PS2/PS3 SSD improvements.

Systems used for testing
*PlayStation 3 CECH-2501B
- Samsung 750 EVO 500GB SSD
*PlayStation 2 SCPH-50001/n (FM1.95)
-Curcial M300 250GB SSD

XMB (PS3)
-Boots up slightly faster then with an HDD
-Games and Trophies install more quickly.
-Loads media files, names and images much more quickly
- When pressing the PlayStation home button the XMB pops up faster and is more responsive while in game.

PS3 Games (Discs with a partial data install)

*Aliens Colonial Marines
-Bug where rooms would load with only low res textures has seemed to be resolved
- Load times reduced by up to 5 seconds
- Long pauses during game play has been resolved
-Stuttering has been reduced but have encountered a couple instances where it occurred but only during multiplayer.
-Texture pop in has been reduced significantly with only minor instances of it occurring (running a door by pass has lowres textures for about 1/2 of a second)

*Fallout 3
-Load times Improved significantly especially when loading into the wasteland
-Texture pop in has been mostly resolved (mostly effects distant trees and buildings)
(I'm still testing this game if any one has anything of note they want me to check I can)

*Silent Hill HD Collection
- Load times Improved significantly
-Some occasional pauses in certain areas have been resolved (likely a streaming issue)

*Silent Hill Downpour
-An issue where the game would a occasionally stutter when walking around Silent Hill seems to have been resolved
-Load times have been improved

*Tales of Graces F
-Battle transition screens are slightly shorter.
-Load times have improved.
-Pauses between anime cut scenes are shorter.

*Tales of Xillia
-Battle transition screens are shorter allowing you to get into combat faster.
-Load screens are completely skipped in quite a few areas.
-NPCs load into the environment more quickly very noticeable in Fennmont right after you escape the research facility.


PlayStation 3 Digital Games

PlayStation 2 games (HD loader/OPL)

*Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets
-Investigating a performance improvement when useing OPL (Frame rate doesn't seem to dip nearly as badly when exploring the school grounds)
-Load times have improved significantly.

*Silent Hill 2
-Load times have improved significantly to the point where it's more than twice as fast than loading from disc and at some points even completely bypassing the load screen all together.
- Loads faster still than the PS3 version of the game on a SSD

*Soul Calibur II
-Character models load much faster in the character selection screen.
-Load times of been improved
-Some times loads fights to fast and will cut off dialog of the characters names before a fight.

*Soul Calibur III
-Same improvements as SCII.
-Skipping character name dialog does not happen is this title.

*Turok Evolution
-Load times Improved significantly.
-Some textures load more quickly on far away objects

*Quake III
-Load times Improved significantly
- Saving and loading data from the memory card is also faster for some reason.

This post isn't finished I'll be adding more later if any one has a game they want me to test please let me know and I will see what I can do. Also just to note all the games I have on my PS2 are back ups of my physical copies. I do not support piracy in anyway.

 

Interesting. Do you know if any SSD works? Was the PS2 not IDE?

 

Pretty much any SSD works but no I modded my Network adapter and replaced the IDE board with a SATA one I bought from Ali Express. But I think an IDE to SATA adapter can work as well but I wanted to remove as much latency as possible between the SSD and the PS2.

 

the sata board you bought to go into your network adapter IS a sata to ide adapter, just specifically made to fit inside the network adapter casing

 

I'm not

Entirely sure how it works I just know it removes the IDE port all together and replaces it with a SATA connector. It's pretty handy you don't have to look around online for a PATA drive. Theres even an improvement when compared to useing a HDD games load a few seconds faster in some instances though that's probably due to the access time of the SSD.

 

Its a sata to ide adapter, I have been working on making my own version using the same chip.

If you google the part number, it will even tell you its a IDE to SATA bridge chip

 

Oh wow that's pretty cool. It would be pretty cool to get one that isn't made in China alot of stuff can prove unreliable my friend ordered a prebuilt one and it didn't work at all for him so they can be pretty hit or miss. I'm just glad my works just fine.

 

That's a very flawed comparison. It's twice as fast than from a disc with an old IDE HDD too...

 

I have 3 different PS2s and compaired the differences between regular IDE drive and even SATA HDD and there really isn't much of a difference. A SSD does offer some improvement over a standard 7200rpm drive. An example would be in Turok evolution a game know for long load times It averaged about 2-4 seconds faster than when loading the same area of the game. It may not be much but we are limited to PATA Speeds and drive access times.

 

id love to see a comparision with an ssd in an xbox 360 xdk

 

The only comparison I'm aware of is one that involved Diablo 3 load times on an SSD useing what I think was a modded Xbox 360.

 

Comparing an SSD with discs in the case of PS2 is a flawed comparison. Especially since you know this and only compared comparable things with the PS3 (ie SSD & HDD, not discs).
Of course it's faster than a disc, duh. However, the difference is barely noticeable when comparing SSD with HDD. Because of that very PATA limitation that you spoke of.

 

lol... it has nothing much to do with whether it's made in China or not, but who made it. Your PS2 was likely made in China as well, but by Foxconn.

Specifically, you're not limited to just ATA speeds, but UDMA mode 4 (66MB/s).
The PS2 also has a fairly slow I/O system as well, thanks to the IOP.

You could also try using OPL instead. HDLoader was made with an old PS2SDK, which had an ATAD module that was based on the SONY original, which did not have support for 48-bit LBA. Eventually, there were mods to replace that old module with a newer one that did, but even so those limited the transfer length to 256 sectors (instead of 16384, which is the limitation of the PS2 DMAC).

 

Do you think I could get better results with OPL than I would with HDloader? Maybe even slightly faster load times? I'm pretty new to PS2 modding and I'm trying to learn more about how it all works.

 

Perhaps. I know that there will be definitely some savings in CPU cycles if games request a large amount of data that is larger than 256 sectors, but that is not very common, however; the SIF DMA buffer used by CDVDFSV for transfers to the EE is 8 sectors in length, so the only way for such a large request to come in is when the game reads data on the IOP. Your mileage may vary.

OPL may be faster than HDLoader though, due to it having a different design. It is presumed to be so because some games with problems needed a new method for slowing down data transfers, when OPL is used.

 

Alright I'll run a few tests between them and see if I can get some decent results and I'll post back.

 

just wanderin, whats the status on this?

 

What is OPL? (I know HDLoader)

 

Here you go: Open PS2 Loader

 

Thank you for your return. It's an expansive experience.