Sony SA290 supports SATA III??

Hello,
I currently have a Sony Vaio SA290X (VPCSA290X) and opted to get the standard 500GB 7200RPM hard drive and get an SSD and replace it myself instead of Sony's prices.

I currently have 2 SSD's in mind, OCZ V3 Max IOPS Edition
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 Series – MAX IOPS Edition VTX3MI-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
or the OCZ V3
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 3 VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
I asked a representative and they said that the only difference is the first one is faster, and they said that my laptop seems to only support SATA II and I won't be able to reach the speeds they advertise since that's SATA III.

Funny side note, I contacted a Sony representative and she told me the SA290 only supports SATA I, no II or III.

But does the SA290 really only support SATA II? And if it does, is it not really worth getting an SSD then if I can't even reach those speeds..?
Odd how the 2nd flagship laptops on Sony doesn't even support SATA III if that's true :/

 

Both Vertex 3 drives have well reported BSOD issues related to the Sandforce controller. At the moment, it's adviseable to not buy them.

 

The SA290 supports SATA III. If you replace the CD/DVD drive with a caddy, and add a SSD/HDD that port is limited to SATA II.

 

Well thank you for the heads up about the BSOD's, and I'm not in a hurry to get an SSD right. Maybe they'll drop a couple bucks by the time a fix comes around.

And I'm just looking to replace the HDD that came with the laptop, I think it's Toshiba. I have a blu-ray drive, so I'm not touching that at all. But I'm glad to know that the SA290 supports SATA III.
Just odd how an OCZ representative said it only supported II and a Sony rep. said it only supported I.

 

with the latest BIOS it seems that they disabled SATAIII, my OCZ Agility 3 SSD is running on SATAII only. Confirmed by another forumer using a Crucial M4. You had best ask tech support to confirm this, their sales reps don't know any technical details

 

May I request you run benchmarks to see if they are at SATA II speeds, or is that just power saving (LPM)?

 

Really wish I could. Intel RST reports 3gbps, AS-SSD can't get me >SATAII speeds, and the benchmark with compressible data (ATTO) hangs when i run it. Had none of these problems with the old BIOS =(

 

Well if I click the Intel Rapid Storage Technology at the quicklaunch bar, then go to Manage and Advanced, it says SATA transfer rate 3 Gb/s, so I know that this drive meets SATA II standards.

These are my 3D Vantage benchmarks, if that's what you meant
I'm not sure if this link will go to it, but
AMD Radeon HD 6750M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2520M Processor,Sony Corporation VAIO score: P4042 3DMarks

 

So what do you guys think?

 

Well can anyone else recommend the best SSD? I'm looking for around possibly 120GB-240GB SSD. If the Vertex SSD's are the best, then I'll just wait until this wave of bugs and BSOD errors are over and an update fixes it.

 

M4 Crucial... as fast as the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS, while not having any current issues.

 

Would you say the M4 Crucial would rate higher than the Intel 510 and what about the just released Kingston HyperX? People have been saying they're interally almost exactly identical to the Vertex 3's but have worked out some, if not most of the kinks.

 

^^ Depends on which capacities we are thinking about. 120/128GB, the Vertex3/HyperX should be faster. At 256/240GB, the M4 should be faster (and depending on the compressability of the data.