Since the release of Gran Turismo 5, players have been very vocal about the long load times. Apparently, a user on the Beyond3D forums came up with the idea to install a Corsair F120 solid state drive (SDD) into his PlayStation 3 to see if this could improve the situation.

Improve the situation it did, with the PS3 SSD-equipped system being able to cut load times in half. The ability to swap or upgrade the hard drive in the PlayStation 3 continues to be one of its significant advantages over other consoles.

While Sony does not support the use of an SSD in the PlayStation 3, the experiment has served as a point of reference to see how much improvement could be obtained. The results are very surprising, as the hard disk install was said to greatly speed up load times; but it appears that only the SSD can wring every last bit of performance improvement out of the PS3.

As a long-term solution we can’t recommend the flash-based SSD devices, as the PlayStation 3 does not support TRIM which is used to keep the SSD running at peak performance. Still, with the prices coming down on the SSD drives, we expect that more PS3 owners will be playing around with SSDs and trying to find one that supports onboard style TRIM that might be a better fit for the system. With SSDs prices falling, this might be one of the best upgrades a PS3 owner could want, and at least with GT5 it makes a significant difference.

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