x120e, SATA II or SATA III

I want to buy a SSD for the x120e and I have narrowed it down to the next two:

- Crucial RealSSD C300 2.5" 64GB or
- Intel Postville X25-M 2.5" 80GB

the big difference being of course that the Crucial has SATA III and the Intel SATA II, so the final choice depends on the SATA interface on the x120e.

The Lenovo 'Personal Systems Reference' under SATA disk say's:
Some: Solid State Drive (SSD) / SATA 3.0Gb/s, 2.5", upgradable
Some: Hard Disk Drive / SATA 3.0Gb/s, 2.5" wide, upgradable

while the Brazos architectural overview states that it should at least have SATA III possibilities:


Is it possible that the SATA III function has been disabled through hardware or BIOS limitations?

 

Seems weird that nobody else is considering putting a SSD in his/her x120e..

(Hope bumping a topic is allright after 5 days )

 

It's fine as far as I understand the rules. I think perhaps nobody really knows yet, not many have gotten an x120e here yet too.

 

Then again, you would expect the people over at Lenovo to know the answer. Or, one of the 3.764 sites that reviewed the x120e could have taken an in depth look at it..

(WOW, it's small and cheap! Thumbs up!)

 

Most people are just getting their X120e machines, so there's no definite answer yet. I won't be able to test, as the SSD I ordered for mine is SATA II.

 

I asked a similar question somewhere. I think most are settling for 120gb sata2 in favor of the speed boost of sata3.
When I read somewhere that the x120e supported sata3 that was my first thought as well. I would love to see someone put 8gb ram and a C300 and rerun all the benchmarks.

 

There was some debate as to whether or not the x120e actually supports dual channel memory or single channel. I don't think we have a definitive answer on that yet either. Just something to keep in mind when upgrading.

 

HUDSON southbridge supports sata III, since it's based off the AMD sb800.Whether you will see real life speeds slose to sata III is a whole different matter.

 

according to a thread in the SSD section, it wont be as snappy as people thought it would.

pretty much the same as I feel, just got a corsair f120 and bummer its fast, but didnt blow my mind at all.

 

It's definitively single channel. AMD's Zacate only supports single channel memory, so there's no way the X120e would magically support dual channel.

 

More importantly, I want to know if x120e support mSata card. Most likely it is going to be no. I wonder if anybody has try it yet.

 

Check out the Engaget thread on the x120e. Someone already tried the new intel 310 msata (soda creek I believe) drives in the x120e and it didn't work. Too bad, I was holding off on buying an ssd for exactly that reason. I finally went with a 120gb intel. I got burned by OCZ earlier this year with the 25nm fiasco so be careful which drive you buy.

on second thought...maybe it was a thread on slickdeals discussing msata and the x120e. Regardless, it didn't work.

 

Got my x120e. I love the machine.

Is the SATA interface II or III?

And more importantly can the machine use the 6gb/s interface?

Has anyone tried a vertex III on this machine.

I realise that might be ridiculous given that the machine isnt worth that much, just wondering though.

 

I don't think the x120e would have SATA 3, but somebody correct me if I'm wrong. If it doesn't support SATA 3 then it will not utilize 6 Gb/s.

The Vertex 3 series isn't even out yet.

Most SSD don't even come close to saturating SATA 2 levels, only the 510 series from Intel, C300 and Vertex 3 will surpass it IF you have a SATA 3 connector.

 

And then there is the question of power consumption on the x120e. how much power do SATA 3 SSDs utilise?

They have pretty powerful ARM processors for controllers, so the power usage must be at least 1w on idle, which is in the range of regular HDDs.

 

It really depends on which SSD you are talking about and the notebook. If it already comes with a 5400 rpm drive it will most likely have the same battery life.

 

Someone on the Slickdeals forum tried it, and reported that it did not work. I do not recall the model though ~ it was a 40GB msata by Intel.

 

Not necessarily. Most SSDs, especially Intel and Samsung ones, have idle power consumption significantly lower than 1W. You can look at some of the benchmarks at StorageReview to get a general idea. As a whole, SSDs have lower power consumption than HDDs, but there are definitely exceptions to that rule.

