SSD on an oldish motherbord

Hi All,

New member here with a quick question!

I have a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard, which I believe, if I'm reading the tech specs correctly, has only a 3Gbs SATA port. Now, if I attach a SSD (thinking samsung pro - cheap deal on!) am I right in thinking I will be gimping it a bit? I guess it will work slower than on a motherboard with a 6Mbps SATA port right?

I will be upgrading to Windows 7 64 bit (currently running Vista!) to take advantage of the TRIM support etc. Now I will be upgrading to a new setup in the coming months, funds permitting, so I will be using the SSD in the new build regardless.

Will I see enough of an improvement over a standard HDD (from what I gather I will) even though I will be using it in a 3Gbs SATA port?

Currently my startup on my PC is quite sluggish, I built the PC myself and so it didn't come with any preloaded software but I guess over the years the bloat has set in - I have limited time sometimes to do stuff and I really want to be into Windows and my games very quickly - I want the games and their levels and other stuff to load very quickly!

TL; DR - Have a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard with a 3Gbs SATA port - will using a SSD make everything a bit quicker?

Thanks in advance peeps!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aazzgard

Hi All,

New member here with a quick question!

I have a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard, which I believe, if I'm reading the tech specs correctly, has only a 3Gbs SATA port. Now, if I attach a SSD (thinking samsung pro - cheap deal on!) am I right in thinking I will be gimping it a bit? I guess it will work slower than on a motherboard with a 6Mbps SATA port right?

I will be upgrading to Windows 7 64 bit (currently running Vista!) to take advantage of the TRIM support etc. Now I will be upgrading to a new setup in the coming months, funds permitting, so I will be using the SSD in the new build regardless.

Will I see enough of an improvement over a standard HDD (from what I gather I will) even though I will be using it in a 3Gbs SATA port?

Currently my startup on my PC is quite sluggish, I built the PC myself and so it didn't come with any preloaded software but I guess over the years the bloat has set in - I have limited time sometimes to do stuff and I really want to be into Windows and my games very quickly - I want the games and their levels and other stuff to load very quickly!

TL; DR - Have a Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L motherboard with a 3Gbs SATA port - will using a SSD make everything a bit quicker?

Thanks in advance peeps!

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Peak performance on a Samsung 840 Pro is 4.3Gbs. So yes, performance will be capped by your motherboard.

However, peak performance on a typical high-end rust drive (WD Black) is 0.15Gbs. So.....

Even running at sata 2 speeds you will se a big increase in responsiveness and loading times compared to a normal hdd.

Yup, even on SATA 2 sockets SSDs make a big difference - I put an SSD in my Lenovo W500 and it has made a massive difference :)

Sandisk ultra 256gb going for about £120 and Win7 for about £45 - so I think the decision has been made! Will need a 3.5"-2.5" bay converter I think?

The 'speed' from the SSD comes from the IOPS, not really the raw throughput.

You could cap a SSD at 100MB/s and it would still feel infinitely faster than a mechanical disk.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aazzgard

Will need a 3.5"-2.5" bay converter I think?

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Depends on your case.
I have a Corsair Carbide 500R. The 3.5" HDD drawers in that have screw holes (with screws supplied) that fit 2.5" SSDs directly in, no problems. They even have little rubber washers to cushion the SSD, I believe!

What Agent said, buying a SSD is about "seek time", not data transfer rates.

The time it takes a SSD to locate a specific file is measured in nano seconds (billionth of a second), while on a hard drive it is measured in milliseconds (thousandth of a second). The two are worlds apart, which is why SSDs appear so blindingly fast.

It is not even overly important which SSD you buy, so long as you buy one that is known to be reliable and of a current/recent generation.

I still haven't maxed my crucial M4 on sata 2 , the only real time those huge speeds come in to play is if your moving GB sized files from 1 ssd to another - real world , as said above its all about how quickly the SSD can find a file - which , again as said , is worlds faster than an HDD

It's a bit crazy how some people go off on one when it comes to SATA2/3. HUKD has some users who often rabbit on about how a SSD is almost useless unless it's on SATA3. Utterly barmy.

The chances of even hitting SATA1 speed limits regularly is small on a home system, it's only when you start doing really intensive stuff for periods of time you will notice. Not only that, but how often are people moving around hundreds of megs of files to a device which can write at the speed the other can read?

So much nonsense out there about SATA and SSDs....makes me cringe.

Buying a modern, reliable SSD is way more important than the occasional cap you might reach on SATA2 every now and again.

I stuck a 60GB Kingston V300 SSD into my ancient laptop to give it a new lease of life (BIOS bug limits RAM to 2GB and page swaps were making web browsing intolerable). The fact that it's limited to 150MB/s was utterly irrelevant because I never intended to use it for bulk data transfer. People rambling on about SATA3 being essential for SSDs are a bunch of hype-following clueless idiots who don't know what they're talking about at all.

Have been running SSDs on P4's here so just slap it in and it'll be great!!

Butuz

Quote:

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Originally Posted by directhex

Peak performance on a Samsung 840 Pro is 4.3Gbs. So yes, performance will be capped by your motherboard.

However, peak performance on a typical high-end rust drive (WD Black) is 0.15Gbs. So.....

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Gb or GB? SSDs are generally considerably faster than HDDs, but not ~30 times in sequential transfers.

Thanks for all the responses guys. The Sandisk is now down to ~£105 so that is definitely the one I'm getting. Reccommended by CustomPC mag as a cost effective quite quick SSD so I think I'll be fine on reliability. Now is it going to be a usual OS install, i.e. install the SSD then get the BIOS to boot via CD-ROM/DVD then once Win7 is installed switch it over to the SSD to boot up?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aazzgard

Now is it going to be a usual OS install, i.e. install the SSD then get the BIOS to boot via CD-ROM/DVD then once Win7 is installed switch it over to the SSD to boot up?

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Nah, just get a cloning program, clone your boot drive on to the new SSD, hit restart, change the boot order in your BIOS and go from there. Should boot right up as normal.

I don't know the other programs, but some manufacturers actually have free software that does cloning for this exact reason. It's a pain in the butt to reinstall and reconfigure everything.
I know Samsung do a program on their website, but not sure if it only works with their SSDs or not. Fairly sure it's fine with anything.

Just recently bought an aging Thinkpad T61 for £60 and slapped a Corsair Force 3 into it. Everyone wants to use my old laptop with DDR2 and a T7100 cpu instead of the new i5-based laptops.

Nothing wrong with SATA3 SSDs in a SATA2 port.