SSD Sata 2 vs Sata 3 user experience?

[ioni]

Is there a noticeable difference in user experience between sata 2 and sata 3 for SSDs? I have an 840 Pro but I'm on an older system that I build before sata 3 existed.

I was going to upgrade to a skylake platform, but realized I could just install a USB 3.0 PCI card and upgrade my CPU to an x5650/70 and I'd be pretty much set except for sata 3. I'm wondering if the platform upgrade would be worth it to get sata 3 though.

 

[Sabrewings]

I pitched in a SATA 3 card into a machine that didn't have it for SSD. It ran okay without it, but the SSD would stall occasionally on the motherboard's older controller. This was a few years ago, but it was annoying enough to get a SATA 3 card that had an updated controller to keep up.

I'd say try it without, and if you feel like it has more to offer toss a card in. They're cheap.

 

[ioni]

Would I be able to boot off the SSD if I did that?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Would I be able to boot off the SSD if I did that?

Depends on the controller card. Usually, yes.

 

[Sabrewings]

Would I be able to boot off the SSD if I did that?

Depends on the controller card. Usually, yes.

As Dave said, yes. It's very rare to find one that won't allow it. The machine I was using had a 2007 motherboard and it recognized the card as a boot device no problem.

 

[ioni]

Well I have an MSI x58m. So it's definitely newer than 2007. Sounds like I should be able to get a pretty good bump for a lot cheaper than I was originally going to spend

 

[coercitiv]

Is there a noticeable difference in user experience between sata 2 and sata 3 for SSDs? I have an 840 Pro but I'm on an older system that I build before sata 3 existed.

None that a normal user would notice. I had a 840 Pro mounted on the SATA 3 port of my laptop (Haswell quad, 16GB RAM). After upgrading to a 850 Pro mainly due to storage needs, the older SSD replaced the DVD drive in a SATA 2 port of the same unit.

Running Diablo 3 from either SATA 3 on 850 Pro or from SATA 2 on 840 Pro showed no discernible difference from a subjective user perspective.

If you have specific loads that require strong sequential performance (writing large 1-2GB files for example) you will see a difference, otherwise user experience is still mainly bound by random IO performance, which is still more or less at SATA 1 levels. Bottom line, if you want to take your time before an all out upgrade (wait for skylake and NVMe drives to mature), SATA 2 will not hold you down that much - that is if you don't have specific (heavy) workloads in mind.

 

[corkyg]

My SSDs are SATA3 capable (Sammy 830s and 850 EVOs) but are confined to a laptop that only has SATA2. The result is very acceptable and very reliable. One of these days I'll get a new laptop with SATA3. In the meantime, the T510 is a very reliable tool.

 

[razel]

Not worth the platform upgrade just to get SATA III. Perhaps if you want other new features the board offers.

 

[ioni]

My SSDs are SATA3 capable (Sammy 830s and 850 EVOs) but are confined to a laptop that only has SATA2. The result is very acceptable and very reliable. One of these days I'll get a new laptop with SATA3. In the meantime, the T510 is a very reliable tool.

Yea, I already know how it performs on sata2. That's what I'm using now. I was curious if there was a big difference to the user with sata3 because I always hear people saying how SSDs are a massive upgrade to user experience. This has not been my experience, it's been more like a minor upgrade, so I was wondering if it was due to using sata2.

 

[aigomorla]

no noticable different outside benchmarks.

your looking at the bottom of of the time graph, where it looks like a straight line unless you magnify like 1000x.

basically cuz something takes .5 sec to load on sata2 -> you will not notice it even if it loaded .25sec half the time.... cuz the aspect of .25sec to you is not even a heart beat.
However on benchmarks... its like OMGWOWZERS 2x SPEED!!! FAST!!! but to you the real time lapse wasn't even that special or memorable.

However some Sata2 does not offer TRIM, which is probably a big thing if you consider SSD's tend to slow down as they get filled without over partitioning.

 

[CiPHER]

Consumer like to look at high numbers and want even higher and higher and higher....

But they are betraying their own interests by doing so. The funny thing is that the reason why SSDs are so fast, is because of the lowest number in benchmarks: 20MB/s of blocking 4K random read performance is the true reason SSDs feel so snappy and applications respond instantly. The higher numbers are not at all interesting. Why would you need 2GB/s write performance on a system drive that only writes some log files now and then, but relies on low read latency to feel snappy?!

Companies, of course, are more than happy to exploit their customer's greed for high numbers, which is why Samsung releases RAPID and technologies such as EVO and DWE are there to temporarily boost write performance. But in the end consumers are paying big bucks for low-quality TLC technology with software protections - thus being very cheap to produce and increasing profit margin for the manufacturer.

But i have learned to live with it. Consumers simply do not look after their own interests. They want to be fooled. So buy a new computer just to get SATA/600, and then buy a new one just to get M.2 PCIe SSDs. I try not to care any longer, which is not all that easy for me to be honest. :biggrin:

 

[iluvdeal]

The noticeable upgrade is going from HD to SSD, it won't be noticeable going from SSD on SATA2 to SSD on SATA3. Maybe do a minor upgrade and hold out til Cannonlake?

