A new video comparing the speed and performance of the PlayStation 5 internal SSD with an M.2 drive has been shared online, highlighting some interesting facts.
The new video, shared on YouTube by MiDASTECH, compares the console’s internal SSD with a Samsung 980 PRO 1 TB drive. While load times and performance do seem to be pretty much identical in games like Spider-Man: Miles Morales, it seems like transferring games from the M.2 drive to the internal SSD takes way too much time, given the drive’s specs. It took around 2 minutes and 51 seconds to transfer 39 GB from the M.2 drive to the internal SSD, which seems to indicate that write speeds are currently being limited in this scenario. As the firmware is still in beta, there’s the possibility that this won’t happen in the final release of the firmware.
Installing an M.2 drive that meets the recommended specs will not cause issues in PlayStation 5 games that rely heavily on fast speeds, as confirmed by Insomniac Games’ Director of Core Technology Mike Fitzgerald. In the tests made by the developer, the performance of SSDs that meet the recommended specs is almost identical to that of the internal drive in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.
The Gen4 drives we tried that met the recommended specs gave results almost indistinguishable from the internal SSD. The rest of the I/O path still in use (hardware Kraken decompression, etc.) is definitely pulling its weight in delivering the crazy loading moments in Rift Apart.
We tried some below-spec Gen4 M.2 drives as well and saw up to 15% slower loading in the most SSD-stressing areas of the game. Not too shabby, but keep a close eye on technical specs if you’re making an SSD purchase, as our game does rely on high-quality storage.
Support for the PlayStation 5 M.2 storage expansion has been introduced with a new beta firmware. A public release date for the firmware has yet to be confirmed.
