PS2/PS3 SSD improvements.

SSD isn't going to have better performance than a HDD, because there isn't SATA 3!

It's the same story with the PS4, only PS4 Pro has SATA 3.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

 

But, I am not surprised if it helps the weakness that APA has in the PS2, whereby APA is bad with a large disk containing a lot of partitions because it cannot cache accesses to all partitions and it takes a while to scan through the entire disk to access the partitions at the end.

The telltale sign of this fault can be observed in the HDD Browser, when it takes a long time to list all entries on the screen, towards the end of the disk.

It can be said that APA simply wasn't designed to support large disks and SCEI never expected anyone to own that many games...

 

Speed benefits of ssds isn't just the max transfer speed.

 

Update on the OPL tests vs HDLoader speeds it is slightly faster in one game so far Turok evolution comes out ahead by about .5 -1.5 seconds (pretty much the only game with a slight noticeable improvement). Silent Hill 2 its almost impossible to tell it according to my stop watch its pretty close to close to be sure. Soul Calibur 2 and 3 its impossible to tell honestly. I need some games with longer load times to be sure. So far this has been pretty interesting I'll have to go through my game library and find some games with longer load times to get more consistent results.

 

BTW, having longer loading times doesn't necessarily mean that the game is reading more data. It could be spending the time processing data or even has a rather unoptimized way of reading data.

Also, a long time ago, the homebrew ATAD module was modified to use a semaphore for waiting on I/O completion. I only undid that change in recent years (originally because SCEI didn't do it), so HDLoader definitely has worser performance.
Logically, blocking the thread with a semaphore should increase the degree of multiprogramming... but the IOP is so slow that the overhead from using the semaphore actually hurts more lol.
I remember that it mattered because Melty Blood Act Cadenza would have some stuttering at the loading screen, before I removed that semaphore. It don't suppose that it really affects the throughput of the ATA interface because large blocks can be read, but it did help the SMAP (network) interface by quite a lot (0.6MB/s, I think).

 

I like the look of the console without the adapter on the back. Also the hd adds unnecessary weight. I relocate the usb ports to the hard drive bay with a wire and hide the flash drive inside. Speed or load times havent been much of an issue because going back to an older system I'm used to it.

 

Ghostbusters has a long loading time, around a minute to the intro video loading from SMB. I'd be interested to know how quickly that loads from your SSD.

 

We actually got it in at my work recently if it's still there I'll pick it up . Also testing the tales series with 2 PS3s side by side so I'll update with more games soon.

 

You're missing out. This doesn't really have do with it being an older system, but the USB interfaces just weren't meant for loading games. They did design the HDD unit to store games, although they only completed that specification later on.

With USB, you're not really going to suffer from the loading speed, but the fact that your FMVs are likely going to stutter.

 

From what I've noticed on my friends slim alot of games load very slowly off of his USB flash drive some even taking upwards of an entire minute or even longer to load.

 

The USB on the Playstation 2 is USB 1 giving a transfer rate of less than 12 mbits per second. That would be 1.5MB/sec at most. But you will have overhead that takes up some of that. The PS2 has a CD-ROM read rate of up to 24x which is about 3.6MB/sec and a DVD 4x rate being about 5.5MB/sec. Games that load the data they want at once and then just play some audio from the disc might work fine. But many games will load data during gameplay and that would be an issue. FMVs require a higher bitrate than USB on the PS2 can deal with I'd imagine.

If the PS2 had come equipped with USB 2 then the transfer rate wouldn't have been an issue at all and USB storage with some sort of loader might have been a lot more popular.

 

UPDATE: Will be adding several games to the list this week. Mostly PS2 games.

 

Does anyone know what the average/max transfer rate with an SSD in a ps2 would be by chance? I couldn't find any solid information on it. I know speeds won't reach 66.6 MB/s because of the I/OP. I know that the only benefits won't come just from the transfer rate. (I.E. access times. Also please don't input speeds based on installing disc to the SSD since the disc drive will bottleneck the speeds of the SSD.) If anyone could enlighten me or clear up any ignorance I have on the subject that would be excellent.

 

Picked up ghost busters the other day will get around to testing it soon