[Zon2020]

Assuming your MB supports SATA III 6gb/s, is there any real-world value in that over SATA II for an HTPC SSD? Would you ever notice the difference in this application?

My question is a general one and not limited to any specific models, but is prompted by some current SSD specials at the Egg (I posted in the Hot Deals thread, assuming that was where they belonged) which made me wonder whether there is any real-world value in getting for example a SATA III Crucial over an OCZ or Intel SATA II of comparable size and price. How valuable is that difference, or should that distinction be largely disregarded when comparing the other characteristics of the drives?

Any thoughts or experience comparing the two would be appreciated. Thanks.

[eskro]

uhm,
think about it this way, SATAIII is capable of greater speeds of course but,
the Spec to look for in an SSD is the READ & WRITE speeds...
dont go crazy over SATAII or SATAIII....

[numb7rs]

A SATA-II connection will (theoretically) saturate at 3Gbit/s, or around 380MB/s. If a drive claims read/write speeds slower than this, SATA-III will not make a difference. You can get drives that claim read/write speeds faster than this, if you are willing to pay for it. However, IMHO the marginal increase in performance you will see is not worth the increase in price.

There is also the fact that the true read/write speeds when loading something like XBMC will be somewhat lower than the claimed values, because it is loading lots of small files.

[Zon2020]

Interesting, after reading numb7rs's post, I went back at looked at Crucial's claim for its SATA III 128GB SSD. They claim:

Sequential Access - Read 355MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s), 265MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)
Sequential Access - Write 140MB/sec (SATA 6Gb/s) 140MB/sec (SATA 3Gb/s)

So they claim increased read performance from 265MB/s to 355MB/s (about 33%), but no change in write performance, using SATA III rather than SATA II.

This suggests to me that, all else being equal, including price, controller, quality, etc, the SATA III might tip the balance, but that the other factors are more important.

But as a point of comparison, the SATA II 120GB Intel 320 Series claims read/write performance of 270/130. The SATA II 120GB OCZ Agility 2 claims read/write speeds of "up to" 285/275, probably because of the SandForce controller's compression schemes.

[numb7rs]

As I said, that 380MB/s figure was theoretical, though I wasn't expecting the difference to be quite that much.

It might be worth looking around to see if you can find some reviews with real world tests, as these will give a better indication of the performance you will actually see.

[eskro]

if the price of the SATAIII SSD is same as the SATAII one,
well, get the SATAIII if you motherboard supports it!

But if the price difference is alot, stick with SATAII...
because a 128GB SSD is pricey enough already....

[paul]

Just bear in mind all those figures were done in controlled lab conditions.
I would stick with sata1 its more than fast enough for what we need in a HTPC.
Just my honest oppinion