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walkie

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 13, 2010
331
3
Hi all, I've been thinking about buying a SSD and upgrade my early 2010 21.5" iMac, actually I upgraded RAM memory from 4GB to 12GB and it worked like a charm, but I don't know if I will take advantage of the top speed of a SSD since I ignore if this model in particular has SATA II or SATA III, anyone has already done this in the same iMac model? please help.
Thanks.
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
31
located
While the 2010 iMac might "only" have an S-ATA 3.0 Gbps (S-ATA II) interface and not take advantage of S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) speeds with an S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSD for sequential read and write tasks, an SSD will be a huge improvement just for the latency (finding and opening files/apps much, much faster) alone.
I have an S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSD in my 2009 MBP, which only has S-ATA 3.0 Gbps (S-ATA II), but the speed improve is astonishing.
 

walkie

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 13, 2010
331
3
While the 2010 iMac might "only" have an S-ATA 3.0 Gbps (S-ATA II) interface and not take advantage of S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) speeds with an S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSD for sequential read and write tasks, an SSD will be a huge improvement just for the latency (finding and opening files/apps much, much faster) alone.
I have an S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSD in my 2009 MBP, which only has S-ATA 3.0 Gbps (S-ATA II), but the speed improve is astonishing.

Thank you so much, so when buying it is best to buy the 3G in my case and not to spend the extra money for the 6G one since it won't deliver as fast as it is, that's ok.
 
Nov 28, 2010
22,670
31
located
Thank you so much, so when buying it is best to buy the 3G in my case and not to spend the extra money for the 6G one since it won't deliver as fast as it is, that's ok.

As S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSDs are not that expensive anymore, it is okay to buy such an SSD, but if you have access to S-ATA 3.0 Gbps (S-ATA II) SSDs, that are much cheaper than S-ATA 6.0 Gbps (S-ATA III) SSDs, then you can go for that.
 
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