SATA II v SATA III

[pro2a]

Ok... So I got a steal on Newegg. I love their holiday specials They were advertising 180GB OCZ SSD's (Clicky) for $139 and they retail for like $224... Needless to say they didn't have to twist my arm... I got 2.

Anyway read write speeds are 525 and 500mb/s respectively. Eventually I plan on getting a MoBo which supports SATA 3, right now however I only support SATA 2. I know I can use a SATA 3 in a SATA 2 port, but what can I expect with the read write speeds? What is the cap with SATA 2? I heard someone say the seek times should stay the same (3GB/s v 6GB/s isn't even noticeable), it's just how quick it gets it. Does this seem right?

 

[PP Mguire]

Ok... So I got a steal on Newegg. I love their holiday specials They were advertising 180GB OCZ SSD's (Clicky) for $139 and they retail for like $224... Needless to say they didn't have to twist my arm... I got 2.

Anyway read write speeds are 525 and 500mb/s respectively. Eventually I plan on getting a MoBo which supports SATA 3, right now however I only support SATA 2. I know I can use a SATA 3 in a SATA 2 port, but what can I expect with the read write speeds? What is the cap with SATA 2? I heard someone say the seek times should stay the same (3GB/s v 6GB/s isn't even noticeable), it's just how quick it gets it. Does this seem right?

The seek times are independent to the SSD or drive itself. The only thing the bus limits is throughput which is how many MB/s of data can go back and forth at any given time. With this being said, SATA2 has a max of around 300MB/s so you're looking around 285 read/write sustained just like a regular SATA2 SSD. It's nothing to shake your head at either as SATA2 speeds are still fast for an SSD. Not going to lie, my friends Agility 3 and my Vertex 2 look identical in terms of loading while looking directly at our screens. In other words, benchmarks he is going to eat me alive, but playing BF3, Skyrim, loading Windows or a browser all literally seem and feel the same.

 

[pro2a]

The way I understand it from your post is you saying is that read/write speeds cap at 300mb/s with a SATA 2 and the seek times will stay the same? The way I understand it the read/write speeds are data transfer, the IOPS is the time it takes to find the information on the drive which should not bottle neck.

Once I get a SATA 3 compatible MoBo... then I can make it out to 525/500mps speeds

 

[PP Mguire]

The way I understand it from your post is you saying is that read/write speeds cap at 300mb/s with a SATA 2 and the seek times will stay the same? The way I understand it the read/write speeds are data transfer, the IOPS is the time it takes to find the information on the drive which should not bottle neck.

Once I get a SATA 3 compatible MoBo... then I can make it out to 525/500mps speeds

Yes read and write speeds are data transfer which is limited to the type of bus you run the device on IE SATA 2 or 3. IOPS is input/output operations per second. In other words how fast it can read/write simultaneously which is what gives Vertex drives their edge with higher IOPS.
Seek time is how fast the device can find a file. Mechanical drives are limited to 4.6ms or something like that due to spin speeds, but SSDs are like less than a ms.

IOPS and seek time are not dependent on the bus you use so there will be no difference there between SATA 2 and 3. Only read/write speeds which will cap around 285MB/s going both ways on SATA 2.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

About the only time you would really notice a difference between SATA2 and SATA3 right now is when transferring between two drives on the same machine, or in a benchmark. Other than that, you can only load data so fast when it's so small. Are you really going to tell the difference between 1MB of data being transfered between a SATA2 and SATA3 drive? Unlikely, that is, till you start getting into hundreds of megs, then you will be able to notice speed differences. The sad part is, at the rate that SSD's are going in terms of speed, we might be needing 10Gbit or 100Gbit for home networks sooner than thought.

 

[pro2a]

Sounds good guys. This is what I was looking for. Eventually when I play games like SC2, MW3, Black Ops etc... on SATA 3 board, I'm assuming I will notice a marked increase on load times as opposed to opening the same games on a SATA 2. As for run of the mill programs i.e. Firefox, Winamp, Google Earth and other stuff, I won't notice a difference. This is what I gather. Thanks for the help.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Well, the load on most games isn't big really... Sure the game it self is large, but, if the map your loading is at most 20mb, you won't see much any difference.

 

[PP Mguire]

Sounds good guys. This is what I was looking for. Eventually when I play games like SC2, MW3, Black Ops etc... on SATA 3 board, I'm assuming I will notice a marked increase on load times as opposed to opening the same games on a SATA 2. As for run of the mill programs i.e. Firefox, Winamp, Google Earth and other stuff, I won't notice a difference. This is what I gather. Thanks for the help.

Well, the load on most games isn't big really... Sure the game it self is large, but, if the map your loading is at most 20mb, you won't see much any difference.

This. The only 2 games you will see a difference in between drives is BF3 loading and Skyrim loading. And here again, the difference between my friends Agility 3 and my Vertex 2 is real slim. I load BF3 maps about as quickly as he does.