Would I see much of a performance difference between SATA II vs. SATA III SSD?

[soarwitheagles]

Hi all!

Happy early Merry Christmas to all!

Each of my Gigabyte MB's is SATA III capable and I am thankful for that!

I recently purchased some SATA II SSD's that were very low priced:

Intel 320 Series 160GB $145
Intel 320 Series 120 GB $114
OCZ Vertez Plus 120 GB $80

These were the best prices I have ever seen so, I could not resist!

Ok, here is my question:

Would I see much of a performance difference between SATA II vs. SATA III SSD when connected to SATA III on my MB?

If there is a great difference, then I could always sell these SATA II SSD's and purchase a SATA III SSD.

I really like this SATA III SSD, but the price is quite high for me: Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive @ $219...

Would there really be much of a difference in real life scenarios?

It's me,

Soar

[Dark Mantis]

Hi Soar and a Happy Christmas to you too.

There is a performance hit to be taken when using SATA2 SSDs on a true SATA3 enabled motherboard but after saying that if you are getting the full SATA2 data throughput then I am sure that you would be quite happy using them. The Intel ones were some of the best anyway. You wpould have been better off buying two of the Intel drives and using them in RAID0 for a real speed boost.

I would just say use them and be happy. We suffered magnetic drives for long enough and they were so much slower than even the SATA1 SSDs.

[teknology9]

Hi Soar, how are doing chap....are the fish still biting?!!!

I'm going to buy a SSD very shortly to put on my current MB , the Crucial M4 are backwards compatible with SATAII ports also and when the time is right for a new MB I will install it onto that platform.


Cheers,

Teknology9

[Dark Mantis]

Hi teknology yes I don't blame you as it is the best spent money when coming to upgrading altogether. We have been held back for so long by these magnetic drives and the difference these SSDs or PCIE cards make is astronomical.

[teknology9]

Hi DM & congrats

Yes...I've been meaning to buy one for a while, but every time I look at the Scan website there sold out!!! So, all being well I'll have one this time next week.....which will mean another clean install.  

The Revo hybrid drives look interesting also.....but can't afford that much.

Teknology9

[Dark Mantis]

That was the last SSD that I purchased and it (Revox2 100GB) was about £315 then but it has come down to about £280 now, but still expensive. They are fast though as I get 740 MBs read and 690 MBs write so can't complain there. It's also bootable which a lot of these PCIE ones aren't or at least you have to spend a lot of effort to configure them to enable it. The newer version, the X3, is screamingly fast and there is nothing to touch it apart from Enterprise options.

The thing is with the prices skyrocketing recently because of the floods the SSDs are looking a lot more value for money now and it must be doing their manufacturers a real Christmas bonus. Unless they are instalkled and setup properly though  there will be a lot of failures in a fairly short time as they are not so robust electrically as the older magnetic disk type.

It will be interestring to see how things pan out in a couple of years time once they have been around in general (ab)use for a reasonable time.

[teknology9]

Would you Adam and Eve it.......Scan have only gorn and sold out again......maybe I should go for the 256gb SSD.

[absic]

Shows how popular these SSD's are.

Instead of waiting for them to be in stock, place your order now and you will get one as soon as they get the next supply delivered. 

[teknology9]

If I mention your name absic do you think they will give me a discount?!!!!

[absic]

No way, they will probably charge you double if you do that!! 

[teknology9]

I asked for that one!!!  No sooner had I sent my post this morning..... I went over to the Scan website and they were sold out. Yes, I think I'll take your advice on that one.

[Dark Mantis]

Seriously if you can afford the 256GB the speeds especially the write speed will be substantially faster.

[teknology9]

OK.....I'll mention your name then Dark Mantis......256gb SSD here we come!!!!!

Seriously, I take your point and I am aware of this....but £300 is a lot so near to Christmas.......then again it is for me!!!

[soarwitheagles]

Hi Soar, how are doing chap....are the fish still biting?!!!

I'm going to buy a SSD very shortly to put on my current MB , the Crucial M4 are backwards compatible with SATAII ports also and when the time is right for a new MB I will install it onto that platform.


Cheers,

Teknology9

T9,

The fish have been biting a lot lately...we took a friend with his 3 young daughters up to the high lakes in the snow and each girl caught many, many fish...it was their first time fishing and they loved it.

Yes, the Crucial M4 have the best reviews here in the states...people swear by them.  That is why I would like to use their product...but their prices rarely drop low as in the case with these Intel SSD's.

I forgot that I am currently using Crucial's SATA III in my 2500K build.  I am not so sure that I see a noticeable difference between the Crucial SATA III and the OCZ SATA II.  Of course I have not done any testing or benchmarking with each unit...I simply do not know how.

Anyone know of a good software program that will show me the different speeds of each SSD?

I am trying to discover the best way to go with these SSD's.

The thing that is driving me nuts is that on my AMD rig, the OCZ SSD is only 60 GB, and it is already loaded with 50GB and keeps growing daily...and I no longer want to face the stress of it maxing out and causing problems.

That is the main reason I purchased 120 GB and 160 GB SSD's.

On the other hand, my Intel rig with the 60 GB Crucial Real C300 is no where near maxing out and it runs well....I do not understand why one has much more data than the other unless...it may be due to the fact that I use my AMD as my main rig, and the Intel I rarely use as a back up...

Any suggestions anyone?

And what is the RAID0 so many people talk about?  I read and reread about RAID set ups and I just became more and more confused...

From what I understand, RAID 0 increases the performance [not sure how great the performance would be].  I think I must use two of the exact same identical SSD's [which would be ideal for me because I have a number of identical SSD's].  And last, I read somewhere that SSD's set up in a RAID platform cannot have TRIM enabled....

So, I am not sure if it is worth it to use RAID 0.  Any thoughts on this gentlemen?

Soar

[absic]

Hi Soar,

for testing SSD's I would recommend ATTO which you can download from here: http://www.attotech.com/products/product.php?sku=Disk_Benchmark as it's easy to use and better still free!!

There will undoubtedly be recommendations made by other members for different software solutions for benchmarking but, having spent over 8 weeks benching my own SSD's with various software and talking to manufacturer's this is definitely the best out there at the moment.

A note of caution though, you don't want to run benchmarking software too often on SSD's as, because of the nature of writing to the drive for testing, it will very quickly have an impact on their performance, especially over the long term.