SATA-300 on 2 GHz MB?

[nitro2k01]

I have a 2 GHz MB, and I'm considering going SSD. However, one thing that bothers me is whether I'll be able to use SATA-300 to max out the speed from the SSD. (I have an Intel X25 in mind.)

I've seen this talk about the ICH8-M being able to perform 3.0 Gbps, and that Apple supposedly released a firmware update enabling it ages ago. But I haven't found anything conclusive on the subject. Furthermore, System Profiler tells me this:

  Vendor:	Intel
  Product:	ICH8-M AHCI
  Link Speed:	1.5 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed:	1.5 Gigabit
  Description:	AHCI Version 1.10 Supported

Since my current disk, a WD3200, is supposed to support a SATA-300 link, and SP reports a 1.5Gbps link, that gets my hopes down.

 

[C64]

Don't know about the firmware update, but from Wikipedia:

First-generation SATA interfaces, now known as SATA 1.5 Gbit/s, communicate at a rate of 1.5 Gbit/s. Taking 8b/10b encoding overhead into account, they have an actual uncoded transfer rate of 1.2 Gbit/s (1500000000*8/10/1024/1024/8 ≅ 143.05 MiB/s).

So even with 1.5Gbit, most of the time you'll either not reach the max, or max it out. Either way, you'll definitely notice the huge speed increase, albeit a bit less with certain operations compared to an SATA3 interface.

 

[nitro2k01]

So as it turns out, the patch was for MB Pro and Mac Minis. So no luck for my white MB. I'll still be buying an X25 though. It's not like it's a bad investment anyway. And I'll probably get a better computer in the future.

 

[C64]

I have a similar MB and also thinking about the Intel SSD. Not sure which size though, and hoping for a price drop somewhere in the next few months But I'm pretty sure that despite the 1.5Gbit throughput it'll be a world of difference. And like you say, it's always usable in newer computer.