The Ultimate PS4 Pro: 8TB SSD Upgrade - Can We Fix Loading Times And Texture Pop-In?

there's only one real upgrade vector for your ps4 ps4 pro and that's storage and over the months we've had a lot of requests to comprehensively retest the advantages of upgrading your console with an ssd and to do so we've taken the nuclear option this is the samsung 870 qvo 8 terabyte ssd the largest and possibly the fastest 2.5 inch solid-state drive on the market may not have the raw bandwidth of ps5 ssd but you're getting an order of magnitude more storage that'll max out the pros available interface it's the best way possible to enhance the console but what advantages does it actually deliver can we address the long load times of games like the witcher 3 can we mitigate the ugly pop-in issues of final fantasy vii remake and yeah what's the difference between running this beast as a usb add-on drive as opposed to using it to replace the internal stock drive you've got questions a lot of them i should add and we've got answers let's look at the hardware first and this remarkable level of storage we've got here eight terabytes is possible on the qvo870 model due to the move to qlc nand which allows for four bits per cell along with the vertical stacking of memory modules previous generations had four terabytes as the max size and it's this moving technology that has inflated the cost and indeed the storage potential now the downside to qlc nands is slower read and write speeds uh compared to two or three bit memory but that's made up for by samsung with more generous dram sizes so the eight terabyte model here comes with a large 8 gigabyte dram cache to match and well the pc benchmarks certainly look impressive with samsung promising a max read of 560 megabytes per second max right of 530 and our tests seem to validate those metrics now there are concerns about qlc nan's longevity in terms of endurance in terms of sustained rights of multi-terabyte files but that will never be a concern for a console so let's look at this one way for ps4 pro an 8 terabyte ssd like this is absolute overkill especially since it's unlikely that we'll be able to hit its ultimate potential whether it's down to the internal interface or cpu limitations on data decompression is clearly a bottleneck here which does mean that you won't get the most out of this drive as you would in a pc regardless this drive does give the console the most optimal conditions in terms of speed and size solving two issues for pro in one go and yeah consider a game install sizes this generation modern warfare in particular is notorious for its in-store profile it's nearing 200 gigabytes now with constant war zone updates inflating that number and uh yeah then there's titles like red dead redemption 2 destiny 2 both well in excess of a hundred gigs now and it can get increasingly hard to manage space on a pros stock one terabyte drive but there's a second potential use for such a drive as well for future proofing for playstation 5 we could use this qvo870 ssd to store all of our ps4 games attached externally to the system of course sony's next-gen machine requires an ultra-fast nvme ssd to play new ps5 games where immense bandwidth is a given in other words a regular ssd like this is a write-off for next-gen game storage however sony has confirmed that ps4 games can be stored and played from an external drive ssd or otherwise and it's in this way that the 870 could produce a huge benefit as an ult for large ultrafast cache for storing current gen favorites you could put it in a usb enclosure and you could use this drive on both your ps4 and your ps5 what's more we'll likely see its speeds being better tapped into as well an upgraded usb connection in combination with a cpu architecture that can stream in and decompress data more quickly it's definitely potential there let's focus on ps4 pro for the moment then and what we can actually do to upgrade system performance with this drive so there are two ways to use the driver of the console and we've been asked quite a lot to compare them in more depth head to head the simple solution is simply to hook up the drive via the usb port you can put it into an enclosure and connect it that way or the sort of rough and ready solution just grab a usb to sata connector as we've done here and just plug it in easier obviously but clearly less secure now whether you choose to install the drive internally or connect it via usb the pro sees 7.2 terabytes of usable storage once you boot the machine still pretty respectable right in fact it's enough to store modern warfare in its entirety 40 times for storage problem solved then but what about loading times first off let's kick off with the big guns battlefield 5 the witcher 3 and even days gone all have loading screens that last over a minute when you're using the ps4 pro's stock hdd it's not so much of an issue for battlefield 5 where there's just one big initial load per campaign level but still it's a nuisance right the witcher 3 that's another story from novigrad to the white orchard fast travelling between regions is necessary and always incurs a lengthy weight the good news is that our ssd dramatically chops this down check this out loading our novigrad save from the main menu we're waiting 62 seconds on an internal ssd that compares to 67 seconds on the same ssd when it's connected via usb using an enclosure again proof that in the main direct sata access gets faster results than going via the pros usb ports neither result is exactly impressive though obviously a pc could do