Question about SSD on my build

[Fujiama]

Hello. For some time now I have been considering buying a SSD drive for my build, and now finally I can afford it. Now I'm wondering if my build actually can use it, or if I would actually gain performance from it. My current build is:

Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD3R
CPU: I7 920
Ram: 12GB 1600mhz
PSU: Corsair TX750M
GPU: Asus Radeon HD6950 2gb version
Operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

The most important thing about this is of course the motherboard, but this is where I'm confused. As it seems, it doesn't look like my current motherboard has any SATA3 slots.
So, will my current build gain performance from a SSD drive, or does the speed of the current HDD slots on the motherboard limit it, so it won't be as useful?

Also, I would love it if anyone of you could recommend a good SSD drive. I need one around 80-120gb, most likely 120gb is alright.

Thanks!

[vesseblah]

Speed difference between SATA2 and SATA3 is hardly visible in daily use, but the difference of HDD vs SSD is like night and day. You can also freely get SATA3 SSD now and use it in SATA2 port with current computer. It will run faster with new motherboard someday.

Two biggest upgrades you can do for the current computer is:

a) overclock the shit out of the processor. i7-920 is good for that
b) get an SSD

80GB is sensible minimum, but I'd go for 120GB just to make sure it wont be full in a month.

[redmund]

If you intend on putting WoW on your SSD then I'd go with 120gb as an absolute minimum. May as well buy a SATA3 SSD while you're at it, as you may well upgrade other parts of your computer one day and it'll be good to be able to get the most out of your SSD.

[Fujiama]

Speed difference between SATA2 and SATA3 is hardly visible in daily use, but the difference of HDD vs SSD is like night and day. You can also freely get SATA3 SSD now and use it in SATA2 port with current computer. It will run faster with new motherboard someday.

Is there a huge speed difference between a SATA2 SSD and a SATA3 SSD? How much of a difference will it make if I use a SATA3 SSD on my SATA2 slot on my motherboard compared to a SATA3 SSD on a SATA3 slot?

[redmund]

SATA 2 caps out at around 380 MB/sec (theoretical max) with most controllers hitting around 250-270 MB/sec in real world performance. SATA3 can easily double that. Using a SATA 3 drive on a SATA 2 controller will fully saturate the controller, giving you a full 250-270 MB/sec. It won't make any difference to access times and random access reads and writes, only sequential reads and writes (big file transfers, reading large files). A SATA 3 drive on a SATA 3 controller will easily read and write at well over 500MB/sec. You won't notice MUCH real world diff between a SATA 2 and 3 (right now at least), but there's little reason not to go for a SATA 3 drive now, since you're going to keep that drive longer than almost all of your other components.