Dumb question: will ANY modern Sata6 SSD bury sata6?

[Bombastinator]

So there was a person asking about replacing a laptop HD with an ssd.  There are SSDs with cache and SSDs without cache.  My memory is that even the cheapest low end cacheless modern sata6 SSDs will saturate sata1, probably sata3 (not sure) Will they also saturate sata6 or do you need cache for that?

[Electronics Wizardy]

it depends on the workload, the dramless drives can do fast sequentical speeds, but struggle in many random workloads.

 

But for a older laptop, dram won't make a difference, you normally don't need much io, and the cpu will limit you a good amount too.

[ARikozuM]

As far as I'm aware, a lot of drives "can" saturate SATA 6Gb/s. The only issue is getting to the data fast enough to make full use of that pipe. It's sort of like asking if the faucet is better half-open or fully open for a few seconds and then closed for a few. 

[vanished]

I think you might be asking the wrong question.  What you really lose with a very cheap cacheless SSD is durability and random performance.  Whether or not they can saturate the link in sequential transfers is secondary, as these are the factors you will really feel in terms of performance.

 

Also, just to clarify, the standards are SATA I (1.5 Gb/s) which you almost never see, SATA II (3 Gb/s) which would likely be on Core 2 Quad machines and older, and SATA III (6 Gb/s) which is anything even semi-recent.  Sometimes I see people mix up the speeds and version number.

[NewMaxx]

Pretty much any modern SATA SSD will saturate SATA3 (6 Gbps). This isn't hugely relevant for a variety of reasons, one because sequential performance is only part of the equation and two because that's the "up to" SLC cache speeds which don't always translate to long-term or low queue depth (e.g. file transfer) performance. DRAM-less drives are usually designed towards the budget segment and therefore might have a larger SLC cache, but will be slower outside of this cache, as on the BX500 vs. MX500 for example. Likewise, smaller file transfers will be far below SATA limits in terms of MB/s as you're bottlenecked by the protocol (AHCI).

[Carskick]

As other's said, you may be asking the wrong question. I assume you're asking if cacheless drives are worth it, since sequential speeds are capped by SATA3 (6gbps)

 

I've installed hundreds of SATA SSDs in a variety of PCs, from low end to high end drives/PCs. Based on this, here is my opinion:

 

Cheap DRAMless drives are fine as boot drives in old & lightly used computers. They are also fine as game storage and general data drives where speed isn't that important, specifically write speeds.

For heavy use case or drives that are heavily written to, I NEVER suggest a DRAMless drive. Especially since you're usually only saving $10 to $20 on a drive.