New Mainboard/Controller for SSD

lx-

Junior Member
Mar 27, 2011
1
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Hey there,

I'm currently running a couple of old fashioned hard disks in my rig and I'm planning to upgrade to an OCZ Vertex 3 or an Intel 510 Series. The mainboard is an Asus P6T SE which only supports SATA II.
Now the read/write speed of the SSDs exceed the maximum of SATA II's capabilities. The question is, if it would make sense to buy a new motherboard (Intel SmackOver 2) or to go for a controller card like the Asus U3S6 which is made to work with the Asus P6T series.

Now is the raw read/write performance really that crucial for a SSD that is used as a boot drive? Would I really notice a difference between SATA II and SATA 6Gb/s?

I want to use the SSD primarily as my system's boot drive with just a couple of necessary applications installed on it, so I won't perform a lot of copying large files, etc. and that's why I question the need of 500MB/s read performance.
And I'm a little averse to buying a controller card, although the Asus U3S6 has pretty good critics.

Should I upgrade or just plug that thing into my SATA II ports?


lx-
 

Bauss

Member
Mar 14, 2011
57
0
0
If you're convinced that ALL you're doing from the drive is booting and loading apps, then save your money and stick your new SSD into a SATA II port. All you get from going SATA2 to SATA3 is more headroom for faster sequential reads. But most no drive has random 4k performance that can saturate a single SATAII port.