Is it worth an extra $30 for SATA II

[bladephoenix]

I am deciding on a MSI Neo4 Platinum and a Neo4 F. The Platinum has all sorts of interesting goodies like dual LAN and firewire, however, in all likely hood I will not need either. I will be getting a SATA II (7200 RPM Samsung Spinpoint, not a Raptor) drive though, and was wondering if it is indeed worth the extra $$$ to get SATA II -- considering futureproofing and all.

Thanks for advice in advance.

 

[quackerww]

I don't think so. I have it and I find there is no diffrence... Well very little at best.. Save the money dont make my mistake..

 

[ballmode]

Yes, I have noticed a difference when opening folders with lots of files in them.

 

[bladephoenix]

Originally posted by: ballmode
Yes, I have noticed a difference when opening folders with lots of files in them.

Does this mainly have to do with having a SATA II drive and not some other component?

 

[Some1ne]

Yes, it's worth it, provided that the "SATA-II" drive you're getting is one that supports NCQ.

 

[imported_squire]

What exactly is NCQ? I thought it was something that mainly benefits servers.

 

[l Xes l]

Originally posted by: Some1ne
Yes, it's worth it, provided that the "SATA-II" drive you're getting is one that supports NCQ.

NCQ dont do much for the home PCs...
SATAII aint worth the $30... what's the point of increasing the speedlimit when the car can't go even the past the speedlimit..

 

[Some1ne]

What exactly is NCQ?

A scheduling feature that allows the disk to reorder requests such that they can be serviced in a more efficient way.

I thought it was something that mainly benefits servers.

No, it'll benefit any situation in which there are simultaneous requests coming in for resources that lie on very different parts of the disk. A server is one such application domain where this is likely to occur, but it can also happen when multitasking, and is only going to get more common as dual-core chips become more commonplace. For example, encoding a DVD while gaming is a situation that should benefit substantially from having NCQ.

NCQ dont do much for the home PCs...

It will soon, all it's waiting for is multitasking of I/O intensive applications.