so much better with such a rapid ssd but still it's a huge savings stacked up against the 91 second load of ps4 pro's stock drive put it this way it's 68 of the weight this gets even better with load tests on the less complex white orchard area taking 22 seconds on the ssd whether installed internally or externally compared to 40 seconds on the stock drive for the witcher 3 this really makes a difference to the experience of dropping in and out of regions across the map i do wonder though how ps4 back compat on ps5 with the game installed to this drive could better improve those loading times it's something that we'll be revisiting in future as i mentioned a new console using this same drive could give much better results but for now the upgrades are at least considerable for the playstation 4 pro to see one of the biggest upgrades next we turn to battlefield 5 booting a war story mission in northeast would usually take a whole 60 seconds to get to any gameplay but this ssd cuts that straight in half to just 30 seconds other missions see even greater gains the next mission along to aya hits the same 30 second figure on an ssd down from 66 seconds on stock all of which gives us an extreme cutting loading times 45 of the weights you'd experience on the stock hdd to pick another title with a big opening load ahead of a sprawling open field we have days gone plenty of other titles show off the merits of the ssd bloodborne final fantasy remake and gran turismo sport all see improvements of varying degrees perhaps the best one to end on for a demonstration though is fallout 4 a game that does involve entering and leaving interiors like diamond city which cues up some lengthy loads in this case loading our diamond city save takes just 14 seconds on the internal ssd down from 44 seconds usually that gets us our biggest relative saving at 32 percent of the overall load time again impressive stuff for the ssd and even accessed via usb it's a remarkable game the next big question then can upgrading to an ssd improve the actual gameplay experience you see titles rely heavily on streaming and in his recent roads to playstation 5 presentation mark cerny explained the many challenges of working with a mechanical hard drive moving to sst effectively eliminates the bottlenecks inherent in the hard drive we've seen a raft of games battle with the seek times of the ps4's internal hdd like final fantasy vii slum area for example the results are usually mitigated by buffering data in the background into system ram but games like this still clearly depend on the drive for streaming in assets the result is glaring popping and textures that at times don't load at all until you've walked right past them now tests at the time of review of this game were inconclusive but a more detailed look with the qvo870 does seem to show some significant improvements the ssd improves texture streaming around the sector seven slums consisting of a sprawl of npcs and metallic houses set to the backdrop of a mako reactor pitting the stock hard drive against the ssd look at the floor as we run around the same route the stock drive struggles to draw floor textures in even as we run right over them they just don't appear in time leaving us with the low res asset instead meanwhile the ssd streams everything in on cue so there's no more blurry textures there surprisingly this also applies to geometry in the distance you'll catch rubble stacking up around the slums popping in faster on the ssd but that's it the npcs all fade in at the exact same range suggesting that this is a baked in draw distance setting short of seeing the game patched this is unlikely to improve the mpc fade in always occurs at this range it's not a storage issue textures and geometry popping are improved for final fantasy vii remake but what of other taxing open world games next on the list is the witcher 3 galloping from the outskirts of the navigrad region to the inner city this run is a perfect stress test for a stock ps4 drive versus the ssd and again there's a visually obvious upgrade here much like final fantasy vii textures on building sides don't load in on time on the stock ps4 pro hard drive leaving a blurry mess on the first run is this actually a storage issue or a cpu side decompression bottleneck well with the ssd installed internally you see all of those textures properly load in well ahead of time this goes for the outskirts of the city and again it's always texture assets for geometry meanwhile the pop-in range is seemingly preset and so we see crates barrels and npcs render at the same point during the run-through of the market area so there's no gain there so i did a couple more quick tests so for example on days gone there are some improvements to texture popping during cutscenes especially on the stock drive we have this blurry surface steering in engine cinematics where upgrading to an ssd solves this easily enough next we have large-scale games like fallout 4 just outside diamond city we run a set root of the commonwealth and it's again the case that the stock pro hdd fails to load in textures underfoot in time the ssd saves the day yet again faster seek times to its flash memory serve up the assets faster so the evidence for an ssd upgrade is looking good then loading times aren't improved in step with the generational leap in hardware performance but they are substantially improved on the titles most egregiously impacted by asset popping we can confirm that there are improvements we are using what may well be the best possible ssd for the job here with