SATA III controller card recommendation?

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ben805

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 27, 2006
Messages
188
Can someone please suggest a good SATA3 controller card to run a Samsung 830 256GB SSD? RAID or no RAID doesn't matter. My Asus P6T Deluxe only have SATA2 ports so it can't take full advantage of the SSD, still waiting for ivy bridge so I won't be upgrading my core i7 920 at the moment.
 
I would not recommend spending the money for it just to bridge the gap to Ivy bridge. In my experience, cheaper sata ports tend to, well, stink, both performance and reliability wise. A quality card is probably going to get close to $100 usd or more as drescherjm mentioned.

The sata III speed, or lack of, will only impact you in loading the biggest programs/games. Saturated Sata II speeds with an SSD is still very fast and much faster than any mechanical hard drive. I'd prefer an SSD on an Intel sata II port than on a Sata III card with a Marvell or Silicon Image controller, for example.
 
I'd prefer an SSD on an Intel sata II port than on a Sata III card with a Marvell or Silicon Image controller, for example.
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Exactly. These cheap SATA III ports are actually slower than the Intel SATA II ports in a lot of ways.

The sata III speed, or lack of, will only impact you in loading the biggest programs/games.
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Yes. The lack of SATA III will only impact you when you are doing large sequential transfers. This is something that you will most likely not do for the bulk of your SSD usage and really not what an SSD is best at. The main benifit to using an SSD is its random read and write performance and low latency not its sequential read / write speed. Small random reads and writes will not be hampered at all by the SATA II interface. SSDs are not that fast yet..
 
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ben805 said:
Can someone please suggest a good SATA3 controller card to run a Samsung 830 256GB SSD? RAID or no RAID doesn't matter. My Asus P6T Deluxe only have SATA2 ports so it can't take full advantage of the SSD, still waiting for ivy bridge so I won't be upgrading my core i7 920 at the moment.
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Its expensive to enter the good sata controller cards, i would just wait for ivy, its less than 2 months away. I personally didnt notice much difference from X25m on Sata II to Crucial M4, yes in transfering files and in most benches is faster, but to the average user i doubt you can feel the difference, i would just use the 830 on sata II until ivy is out.
 
Agree with the other posters, as you will probably only see the difference in benchmarks and not in the real world.
 
no benefit in photo and 1080p editing with the higher throughput from 6G SATA3? I'm all about saving money so if it's no noticeable improvement then I'll wait a bit longer for the ivy to take advantage of the extra speed then. :)
 
Are the photos going to be 100s of MB in size?

For 1080p probably not since you will load only a few frames at a time and not GB at at time.
 
I use Canon 5D Mark 2, 21MP. Raw files are between 32~38MB each, depending on the ISO and contain. Usually I batch process anywhere from 10 to 16GB worth of RAW files at a time..
 
Still I do not expect this to be too limiting with SATA II.

Usually I batch process anywhere from 10 to 16GB worth of RAW files at a time..
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I assume you are not loading several GB into your RAM at 1 time and they probably all would not be in sequential blocks. Even if you wrote one file after another wear leveling would probably scatter them across the SSD that is after you did 1 drive worth of writes on the SSD.
 
So, no SATA 6g controller cards that can hit 500 megabytes/sec for less than $100? I'm looking at a plextor m3, or a crucial m4 and I was hoping to get a reasonably priced controller to get those speeds.
 
Devistater said:
So, no SATA 6g controller cards that can hit 500 megabytes/sec for less than $100? I'm looking at a plextor m3, or a crucial m4 and I was hoping to get a reasonably priced controller to get those speeds.
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Really though, most likely you wouldn't see any real world difference except in benchmarks. There are only a few rare instances that you would notice the difference, and even then, we are talking a pretty small difference. I would say stick with what you have, get a SATAIII/6Gbps drive, and then when you upgrade your motherboard, you can have the benchies back...
 
The problem with any controller except an LSI 9260/9265 with faspath key, will not necessarily be throughput. I would expect an IBM1015 to give you the max sequential specified.

But the IOPS will be lacking, and since that's what SSD are about, it's kind of pointless.
 
