston SSDNow V+100).

I think anyone arguing against the benefits of SSD for GT5/6 should wait to pass judgement and advice until they try it for themselves IMHO.

GT6 supposedly fixed the slow loading menus so the benefits might be reduced compared to GT5, but I would guess it will still help the track loading times.

 

[Johnnypenso]

GTP has reported on this. This demo shows a 33% reduction in GT5 loading times.



Second example..worth the minute watch time just for the music:

 

[NOSWaster]

Yes I was a Gamesage in Project Torque for two years.

I knew it! Nice to see you here.

Edit: Just purchased myself a Kingston HyperX 120GB SSD. I'm gonna enter my preorder codes, then wait until I can get the download version after I return the unopened and wrapped disk to gamestop.

I can't wait to see how fast it's going to load GT6.

 

[Dexter55]

i've been playing yesterday a couple of hours, with the digital version and the SSD. I'm very very happy. Game menus goes amazingly quick, races loads in only some seconds, tuning, licenses ... super fast..

My friends with standar HDD, says they feel GT6 a lot more responsive and quick than GT5, so i can't really tell the difference, because i haven't seen their games running, but I can say, mine it's a pleasure to use and play, really really fast.

 

[NOSWaster]

Wellllp. I can't return the anniversary edition disc because the codes came inside. But I'll see how fast the SSD with disk goes. Want to compare, @Dexter55?

 

[FRoSTeD]

i've been playing yesterday a couple of hours, with the digital version and the SSD. I'm very very happy. Game menus goes amazingly quick, races loads in only some seconds, tuning, licenses ... super fast..

My friends with standar HDD, says they feel GT6 a lot more responsive and quick than GT5, so i can't really tell the difference, because i haven't seen their games running, but I can say, mine it's a pleasure to use and play, really really fast.

Exact same situation for me. Loving it!

 

[gslooney]

I downloaded on release and played it last night on HDD .. was better than gt5. I swapped out the HDD to an SSD this morning and, frankly I wouldnt go back to hdd..
Load times and time between menu's is just so much better.

 

[shirakawaa]

I downloaded on release and played it last night on HDD .. was better than gt5. I swapped out the HDD to an SSD this morning and, frankly I wouldnt go back to hdd..
Load times and time between menu's is just so much better.

Good to know that there indeed is a difference between an HDD and an SSD with the digitally delivered version.
Is it very noticeable, given that apparently PD improved loading times all-around?
What SSD do you have?

 

[Dexter55]

Wellllp. I can't return the anniversary edition disc because the codes came inside. But I'll see how fast the SSD with disk goes. Want to compare, @Dexter55?

Yes ! We can compare of course. We can try loading the game from the menu, loading a race, buying a car, tuning, whatever you want, the important it's to be agree of what we want to compare, i've also recorded a short video yesterday, i'm going to upload it to YouTube and post the link.

 

[shirakawaa]

A test that can be done is:

- Disabling the opening movie from the options menu
- Measuring the GT6 booting time by the moment the X button on the XMB is pressed to when the main GT6 menu appears.

With my system, (DL version of GT6 on an Intel X25-E SSD 64GB), the game takes about 24 seconds to boot.
I'm not sure if the internet connection quality is affecting this, though.