 

[ArisVer]

This has not been my experience, it's been more like a minor upgrade, so I was wondering if it was due to using sata2.

I am surprised that you didn't notice the big performance improvement as I did. I went from a 160GB HDD (SATA1 I think), which is slow compared to a 1/2 or 1 TB HDD, to a 240GB M500 Crucial SSD and the performance increase was huge. Both were connected to SATA 2.

Edit. I should have mentioned that the most significant improvement is at accessing the files and not the transfer of files.

 

[TomFoster]

I wouldn't expect any noticeable difference. Possibly with SSDs in benchmarks but I've not noticed any perceivable difference between an SSD on SATA 2 and the same SSD on SATA 3.
I wouldn't upgrade for SATA 3, put it that way!

 

[j3SeCh6d]

If you're motherboard has an extra pcie x1/x4 slot available, then purchasing a pcie x1/x4 sata iii adapter maybe the way to go to improve bandwidth for your Samsung 840 Pro SSD. This will bring your SATA speed from SATA II speed to slightly below SATA III speed in throughput.

Just make sure that the pcie sata iii adapter you buy is hardware bootable.

 

[Deders]

Have just upgraded from p55 to a z170 system using the same Samsung 830. The difference is negligible. The biggest difference with SSD's is the ability to process 4k read and writes and similar requests at speeds that are 100X faster than they could be processed from a HDD. 20-30MB/s on a SSD for single queue compared to 0.2-0.3MB/s on a HDD. Sata 2 will only slightly limit this, you might get 20MB/s instead of 25MB/s.

I have been monitoring the MB/s for all my disks and found in day to day usage, and even with games there are very few split second moments where something will want more than the 260MB/s that Sata 2 is able to deliver. This will result in maybe a second longer loading time on the odd occasion.

 

[AlienTech]

I pitched in a SATA 3 card into a machine that didn't have it for SSD. It ran okay without it, but the SSD would stall occasionally on the motherboard's older controller. This was a few years ago, but it was annoying enough to get a SATA 3 card that had an updated controller to keep up.

I'd say try it without, and if you feel like it has more to offer toss a card in. They're cheap.

PCIE sata 3 cards mostly run at 5Gb and not 6Gb like SATA3.. also they will be slower than the SATA3 on the mother board. So you have to get one which does do 6Gb speeds and they use 4 PCI lanes of 2.5gb's.. many of the cheap ones only use 2 which is why you only get 5Gb speeds.. Not many motherboard have these 4 lane PCI slots so you might lose the 16x graphics card slot. Even though the PCI was supposedly running at 5Gb speeds, I was only getting under 300MB speeds on it, notmuch better than the saturated SATA2 ports on the mother board which should do 240MB easily...

Now USB3 ports do work faster than USB2 ports even with USB2 devices.. It all has to do with where the control for the port is at..

 

[h9826790]

I have a PCIe SATA 3 card and a 840 Evo, which gives me 500MB/s R/W in benchmark. If I run my 840 Evo via the SATA 2 port, then the benchmark shows only 250MB/s.

However, I can tell you that I really can't tell the difference in real world normal ops. No matter it's the boot time, application launch time, game loading time... Really can't tell the difference.

Apart from copying very large files / running benchmark. I can't feel the benefit to run my SSD in via a SATA 3 PCIe card. So I end up remove it, and put another GPU in. That gives me much better video editing performance / gaming experience.

The main benefit to use SSD is the high IOPS, not the sequential speed. Otherwise, few HDD in RAID 0 will be a very good setup for everything. And we know in real world, a SSD run via SATA 2 port (250MB/s) can easily beat a 5 HDD RAID 0 setup (600MB/s) in OS operation. It's not about high speed, but low latency. It's the small files cause the slow down, but not the large files.

 

[Omar F1]

I have a PCIe SATA 3 card and a 840 Evo, which gives me 500MB/s R/W in benchmark. If I run my 840 Evo via the SATA 2 port, then the benchmark shows only 250MB/s.

However, I can tell you that I really can't tell the difference in real world normal ops. No matter it's the boot time, application launch time, game loading time... Really can't tell the difference.
Apart from copying very large files / running benchmark. I can't feel the benefit to run my SSD in via a SATA 3 PCIe card. So I end up remove it, and put another GPU in. That gives me much better video editing performance / gaming experience.

The main benefit to use SSD is the high IOPS, not the sequential speed. Otherwise, few HDD in RAID 0 will be a very good setup for everything. And we know in real world, a SSD run via SATA 2 port (250MB/s) can easily beat a 5 HDD RAID 0 setup (600MB/s) in OS operation. It's not about high speed, but low latency. It's the small files cause the slow down, but not the large files.

Same exact situation here.
I've just moved from X58 to Z170 and I can't feel anything faster.
The X58/Xeon 5650 was given to another family member though, otherwise I'd greatly regretted such an upgrade for a normal user.

 

[MongGrel]

Still using the old P6T7 here, has many fast PCIE slots. Dropped a Sata 3 card in here long ago and stuck two Sammy EVO 120s in it long ago in RAID0 for the OS.

They hit around 750.

Not typical I guess.

YMMV, depending on the MOBO's and what you use them for of course.

Still running an areca hardware card with 4 X 1TB old WD RE3's for storage also, on the main...