Difference between SATA 3.0 Gb & SATA 150

spartan92

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May 11, 2004
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Is there a difference between the two? I'm building a new system for primarily gaming, internet and digital music. I want a fast drive but when looking at system specs on sites like New Egg and comparing one of each side by side, it looks like the 3.0Gb is actually slower. Can someone please educate me? Thanks!
 

pat

Expert
When comparing seek time, don't forget that usually, you are comapring millisecond or even tenth of millisecond. A millisecond is 1/1000th of one second.. seriously, do you actually believe that your brain is fast enough to notice the difference? Second... transfer speed. While SATA 3.0 double the bandwidth tof the interface, today's HDD cannot even saturate the ATA100 interface.. so let alone the SATA150 or 3.0... And, the speed of the transfer is not only imposed by the drive, but by the controller too. Newer controller perform better than older one. Newer feature improve hdd speed, but noticable only in benchmark or within particuliar task..

A F1 car won't go faster than a Cavalier in rush hours or traffic jam.. For day to day usage, you wont notice any difference between newest serie HDD. So, for gaming, internet or music, I personnaly get a Seagate because they have a 5 years warranty. Other will probaly perform the same, but have a 3 years warranty. At the end of the day, the difference between the fastest and the slowest will be a few seconds .. that you'l loose anyway by going to the batroom..

Feature like NCQ actually does nothing for desktop usage.. but it looks nice in a description files.. Improved logic and mechanics in the newer drive is what make the difference for the speed, not the interface. Once they"ll start saturate the bandwidth of ata100 or SATA150, then I would advise on something else. but for now, look at price/warranty to choose


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spartan92

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Thanks so much for the education Pat. Sounds like a lot of these new features are theorhetically improvements but do nothing for real world applications. I'll take your advice to heart and focus on warranty and price. Appreciate the help.
 

RichPLS

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I could see where SATA 3 would be significant using a RAM drive.

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jlanka

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Follow up question: Would a 3.0 SATA work on a SATA mobo that has whats advertised as a SATA150 interface (specifically the ABIT AN8-Ultra)?

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chillyman

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SATA 3.0.. WTF?? Since when did they come up with this, they're just barely started announcing SATA-2 capable drives!

You guys are confusing me. :evil:
 

pickxx

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They had SATA, but some companies were using bridge setups and not true SATA....so they came up with the SATA2 standard....which has a max transfer of 3.0Gb/sec.

Here is a shocker...the drives dont even come close tot tha 3.0gb/sec....but you can daisy chain some SATA drives and full the bandwidth of that SATA channel. Or use a RAID0 or RAID 5 to saturate it as well....

its not SATA3