Going all digital download for PS4 bad idea?

[sze5003]

I have an SSD in my PS4 (480GB) and an 85MBps download speed so for now I can fit all my games on the SSD. But when it gets full I will just remove the games I don't play that much, in the event I want to play them later my internet is fast enough that it would only take an hour maybe 2 before I had it back.

So for me, digital only is the way to go this generation.

Does it make a difference? I have heard it doesn't really speed things up like it would on a pc.

 

[smackababy]

Does it make a difference? I have heard it doesn't really speed things up like it would on a pc.

I was always under the impressing the reason it made more of a difference in a PC was because you were always loading things from the HD. On a console, most of the stuff is loaded in memory (OS, lot of game stuff, etc), so you don't get the benefit of loading up a new program very often. I'd imagine things like level loading see the most substantial difference.

 

[sze5003]

Yea and I'm not even sure if it would speed up boot times on the ps4. I mean if my pc can boot in 4-6 seconds after I press the power button will the ps4 do the same.

I notice that the ps4 boot up and shutdown process take some time even from stand by mode.

Once it's up the rest of the stuff are proceses that are ready to run and basically waiting on threads to run. The only thing you can close on the ps4 is the game itself if it freezes or malfunctions. All the OS apps never act that way.

 

[mnewsham]

Does it make a difference? I have heard it doesn't really speed things up like it would on a pc.

It improves loading times, this generation of consoles is pretty solid in terms of memory available so they don't need to do loads often, but if you notice when a game DOES have to load something from the HDD it takes awhile. The SSD cuts that time down significantly, is it "worth it" for 95% of people? no. But I was buying a 480GB for my PC at the time and just got two. so meh.

 

[sze5003]

God, I've unwittingly created some kind of Canuck magnet with this thread .

Eug, I already did that experiment for you. I found that ALL the jumper settings (FSB, voltage, FCPGA-PPGA) on the Slotket!!! make absolutely no difference, at least on my BX6r2. I tried running it in both FCPGA and PPGA mode at various voltages and it worked either way - but only up to 825MHz. The BIOS settings always overrode whatever the slotket was jumpered to. I've found this to be true with the MSI 6905 v1.1 as well. I of course can't speak for your Asus mobo however.

Yea one of the games that I play often now is mlb the show. I'm annoyed by the load times there. It took like 30 min or so to install and still takes a while to load in between rtts games. Did you play it and has it made it much quicker you think?

 

[mnewsham]

Yea one of the games that I play often now is mlb the show. I'm annoyed by the load times there. It took like 30 min or so to install and still takes a while to load in between rtts games. Did you play it and has it made it much quicker you think?

I haven't played that game in particular so I am not 100% sure, but I can say that from the games I have installed and compared to the HDD they are noticeably faster, not a HUGE difference, but you do notice it. Probably 40% quicker? I'd need to do some actual testing to verify though. and i'm fairly lazy

 

[sze5003]

When prices are lower I'll probably test it myself but for now I would much rather get a 512gb ssd for my desktop. Geesh I already have 3 ssd's in it now it's like by the time I upgrade I'll have a collection of ssd drives.

 

[mnewsham]

When prices are lower I'll probably test it myself but for now I would much rather get a 512gb ssd for my desktop. Geesh I already have 3 ssd's in it now it's like by the time I upgrade I'll have a collection of ssd drives.

Yeah I have a 480GB and 2x 240GB in my desktop so I know the feeling!

 

[Lil Frier]

Well, I'm pretty sure it was revealed that the consoles are using SATA 2 boards. Wouldn't their lack of bandwidth negate the SSD gains? That was the early stuff I heard, that putting a SSD into the PS4 gave negligible gains.

 

[railven]

Well, I'm pretty sure it was revealed that the consoles are using SATA 2 boards. Wouldn't their lack of bandwidth negate the SSD gains? That was the early stuff I heard, that putting a SSD into the PS4 gave negligible gains.

5400 RPM HDD (what is most likely in these consoles) is going to hit what, like 60-80MB/s at best? Even that is a pipe dream.

A good SSD can saturate a SATA 1 port, and that's in the 1.5Gbit/s which is like 150+MB/s

However, it depends mostly on the game and how it is coded. Games that load most of their data to persistent memory won't benefit from an SSD outside of better load times.