I like my LSI 9260-4i with crucial 512SSD. spendy card though, but much faster than you can get out of SATAII. Especially when you have 4 600GB VR's on them already... there is an upper limit to throughput.

LSI-9260-4i-M4512GB-SSD-CrystalDiskMark.png
 
hotcrandel said:
I like my LSI 9260-4i with crucial 512SSD. spendy card though, but much faster than you can get out of SATAII. Especially when you have 4 600GB VR's on them already... there is an upper limit to throughput.

LSI-9260-4i-M4512GB-SSD-CrystalDiskMark.png
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However looking at the bottom 2 performance metrics is why there is not a big difference in the real world. Although I do admit 512K reads / writes will be used in real world some of the time.
 
This question has been asked and answered many times and the answer is always the same.

Stick with your SATA2 Intel ports unless you can afford an LSI 9260-4i + Fastpath key for @ 400.00.

There is no free or even cheap lunch. :)
 
Just curious, what does the fastpath key do? I've seen the term but haven't been able to dig up the benefit.
 
Hi OldHippie. I have seen your comments about the LSI 9265/Fastpath and have been thinking of going with that setup for some time and am aware of the price, but have a few questions:
1) Will this work with HDD's? I have 4 now, but will be upgrading to SSD's in the future.
2) Where can I go with technical questions, if I have any?
3) The Fastpath, if I understand correctly, is just a license that opens part of the software and costs about $150-$175. Is this correct?
 
I have seen your comments about the LSI 9265/Fastpath
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Alll my comments are about the 9260. The 9265 is the newer model.

I have no idea what advantages, if any, it would bring to mechanical drives.

LSI does have phone and email support.

To activate Fastpath on the 9260 you purchase and install a little module/do-dad/thingie directly on the card.

The 9265 series is a matter of getting a code to enable Fastpath.
 
hotcrandel said:
I have. What I get out of it is it cranks up IOPS for SSD arrays. I guess it wasn't clear if it applies to single drives at all.
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They probably don't expect someone to buy that card to use it with only one drive.
 
SuperDank said:
Apricorn Velocity Solo - PCI Express Card. ~$50
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Uses Marvell 9125, looks like best speed is around 400 mb/sec, my motherboard uses the 9128, which is basically the same thing. So its not going to help me much.


FrostBite said:
IBM M1015 flashed into IT mode? I just bought one for $85 on these forums.
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Now that is an interesting idea, I see those on ebay for around the same. I'm definitely going to have to look into that.
 
My buddy borrowed me one of his Highpoint Rocket 620 SATA3 card, it has a Marvell 91xx chipset, seq write is worst than the ICH10R but seq read is slightly higher at 407MB/s instead of 280MB/s, this card sucks so putting it back on the ICH10R for now. Not sure how the IBM M1015 going to fair any better but base on a few reviews I saw the only way to max out our SSD is with something like $650 lsi 9265-8i or $970 Areca with 4GB cache, for that kind of money I might as well replace my socket 1366 system to 1155 and call it a day. LOL
 
for that kind of money I might as well replace my socket 1366 system to 1155 and call it a day. LOL
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If you're looking for more than 2 Intel SATA6 ports nothing in current production is gonna help ya. :)
 
Socket 1366 means 0 Intel SATA6, so 2 is better. I would go 2011 however.
 
cw823 said:
several x58 boards have SATAIII, last time I checked x58 was 1366.....therefore.....
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But that is 0 intel SATA III ports. Currently SATA III ports from any other manufacturer except the expensive SAS card are a downgrade (higher latency / slower writes / lower IOPS) in real world performance from the Intel SATA II ports that are standard on X58 motherboards.
 
drescherjm said:
But that is 0 intel SATA III ports. Currently SATA III ports from any other manufacturer except the expensive SAS card are a downgrade (higher latency / slower writes / lower IOPS) in real world performance from the Intel SATA II ports that are standard on X58 motherboards.
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Then he should've stated that, shouldn't he.
 
SATA6 he was talking about was SATA III.

Some users state SATA II or SATA III while others use SATA3 or SATA6.
 
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