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    Does Vaio SZ790 support Sata II?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by K0t, Dec 11, 2009.

  1. K0t

    K0t Newbie

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    Hi,

    Sony Vaio SZ790, Intel GM965, ICH8
    Want upgrade my HDD to Intel SSD and use all 250mb/s read.
    Does this model support Sata II?
    Thank you.
     
    K0t, Dec 11, 2009
    #1
  2. leslieann

    leslieann Notebook Deity

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    Simple answer.
    No.

    Sony disabled AHCI in the bios, which is likely to be necessary to achieve those speeds. You can enable it though, but it requires some work. How fast is the buss after that, I'm not sure. The fastest drive I have hooked in was able to pull over 80mbps, and spike to 125. However those were the limits of the drive.


    Keep in mind, the real performance gain is not the transfer speed anyhow. I went from 50mpbs to 80mbps and really could hardly tell any difference. Where the SSD will shine is access times. That is what will make a noticeable change in how things work. laptop drives are notoriously slow in this area, and SSD is smoking in that regard.

    Also bear in mind the default Sony drive only transfers at 55mbps with an access time of 18ms. It's pathetically slow.


    My advice, pass on the Intel, it's over priced (last I looked). Check out something with a slower transfer rate (aim for 150-200). You would get 99% of the performance that the Intel will get for a lot less. And yes you will see a jump in performance.
     
    leslieann, Dec 11, 2009
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  3. leslieann

    leslieann Notebook Deity

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    Even on desktops, the only time I saw the matrix drivers work was with raid.
     
    leslieann, Dec 13, 2009
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  4. JTravers

    JTravers Notebook Consultant

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    I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to add a comment since I just installed an Intel 160GB SSD in my SZ730. It definitely seems to have SATA-II because my benchmarks show it reading sequentially at greater than 150MB/s (the SATA-I limit). Also, I unlocked AHCI in the BIOS, and it greatly increased the small random read/write speeds (1.5-2x increase) of the SSD.

    If you're still thinking of upgrading, definitely go for it.
     
    JTravers, Apr 5, 2010
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