Eitherway, SSD on SATA1/2/3 is an upgrade to any mechanical drive, with exceptions to some SCSI which none of these consoles are going to be using.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Anandtech did HDD load time tests for the ps4 I believe as well.

Showed a difference but not substantial enough for me to drop $200 on a SSD for my ps4. A $70 7200rpm 1TB drive is more attractive.

 

[Lil Frier]

Anandtech did HDD load time tests for the ps4 I believe as well.

Showed a difference but not substantial enough for me to drop $200 on a SSD for my ps4. A $70 7200rpm 1TB drive is more attractive.

That was more my point, that the insane SSD costs to match the storage that these consoles need (20-30 GB for many games) isn't worth it. You're going to save a few second on games, but it's not the night-and-day start-up difference like a desktop gets.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Hybrid drives especially don't seem to have the same benefits as on a PC. The Hybrid drives are supposed to store the most used items on the solid state portion and the lesser used data on the mechanical portion. The PS4 doesn't constantly read from the disk like a windows PC would. Once things are loaded into memory like the system files, the HDD idles.

 

[smackababy]

I suspect, the only reason you notice it more on the PC is because you're loading things into memory far more often than on console. Once you have your stuff open and loaded, PCs don't perform that much better with an SSD. It is just switching between programs and opening new ones makes a huge improvement.

I would think the real improvement was installing on the consoles.

 

[sze5003]

If we could install a game completely on the hd without needing the disc after, I bet there would be more of a difference. That and I would hope booting would be quicker too.

 

[mnewsham]

If we could install a game completely on the hd without needing the disc after, I bet there would be more of a difference. That and I would hope booting would be quicker too.

You can, just download the games from PSN which is what I do with all my games.

 

[cmdrdredd]

You can, just download the games from PSN which is what I do with all my games.

Think he means have the disk but not need the disk in there.

 

[sze5003]

Yea like when you put the disc in and installs but actually installs the whole game.

 

[mnewsham]

Yea like when you put the disc in and installs but actually installs the whole game.

Eh, it'd be nice. But again, that's why they are pushing downloads so hard. They would like to do away with disk based sales if they could.

 

[sze5003]

For that to happen they need to price and market the games correctly. Used games would have to stop being sold and no more trade ins. I know best buy usually gives you a lot more than game stop. I traded in killzone 2.5 months after release for $40 and got 2k14. Then I traded in cod ghosts for 30 bucks in April and was able to get watch dogs.

I don't mind downloading the cheaper games on psn.

 

[Lil Frier]

Yeah, digital distribution requires better pricing. They would have to have games drop from $60 to $40 permanently inside of 6 months. They'd need something to make up for the loss of game re-selling (maybe let you get X% of your cost back for a game if you give up the license in console credit?), because that funds a lot of new purchases.

Steam puts new games 10% off before release at times, for example. Microsoft and Sony would have to REALLY get aggressive with their online game costs to justify digital purchases. I know I have 0 incentive to buy digital games so far this generation. Has any retail title's digital version dropped under $29.99? Tomb Raider finally hit that price this week on the One, but it's hard to take in a $30 single-player game I can't trade in when I finish it (in a month or less), considering how old it is.

 

[Bman123]

The only games I'll buy digital this gen will be arcade style games like trials fusion, full house poker. There's no reason to buy digital because damn near all the games out now release every year besides the exclusives excluding mlb the show.
If we could get steam pricing on consoles then people would be more inclined to download new games but until then I'll stick with the discs. I myself only play a handful of games at a time, the game needs good multiplayer for me to keep it without that the game just loses value sitting under my TV.

 

[TeknoBug]

So far I purchased via digital are: MGS5: Ground Zeros and Dead Nation. Rest I got on physical because I plan on trading a couple in for NHL 15 and maybe Destiny.

 

[cmdrdredd]

So far I purchased via digital are: MGS5: Ground Zeros and Dead Nation. Rest I got on physical because I plan on trading a couple in for NHL 15 and maybe Destiny.

dead Nation was free via psn+ a couple months back.

 

[TeknoBug]

dead Nation was free via psn+ a couple months back.

damn it. But I bought the PS4 2 weeks ago so it wasn't possible for me.