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Author Topic: Is SATA III upgrade from SATA II worth it?  (Read 3683 times)

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DaveLembke

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Is SATA III upgrade from SATA II worth it?
« on: July 14, 2012, 09:35:44 AM »
Figured I'd check here first before dumping money into this. Up until buying a 90GB OCZ Vertex SSD that supports 6GB/s SATA III speed, I was totally satisfied with my setup running quickly on SATA II 3GB/s with regular 7200RPM 500GB Seagate Drive. My system is now running still off of the 500GB SATA II drive and I am using my SSD that is capable of SATA III 6GB/s speed, at the backwards compatible SATA II 3GB/s speed and this drive is my gaming drive that runs as slave to my 7200RPM drive that is master. Game load times and performance is way better/faster on this SSD such as World of Warcraft load times and transition times porting from place to place with map loading etc.

Knowing that I "could" get even faster performance with 6GB/s vs the 3GB/s that I am currently running is very tempting to spend money and run for the speed and take full advantage of that SSD's abilities vs running it at 1/2 of its speed.

In order to get this 6GB/s speed of SATA III I will have to replace my motherboard as for I dont have an available PCIe slot for a SATA III drive controller card, and I read somewheres online someone stating that the PCIe expansion slot with SATA III controller card max's out at 5GB/s due to limited bandwidth of the PCIe slot.

Here is my hardware:

Motherboard = BioStar MCP6PB M2+
CPU =              Athlon II x4 620 ( 2.6Ghz Quad ) AM3
Ram =              DDR2 800Mhz ( 4GB, but only 3GB usable with this OS )
OS =                Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
Slots=             1 PCIe 16x ( Video Card ), 2 normal PCI slots 1 of 2 populated with 2nd NIC
PSU =             Cooler Master 460 Watt

I am trying to figure out if its worth dumping money into this project to upgrade to 6GB/s SATA III from 3GB/s SATA II for about $120, as for I can only migrate my CPU and cards to the new motherboard which is an AM3+, but I'd have to replace my RAM with DDR3. The Ram upgrade to DDR3 from my 800Mhz Corsair DDR2 would also boost performance as well, but if I am not going to see close to 2x the speed of SATA II in this SSD drives performance at SATA III, I wont bother spending the money.

Thanks for help on making this decision..  ;D





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Re: Is SATA III upgrade from SATA II worth it?
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2012, 09:50:04 AM »
I guess it really depends if you need that extra speed. And, of course, whether the SSD is capable of speeds higher than 3gbps. Most consumer-available SSD drives top out around half a gigabyte/sec read, and ~300gb/s write, so I don't think you will get any faster by changing the interface.

Now, on the other hand, there are faster SSD drives available, and it seems reasonable to expect that as time passes those will become available to the consumer. So I guess the real question is, Will you have already moved on from that machine by then? And, since you would need that faster SSD anyway, it might make sense for that to be "allotted" as part of some future build.

That's my take on it anyway. I'm envious of anybody that has an SSD, personally. And you spoiled buggers still want more speed!  ;D
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DaveLembke

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Re: Is SATA III upgrade from SATA II worth it?
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2012, 02:58:50 PM »
Thanks BC... And yeah... ever since the Turbo button was invented for the PC in the 286/386 days... I have had a need for speed, even if spoiled with the better hardware.... LOL

Speed is expensive, and the good thing is that i am a lot more conservative now than I was 20 years ago. 20 years ago I would have spent $300 for speed and take a chance on it etc, these days I question whether I should spend $120...LOL