 

A closer look at AMD's Brazos platform - The Tech Report - Page 1

 

I'd like to bump this, can I know if the X120e will support SATA III? Thanks

 

I'd also like to know the answer to this. My x120e is set to arrive this Friday, but I only own SATA II drives. More than like 95% likely, however, is that this will support SATA3.

Mr Raider's link is somewhat reassuring, but not 100% definitive. Manufacturers cripple things for whatever stupid reason all the time. Here's something a little more assuring, but still not 100%:

"All upcoming AMD Fusion APUs will have one thing in common, they will share the Hudson Fusion Controller Hub (FCH) and the Hudson will be available in seven distinct variants aimed at three market segments.

Three versions are reserved for AMD's new notebook platforms. All feature support for up to six SATA 6Gbps devices and four second generation PCIe x1 GPPs. Hudson M1 is will take care of Brazos/Ontario."

 

I was hoping for SATA 3 (6Gbps) speeds from the Intel 510 SSD I put in my Lenovo X120e but unfortunately it seems to be gimped to SATA 2 speeds because Crystal Disk Mark was reporting 250mb sequential read speeds where if it was full throttle it should be around 450mb. Nevertheless it boots up in about 30 seconds and applications open up in a couple of seconds or so, I just wouldn't pay extra for a SATA 3 SSD if it was destined to spend its lifetime in this netbook. I was asking myself this question 2 months ago also and was hopeful that the AMD specs would hold true, but vendors sometimes neuter it for whatever reason.

 

Just because it's 250 sequential doesn't mean it's SATA2. It might be that the AMD E350 is too weak to do more than that. In fact, I'd say if you're above 240MB/sec, it's almost proof that you have SATA3. There's overhead with SATA2 and you wouldn't reach the total 250MB/sec in real life.

That's little consolation though. Because it's still real life SATA2.

 

Hi all, I have an Agility III connected to the x120e on Windows Ultimate on a clean install I'll be happy to run some tests for you, what would you like? Thanks.

 

Crystal Mark should be fine. We just need you to get above 250MB/sec on anything. That'll confirm.

 

link please?

 

CrystalDiskMark - Software - Crystal Dew World

Doesn't even need an install. Just run the exe. Oh, and set the pull down menu to "50MB" so you don't use up your writes on the SSD. If you get some nice numbers, I might dump my Vertex 2.

 

Thanks for doing this. Your numbers looks just as horrible as mine.

Vertex 2 in my Sony VAIO YB:



Vertex 2 in my desktop SATA2

 

My results are dire. I may start to comfort eat.

 

Whatever this crap is, it's not the manufacturer. Someone said they got really high write speeds though on an AMD E350. This is still an unsolved mystery.

 

Maybe its my settings? Is there something I'm missing here cos my readings are really low. Did I need to activate TRIM support or something somewhere? Thanks.

 

I'm getting the same performance numbers that you are. The screenshot with high numbers is on my desktop.

 

Houston, we either have an OCZ/Sandforce problem or an AMD E-350 problem. Either way, my Kingston V+100 does not have crippled writes. So, it's possible to get the full speed on the AMD E-350, but not with OCZ/Sandforce.

 

I also have Vertex 2 in mine, and i got the following:

 

I'm curious to know if iTunes opens up any faster on SATA III. But then again, I'm uploading all my crap to Google Music right now, so maybe it won't even matter in a week.

 

If there was any doubt remaining at all, here's my bench with a C300 64GB. It's supposed to do 350MB / 70MB. It seems limited at 250MB, suggesting SATA II.

 

I just did a benchmark with my new Kingston V+100 96GB SSD. Does this seem like normal?

 

The results for my Vertex 2 are pretty crappy as well. Less than half the 4K read speeds I get with other laptops.

 

This seems to be a recurring trend with OCZ SSD's, if you're not satisfied with the speed, you can always RMA it. I noticed that a few of their flash drives that I purchased don't really live up to the fast speed claims or promises either.

 

It's not a Vertex 2 problem. Look at my previous post comparing speeds in laptop vs. desktop.