Jason Cross and the crew over at Extreme Tech have recently posted up a piece explaining how they installed a new Intel X-25 solid state drive into a PlayStation 3 gaming console.

 

The article offers a look into the future at what upcoming consoles might use in terms of storage. Intel X-25 is screaming fast - there are no doubts about that - however, it is still limited by the slow Blu-ray drive when installing games.

 

However, when it comes to starting and loading various points in a range of games (Mercenaries 2, Grand Theft Auto IV, Devil May Cry 4 and Grand Turismo 5 Prologue), the different is quite significant. Of course, a rather big difference was noted when installing games that were downloaded directly to the drive.

 

For instance, Devil May Cry 4 with the normal hard drive installed takes 50 seconds to load from the PlayStation menu into the title screen. Whack in an Intel SSD and that time drops right down to 36 seconds.

 

If you can afford the $600 USD or so for the SSD, check out all the SSD PS3 craziness over here.