Choosing SSD drive for SATA 2 motherboard

[DaveE20]

My motherbaord is Gigabyte H55M-S2V, a board from 2010.
I would like to upgrade my system to boot from a SSD drive.

Is there a point to invest in an expensive drive (I'm thinking about Samsung EVO 850) although my connection is SATA 2?

Does the SATA 2 limitations make it to have no difference which model/brand I'll buy bacause it will be limited by the connectiion anyway?

I'm planning to upgrade my entire machine anyway in another year or two.
At the moment I want to have a 120GB SSD drive to improve the preforormance of my correct machine.

 

[LrnzpKiller]

SATA 2 runs at 300MB/s max
SATA 3 runs at 600MB/s max

An SSD on SATA 2 can reach up to 285/275MB/s
An SSD on SATA 3 can reach up to 550/520MB/s

If you don't understand, take a look at this: http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

 

[DaveE20]

SATA 2 runs at 300MB/s max
SATA 3 runs at 600MB/s max

An SSD on SATA 2 can reach up to 285/275MB/s
An SSD on SATA 3 can reach up to 550/520MB/s

If you don't understand, take a look at this: http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I understand this.
My question is, Does is matter which model and brand I'll buy since every disk's preformace will be limited by the connection anyway?
If it doesn't matter, then I'll probably look for cheaper disks then the 850 EVO 120GB, which costs about 67$.
Kingston 120GB 120G SSDnow V300 for example costs about 50$

 

[LrnzpKiller]

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, I understand this.
My question is, Does is matter which model and brand I'll buy since every disk's preformace will be limited by the connection anyway?
If it doesn't matter, then I'll probably look for cheaper disks then the 850 EVO 120GB, which costs about 67$.
Kingston 120GB 120G SSDnow V300 for example costs about 50$

If you just look at the max write & max read speed, compare them and then you'll know the difference in performance.
And Kingston are also really good SSD's

 

[endeavour37a]

I think the 850EVO is a terrific value right now, if your planning on upgrading a bit more later on then get it. Or to save a little money look at the Crucial BX100, I don't think the V300 are very good drives.

 

[Solandri]

Don't worry about being limited to SATA 2 speeds. Yes SATA 2 is limited to 300 MB/s while SATA 3 can reach 600 MB/s. That sounds like a scary huge difference, but it isn't.

The 300+ MB/s speeds are only for sequential read/writes. Most users only hit these speeds when they're copying movies. If you're not spending all day copying movies from one SSD to another SSD, you can pretty much ignore the sequential read/write speeds.

The 512k and 4k read/write speeds are much more important to typical computer use. 512k roughly measures speeds for files a half MB to a few MB in size. 4k measures speeds for small files like Word documents. The vast majority of most people's computer use falls into these sizes. Most modern SSDs top out at about 300 MB/s at 512k read/writes, and 30-70 MB/s for 4k read/writes.

Both of these are within SATA 2's limits. So in practical use, you won't be able to tell the difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3. If you don't believe me, just read this article. You'll notice SATA 3 is impressively faster in benchmarks. But there's practically no difference in real-world usage tests.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-7.html

The only people who need SATA 3 (or PCIe for that matter) are people constantly working with huge files, like people doing real-time video editing. For everyone else, SATA 2 will give you about 98% the speed of SATA 3. 97% the speed of PCIe.

Edit: And I vote for the Samsung 850 EVO because it has really impressive 4k read/write speeds for a budget drive. 4k speeds are the slowest, so they will usually be the bottleneck, and will have the biggest impact on how often you're waiting for the drive to finish.

 

[DaveE20]

Don't worry about being limited to SATA 2 speeds. Yes SATA 2 is limited to 300 MB/s while SATA 3 can reach 600 MB/s. That sounds like a scary huge difference, but it isn't.

The 300+ MB/s speeds are only for sequential read/writes. Most users only hit these speeds when they're copying movies. If you're not spending all day copying movies from one SSD to another SSD, you can pretty much ignore the sequential read/write speeds.

The 512k and 4k read/write speeds are much more important to typical computer use. 512k roughly measures speeds for files a half MB to a few MB in size. 4k measures speeds for small files like Word documents. The vast majority of most people's computer use falls into these sizes. Most modern SSDs top out at about 300 MB/s at 512k read/writes, and 30-70 MB/s for 4k read/writes.

Both of these are within SATA 2's limits. So in practical use, you won't be able to tell the difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3. If you don't believe me, just read this article. You'll notice SATA 3 is impressively faster in benchmarks. But there's practically no difference in real-world usage tests.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sata-6gbps-performance-sata-3gbps,3110-7.html

The only people who need SATA 3 (or PCIe for that matter) are people constantly working with huge files, like people doing real-time video editing. For everyone else, SATA 2 will give you about 98% the speed of SATA 3. 97% the speed of PCIe.

Edit: And I vote for the Samsung 850 EVO because it has really impressive 4k read/write speeds for a budget drive. 4k speeds are the slowest, so they will usually be the bottleneck, and will have the biggest impact on how often you're waiting for the drive to finish.

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply.
Just ordered the Samsung 850 EVO.

Cheers,

David