PCI SATA 3 card w/ SSD?

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macschwag14

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Hi. My rig's stating to get up there in age (still running a Core 2 Quad Q6600). I wanted to do something nice for it since I don't have the funds to build a new one yet. So I impulsively bought a 120GB Corsair Force 3 SSD.

The SSD is SATA 3. My mobo is an ASUS P5QL/EPU, and only has SATA 2 ports. I realize I can run the SSD at SATA 2 speeds from the board or from a PCI-E expansion card, but I've seen a few PCI-E expansion cards with SATA 3 expansion ports.

My questions are, if I bought one of the PCI-E SATA 3 cards, would it be faster than a SATA 2 connection (I'm assuming I won't get SATA 3 speeds with this method)? If so, is there a particular card you'd recommend? Or is there a better method that I haven't even considered yet?
 
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PCI or PCI-E?

If PCI, it'll be a lot slower than the SATA ports on your motherboard
If PCI-E, it may be faster depending on the card you get.

Also, I moved this over to the correct subforum.
 
you have to be careful and make sure the sata 3 card you purchase is not a marvell based one, otherwise it will be worse than your intel ports.

in all honestly, I wouldn't even worry about it. the corsair force series 3 can't perform over 220mb/s on random data, and your 4k speeds on ich10r will be better on your intel ports than basically any card you can purchase under $300

http://img215.imageshack.us/img215/1944/screenshotmyc.png

that's a force series 3 on a sata 3 port using random data. you can run the test yourself, but you won't be able to hit the 270 mark.

the only time your drive can do 500mb/s is when working with all zeroes, and that basically does not happen unfortunately.
 
in all honestly, I wouldn't even worry about it. the corsair force series 3 can't perform over 220mb/s on random data, and your 4k speeds on ich10r will be better on your intel ports than basically any card you can purchase under $300
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There's nothing more to say.

OP, forget about it. :)
 
funny coincidence that I JUST finished benchmarking this exact chipset. I bought the Asrock H61 budget board with USB3 and SATA3 added both through Asmedia chips to reduce cost compared to an H67 or Z68 platform.

they are definitely NOT the same performance as a true SATA 3 solution. I tested a brand new Solid 3 and Vertex Plus on the H61 SATA2 (Intel) port, the Asmedia SATA3 port, and on a different computer with the Intel SATA3 port (I have the Asrock Extreme4 H67, and Z68 boards with the Intel SATA3 ports).

the Asmedia SATA3 port was slower than any Intel port and cannot take advantage of any decent SATA3 SSD. It cannot even hold up numbers compared to Intel SATA2 solutions. Other than this issue, I actually really like this budget board (completely off topic of course) for $60, and the USB3 speed seems fine so it's still better than other cheap H61 boards.

BTW, this is the chipset on the card you linked and the same one on my budget AsRock H61 board - http://www.asmedia.com.tw/eng/e_show_products.php?cate_index=117&item=118. It is only a tiny bit slower than the Intel SATA2 ports so if you're just looking to add ports for hard drives it's fine, just not for a current gen SATA3 SSD. The Vertex Plus was only about 5% slower compared to the Intel controller, so for lower end SSD's, it's also fine.
 
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I have another computer with a SB850 SATA3 port I'm about to plug these drives into so will post some updates on controller impact on performance. I've tested in the past on the Marvell controller too, and as mentioned above, it sucks :(
 
Thanks for the replies, everybody. Sounds like I should just stick with my crippled SATA2 connection until I do a full upgrade. At least this should be faster than an HDD...
 
Asmedia SATA3 port was slower than any Intel port and cannot take advantage of any decent SATA3 SSD. It cannot even hold up numbers compared to Intel SATA2 solutions.
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It's the same with all avaliable inexpensive SATA3 solutions.
 
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports. But as I have said many time the SSD still ran everyday work at about the same speed as a modern HDD.

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Why would anyone think a fast PCIe SATA3 card would cost over $300? A motherboard with 6 SATA3 ports and CPU cost about $200.

Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
 
GeorgeHR said:
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports. But as I have said many time the SSD still ran everyday work at about the same speed as a modern HDD.
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What drive and what controller? Post your numbers.


GeorgeHR said:
Why would anyone think a fast PCIe SATA3 card would cost over $300? A motherboard with 6 SATA3 ports and CPU cost about $200.

Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
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No Intel board has 6 Sata3 ports and the AMD controllers that do have 6 ports don't perform nearly on par with the Intel controllers.
 
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports.
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That's a pretty sad SSD and MB. :D


Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
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LOL!
 
GeorgeHR said:
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports. But as I have said many time the SSD still ran everyday work at about the same speed as a modern HDD.

---

Why would anyone think a fast PCIe SATA3 card would cost over $300? A motherboard with 6 SATA3 ports and CPU cost about $200.

Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
Click to expand...

Writing zeros, the PCIe card can go beyond SATA2 and thus "bench better". But the point of an SSD is first and foremost reactivity, and cheap PCIe cards destroy that.
 
GeorgeHR said:
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports. But as I have said many time the SSD still ran everyday work at about the same speed as a modern HDD.

---

Why would anyone think a fast PCIe SATA3 card would cost over $300? A motherboard with 6 SATA3 ports and CPU cost about $200.

Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
Click to expand...

you're doing something pretty wrong if the SSD runs "everyday work" about the same as a modern HDD. "Everyday work" is typically use of lots of small files, which is where SSD's kill HDD's. Also as others are saying, if your $25 SATA3 card is outperforming the onboard ports, you either have a really cheap mobo or found some cheap add-on card solution that the rest of the storage community has missed out on.
 
GeorgeHR said:
I happened to had purchased a SSD and a $25 PCIe SATA3 controller.

The PCIe card benched much better than the on board SATA2 ports. But as I have said many time the SSD still ran everyday work at about the same speed as a modern HDD.

---

Why would anyone think a fast PCIe SATA3 card would cost over $300? A motherboard with 6 SATA3 ports and CPU cost about $200.

Some of you fellows need to be a bit more critical in evaluating stuff.
Click to expand...

buy a force series 3, run as-ssd on both, be amazed
 
Your motherboard ports might not get the maximum performance out of the SSD, but it should work just fine. I would recommend using these ports in AHCI with the latest BIOS. Don't bother with a card, its just one more piece to add complexity to your setup.

Otherwise there aren't very many *good* sata III cards that are less than a few hundred bucks. They all have mediocre reviews until you get into something by LSI for $225+, or something used off of ebay that supports SAS6.
 
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