SAS Raid10 vs SATA II Raid10 - many small reads and writes

Hi Everyone,

We're in the market for a new DB server to replace our current one (yes it's one of *those*
questions) ;).

It'll have quad core Xeons, 36GB RAM and some sort of Raid 10 configuration.

Our provider is pushing us towards 6 x SATA II disks in a Raid 10 configuration or 4 x SAS disks in
Raid 10 (budget constraints).

The application that queries this DB opens up about 100 connections and performs millions of
inherently small reads and writes to process the data over the course of a few weeks.

My question is though the maximum throughput may be similar between 6 SATA II and 4 SAS drives does
anybody know if the SAS drives will *significantly* outperform the SATA drives in the face of many
millions of small concurrent reads and writes?

My Google-fu is weak today and I can't seem to come up with a definitive answer one way or the other,
does anyone have any experience that they can offer?

Kind Regards
Phil Berry