One of the good news the PS5 got “shortly” after it hit the market was when SONY decided to enable the console’s M.2 to be able to install an M.2 SSD. The company’s requirements were surprisingly technically demanding (speeds of 5,500 MB/s or more), which sparked controversy. But what if we can’t afford to buy an SSD of this range and install one not recommended for the PS5? Let’s see.
Why was SONY so picky about the measurements and performance of declared compatible SSDs? There is no official answer beyond that these are the requirements for optimal performance. We have to understand that they saw significant losses in bandwidth or load times to claim this, so that’s to be expected. The test that we are going to see pit the SN750 SE 250 GB against the SN 850 1 TB, two SSDs from the same brand with very different characteristics.
Is speed SONY’s excuse for PS5 SSDs?
To have the youngest of the brothers al one 3,200 MB/s
As we can see, in different scenarios, the loading times or benchmark performance in different games are almost identical, where there are no significant differences compared to the internal SSD, which has a clear advantage.
With less than a second of average deviation, we can speak of a more than narrow margin and within the possible errors of measurement.
On subsequent game loads, like Cyberpunk 2077 which is particularly dependent on constant transfer between SSD and GPU, especially on PS5 where it still faces load and speed issues, we see that the differences are again marginal, not enough to justify the price difference.
Differences appear with large masses of data
The only notable differences to take into account are when large amounts of data are moved at the same time and intensively, such as when we want to transfer the games from the console’s internal SSD to the one we have installed as a capacity or storage medium. speed.
Here it is true that the higher sustained transfer rate of the SN850 manages to improve performance in interesting figures, especially since we are not talking about seconds, but minutes, which is representative. Therefore, and in short, saving this last scenario in games does not affect choosing a Slower PCIe 4.0 SSDneither in FPS nor in loading time.
The problem is the resulting rumor, since much more demanding titles are expected with the transfer rate from the SSD to the console itself. If the developers force the transfer of information from the M.2 to the internal SSD or directly to the CPU or the GPU, it is logical that SONY asks and demands what it asks and demands. As of now, that hasn’t happened, but big headlines are coming that could alter the performance inside an SSD not recommended for the PS5.
