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7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
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7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
[ Edited ]
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Time Splitter
Posts: 2113
Registered: 05-12-2007

Message 1 of 220

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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. 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.
UPDATE: Warranty: I spoke with Sony support about this and the representative told me the whole point of the PS3 having an upgradeable HDD is so that users can use bigger and better Hard drives. She told me without any hesitations that this does not break Warranty.
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 / 43.9c 7200rpm - 116 degrees / 46.6c
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.
Update: I changed over and ran some more tests to check exhaust temps. I played different games and even ran F@H just to check on some things and here's what I got. 5400rpm - 129 degrees or 53.9c 7200rpm - 131 degrees or 55.0c
Now these temps are the highest I could hit before the fan kicked in to high. Once that happened, the temps dropped back down. So I don't think the 7200 drive really made much of an impact on temps. There might be some games out there that do a better job at stressing out the PS3, but I don't have any of those.
note: Others may get different results depending on location, air flow, and room temps. For my temps, I tried to maintain a room temp of 78, my PS3 is vertical, and it sits about 3 feet from a cold air duct.
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.
Note: A key thing to look at is the percentage times rather then the actual time. 1 second out of 100 is nothing, but 1 second out of 10 becomes more profound. When dealing with operations that take very little time to complete, it becomes increasingly difficult to gain performance. Even small gains in performance. That is the reason I do not blow off even a 1 second increase in performance.
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. If you want capacity at a lower cost, then stick with a 5400rpm.
And here are the Videos I used to gather the data I used. All are in Divx format btw. Quality was a low priority.
Edit: I have taken down the videos from the server after doing some file cleaning. I felt they were no longer needed after being up for year.
Message Edited by hotpocketdeath on 10-08-2008 08:13 AM
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10-01-2007 09:15 PM
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Re: 7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
[ Edited ]
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Time Splitter
Posts: 2113
Registered: 05-12-2007

Message 3 of 220

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To each there own. But if games start coming along that have longer load times the differences may become more apparent if they use the HDD.
And they don't make any 10k or 15k HDD's that would work inside the PS3. If you wanted to maxamize your PS3 in every way. A 7200rpm would be the way to do it.
Message Edited by hotpocketdeath on 10-01-2007 09:25 PM
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10-01-2007 09:22 PM
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Re: 7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
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Fanboy Hunter
Posts: 7227
Registered: 10-21-2005

Message 5 of 220

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you need to change your font colour a bit, because on the blue light skin, (blue and white) your white font doesn't show unless highlighted.
btw you could upload your videos to stage6.divx.com at any resolution you would like.
Message Edited by anubisosirishades on 10-01-2007 09:32 PM
<==========+==========> Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people When you are born, you are crying and everyone around you is smiling. Live your life so that when you die you are smiling and everyone around you is crying. <==========+==========>
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10-01-2007 09:27 PM
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Re: 7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
[ Edited ]
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Time Splitter
Posts: 2113
Registered: 05-12-2007

Message 7 of 220

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anubisosirishades wrote: you need to change your font colour a bit, because on the blue light skin, (blue and white) your white font doesn't show unless highlighted.
btw you could upload your videos to stage6.divx.com at any resolution you would like.
Message Edited by anubisosirishades on 10-01-2007 09:32 PM
Hope that fixes it for you. I don't know how the fonts got screwed up like that. Not much else I can do without making the fonts to dark for others to read. This is one reason I hate the forum software they are using. vBulletin is much better. And I don't need stage6. The server the video's are on is a remote personal server only accessable by my family and is connected to the internet via an OC3 155Mb/s connection. I just chose divx as the codec because it's the easiest and fastest codec I have.
Message Edited by hotpocketdeath on 10-01-2007 09:42 PM
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10-01-2007 09:40 PM
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Re: 7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
[ Edited ]
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Polygon
Posts: 150
Registered: 02-20-2007

Message 8 of 220

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wow, thanks for this info. I was thinking about doing the same exact thing. installing from the downloaded demos. crazy. a 10% increase is quite nice. people will hate on you cause they already upgraded to 5400rpm and they are jealous. well look at it this way... if you play for 50 minutes you save 5 minutes MORE GAME TIME! ok that last sentence, i know is if the data is constantly streamed. here come the haters
Message Edited by idiealot on 10-01-2007 09:50 PM
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10-01-2007 09:45 PM
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Re: 7200rpm vs 5400rpm HDD for the PS3
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Pixelated
Posts: 506
Registered: 01-13-2007

Message 10 of 220

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Thanks for the info. I never really thought that temperature would be a problem either. Wonder what a faster HDD would be like though instead of a 7200rpm. Anyone want to test that.
PSN ID: Ghost-Reapr Founder and Owner of team FMJ Check out my ebay store at: http://stores.ebay.com/BallZ34-of-Hollywood  
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10-01-2007 10:06 PM
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