a storage level that commands a stratospheric price point but smaller capacity drives are available and the storage side bottleneck should be mostly eliminated even on a much cheaper drive but one lingering question concerns the ps4's front end menus which can get a little laggy using the ssd as external storage probably won't mitigate this but the theory is that using it internally will well from a cold boot the ps4 pro gets to the menus much faster than it does on stock and likewise for switching between games it is a swifter process on the ssd with less stutter thing is though that's really the extent of it in our testing for actual menu navigation there's only a small gain in smoothness most elements of the playstation 4's ui are more dependent on network speed like the tiles of your games library or the social details under each game an upgrade to an ssd either external or installed internally won't make a huge difference in this sense really the biggest upgrade relates to the loading speeds especially when it comes to first booting a game still it is an advantage and we will take it in terms of how game loading times compare when the ssd is mounted internally or connected via usb we mentioned some metrics earlier but to clarify our results demonstrate that there is indeed an advantage in going through the upgrade procedure and removing your stock hdd completely but the results vary on a game by game basis so looking at our final fantasy 7 remake loading result the load time is just one second faster than using the same drive externally via usb 19.5 seconds versus 20.6 bizarrely though in bloodborne both of our loading time tests saw the internal result being one to two seconds slower than using the drive connected via usb however elsewhere the scores were either on par or significantly better our witcher 3 navigate save test saw an internal ssd lop off five seconds from the external result similarly we saw three to five second gains in fallout 4 loading that may not sound too amazing but when the load times are in the 22nd range with the external ssd an extra three to five second time saving is proportionally very impressive now if i personally were doing the upgrade i'd likely opt to mount the drive internally to get as much performance back as possible from what is after all a very expensive upgrade however external usb storage has a key advantage as long as you're using the same psn login you can share the drive between multiple consoles in our work that's really useful when it comes to testing ps4 versus ps4 pro performance we don't need to download the same game twice when it comes to upgrading to ps5 in theory an external drive should simply transition across from your old console to the new one plug and play you're good to go still though an 8 terabyte playstation 4 pro pretty neat right just because you can it doesn't mean you should but we went there and i'm happy that we did just to prove that it really works wouldn't anything at the beginning of the generation the basic concept of an upgrade of this magnitude would have been deemed insane but as the sun sets on the current generation there it is it almost feels like a bottomless pit of fast storage and it's certainly been an interesting experiment this maxed out ps4 pro refines the experience of many games and helps to improve popping issues for games like final fantasy 7 remake as a future upgrade path for playing all ps4 games on ps5 there's value too though the far less expensive lower capacity models would also reap huge dividends if it's too much certainly all of this comes by brute force by paying for an ssd over twice the worth of the console itself which is ridiculous but generally prices on standard capacity drives have reduced to a point now well i think that there's genuine value there and yes all of the results we've collected will be revisited once we have our hands on playstation 5. in the here and now at least this represents the best sony's current best console can be pushed to but all of these games should be playable and with performance updates to boot on nextgen i'm hopeful we'll see a similar uptick in loading speeds and also in streaming throughput for assets all areas will be investigating once the new console lands in a few months time but for today well that's all we've got which means it's time for this the call to action the plaintiff cry to like subscribe and share in appreciation for the amount of time investment put into these tests and yes there's the bell it's there to be rung and doing so delivers something quite extraordinary instant notifications whenever new digital foundry content is published on youtube and yes the df patreon that's there for those that love what we do and want to support the team more directly and in return you'll get pristine quality video downloads of everything we do but that's all from me for now thanks for making it all the way to the end of this one if indeed you did and just generally thanks for watching and supporting digital foundry you

Channel: Digital Foundry

Views: 700,256

Keywords: PS4 Pro, Playstation 4, Pro, Tested, Analysis, Graphics Comparison, SSD, Upgrade, Fix, Loading Times, Texture Pop in, Streaming, 8TB, Playstation 5, PS5, External, Internal, Hard Drive, Solid State, Drive, Ultimate, Witcher 3, Battlefield 5, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Pop-in, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, Gran Turismo Sport, Day's Gone

Id: E07IM_bArGQ

Length: 19min 14sec (1154 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 03 2020