SDD SATA question

[gman314]

I recently ordered a Samsung 830 series 256 gb SDD.  The problem is that the SDD supports 6 gb/sec, yet my motherboard supports only 3 gb/sec.  Now I am wondering if the SSD will even be compatible with my board.  If they are compatible, would there be much benefit at all from having an SSD as opposed to a traditional HDD?  In other words, would the speed simply max out at 3 gb/sec?  Is that even that fast as compared to say a 7200 rpm HDD?

[Generic Eric]

I asked the same question about a different brand, but same spec drive on a different message board.  I was told yes but you just won't the max speed the drive is capable of.

[gman314]

That's what I figured, but will it still be faster than a standard HDD?  I didn't even consider the transfer rate when I decided to purchase the SDD.

[MonMotha]

Yes, it'll still be well faster than a revolving metal drive.

I have an Intel 520 "Cherryville" in my laptop, which only supports SATA 3Gb/sec.  I routinely peg it out at about 290MB/sec, whereas even a reasonably high end 7200RPM mechanical laptop drive is doing well to pull off 70MB/sec and with much higher seek time.  I just don't get to enjoy the 400-500+MB/sec speeds the drive is capable of.

[dholcombe]

You should experience MUCH faster load times even with your board being only 3GB/sec. The 6GB/sec. limitation is really going to be noticeable when copying large files in most cases.

Are you putting the SSD in a dedicated MAME machine? If so I'm interested in hearing about how the experience changes. Currently my cabinet just has an old 80 GB spinning disk so it wouldn't be too expensive to grab a 128 GB SSD to replace it and have a bit more space as a bonus.

[gman314]

You should experience MUCH faster load times even with your board being only 3GB/sec. The 6GB/sec. limitation is really going to be noticeable when copying large files in most cases.

Are you putting the SSD in a dedicated MAME machine? If so I'm interested in hearing about how the experience changes. Currently my cabinet just has an old 80 GB spinning disk so it wouldn't be too expensive to grab a 128 GB SSD to replace it and have a bit more space as a bonus.

The SSD will be in a mame/console machine running on Maximus Arcade as the front end. Although it was a bit pricey ($200 for 256 gb) , I figured that it would make my machine more arcade-like, due to faster load times and minus the noise of a spinning drive. I will let you know how it goes once it is up and running. My last 1TB seagate recently died on me so I am currently in rebuilding mode.