PS5 loading times could get even better — here's how

PS5 loading times could become fifty-fifty better — hither's how

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One of the PS5'southward flagship features is its custom SSD that enables games to load at lightning-quick speeds. However, expanding your PS5'southward hard drive could in fact makes loading time even faster.

The power to increment the console'south internal SSD is currently only available in the kickoff PS5 software beta. Testers are putting the feature through its paces earlier it launches to all console owners. Recently, tech assay specialists Digital Foundry performed all-encompassing tests and discovered that adding an additional SSD can boost the console's loading speeds.

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While Sony has not released an official listing of uniform SSDs, information technology has given a list of criteria that a hard bulldoze must meet in gild to be compatible with the console. Digital Foundry opted for the Samsung 980 Pro SSD, which hits all of Sony's benchmarks and costs around $200 for a 1TB model.

Testing revealed that PS5 exclusive Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart runs near identically on both the base drive and the Samsung 980 Pro. "The 980 Pro is fast plenty to handle taxing PS5 exclusives like Ratchet and Clank and works simply like PS5's stock drive in its commitment of high-bandwidth scenes," says Thomas Morgan of Digital Foundry.

Remarkably, running PS4 games off the Samsung 980 Pro SSD really saw an improvement in load times. Games like The Witcher 3, Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk 2077 had 2-3 seconds shaved off their loading times when compared to being played from the PS5's stock drive. Although Battleground 5 was the exception that loaded faster from the PS5's base storage.

Native PS5 games loaded at substantially an identical speed on both the stock drive and the Samsung 980 Pro. Considering the PS5 offers some of the fastest loading speeds around, this isn't greatly surprising. If anything it's impressive that an extra internal SSD can keep up.

Transferring games betwixt the two drives is the area where the greatest disparity was noticed. Digital Foundry'southward testing revealed that copying a game from the stock drive to the Samsung 980 Pro was significantly quicker than transferring a game the other way.

For case, Cyberpunk 2077 took just one minute and 11 seconds to transfer to the Samsung 980 Pro, merely copying it back to the PS5'south base of operations drive took seven minutes and 18 seconds. Quite an increase.

Digital Foundry was groovy to stress that different SSDs volition have different functioning levels. If you opt for an alternative drive that meets Sony's requirements, such as the WD_Black SN850, you may not see the exact same results as higher up. It's nevertheless encouraging to know that upgrading your PS5 hard drive volition give yous both an increase in storage and a slight operation boost.

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Rory is a staff writer at Tom's Guide based in the UK. He covers a wide range of topics including tech news, deals, gaming, streaming and more. When he's not writing hot takes on the latest gaming hardware and streaming shows, he can be institute watching a borderline unhealthy amount of movies and existence thoroughly disappointed by his terrible football team.