SATA 2 or SATA 3

[Raizinman]

I have a pretty powerful computer from about 1.5 years ago. I am looking to add an SSD. The inside drives are SATA 2 as is the Optical Drive. I could easily purchase a SATA 2 SSD and install it. Or would it be better to purchase a SATA 3 card for about $50, and then add a SATA 3 SSD? Would there be any speed differences? I was looking at getting a 256Gig drive.

 

[nanaki333]

depends what you're doing. if you're just looking for a faster overall windows experience, a good sata2 drive will be fine.

 

[exdeath]

Depends. If the SSD you are buying is under 300 MB/s or so max, then SATA 2 is fine. The only drives that require SATA 3 at the moment are drives like the Vertex 3 and Force 3 that both do 500 MB/sec R/W.

Keep in mind if you buy a SATA 3 card that the PCIe version and number of lanes needs to be sufficient to not get in the way as well. It would be pointless to get a PCIe v1.x 1x card for SATA 3 when the PCIe bus speed wouldn't even handle SATA 2.

 

[Blain]

The inside drives are SATA 2 as is the Optical Drive.

What optical drive are you running?
Did you notice a big performance difference from SATA I optical drives?

 

[Elixer]

What optical drive are you running?
Did you notice a big performance difference from SATA I optical drives?

All optical drives aren't even fast enough to saturate SATA I, let alone SATA II.

 

[groberts101]

Depends. If the SSD you are buying is under 300 MB/s or so max, then SATA 2 is fine. The only drives that require SATA 3 at the moment are drives like the Vertex 3 and Force 3 that both do 500 MB/sec R/W.

Keep in mind if you buy a SATA 3 card that the PCIe version and number of lanes needs to be sufficient to not get in the way as well. It would be pointless to get a PCIe v1.x 1x card for SATA 3 when the PCIe bus speed wouldn't even handle SATA 2.

the sata chip being used is the greatest limiting factor and even a 8x card won't change that max limit. Is why the Marvell chips are so slow even on a 4x card because they are limited to internal architecture of x1 speeds. The 9182 chip uses x2 but has not been adopted by any cards yet.