S-ATA III support in Sandy Bridge Thinkpads?

Love the spec for the new T420s and I will likely order one soon and install a SSD. The Intel Intel 510 requires SATA III interface (6gbit/s) to max out so does the t420s have SATA 2 or SATA 3 interface or should I stick with the X25 G2 (or G3)?

 

I'd think it definitely has SATA 6Gbps, the question is if they throttle it like the *61 series was. Either way, I'd take a hard look at Sandforce 3.

 

The tabook released seemed to indicate otherwise, as it cites the hard drive bay and ODD as connected to SATA 3.0 Gbps ports. =/

On second thought they may just be referring to the drives themselves as being SATA II, rather than the connection. Wouldn't make sense why they would purposely omit using the SATA III ports while skipping to the SATA II ports.

 

Keep in mind that the T420s supports only 7mm drives like the Intel G2 and not the 510, which is 9.5mm

 

If you don't mind losing an optical drive though, the optical bay has the standard 9.5mm height.

 

I just checked the tabook. It shows that all of the new thinkpads are SATA 3gbps ports. Only two models have USB 3.0 (W520 and T420s). No thanks.

 

Unless you plan on buying a SATA 3 SSD, it won't even take advantage of those speeds, so don't put on your party hats just yet..

 

Just because the new drive supports SATA/600, doesn't mean it really needs it, unless you're doing some heavy file storage. The random speeds don't even saturate SATA/150, which is what gives a SSD it's snappiness (other than the access times). IMO the Intel 510 isn't worth the cost as it's essentially the same as the C300 (it uses the same Marvell controller and Micron NAND), only with a tweaked firmware. The G3 should come out in April, though it's still only SATA/300 (Intel knows it won't need more than that).

 

In fact, random performance is actually better on the X25-m in many cases. Obviously write performance and sequential performance are going to be better on the 510.

Hopefully the G3 will be available in a 7mm form factor like the X25-m G2 (which has a removable spacer).

 

I was under a slightly different impression, based on the latest and the greatest:

The Intel SSD 510 Review - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

4KB Random Write 212 -330.5 MB/s

Of course, the random Read isn't yet saturating SATA I:

4KB Random Read 83.1 MB/s

Yet, many operations are bottlenecked by write speeds.

So having a SATA II or even SATA 6Gbps interface may in fact help already with some drives, even if only slightly. And more so in the future, once one upgrades the drive in a couple of years or so.