Anyone put a Sata 3 PCIe board on a Sata 2 motherboard??

NeilF

NeilF

NeilF

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So tempted to put an AsRock Sata 3 PCIe board on my Asus P5Q just to increase the speed of the M4 SDD.

Figure I could potentially add 50% or more speed to it by doing that!


In an ideal world, I'd just plug the PCIe board in, plug my SDD into it, and leave the other devices (2xHDD and a DVD) in the regular MB SATA 2 sockets... And it would just work... Not sure how the motherboard would know to boot from it mind?
 
Could you provide a link to the product you're looking at (not to a competitor but to OcUK or the manufacturer)?

I assume you're talking about a PCI-E SATA 3 controller but I wasn't aware ASRock made such an item.

Add in SATA 3 controllers usually aren't brilliant (unless you spend a decent amount of money) as they tend to use an inferior controller such as the Marvell 9128.
 
Surveyor said:
Could you provide a link to the product you're looking at (not to a competitor but to OcUK or the manufacturer)?

I assume you're talking about a PCI-E SATA 3 controller but I wasn't aware ASRock made such an item.

Add in SATA 3 controllers usually aren't brilliant (unless you spend a decent amount of money) as they tend to use an inferior controller such as the Marvell 9128.
Click to expand...

http://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/card.asp?Model=SATA3 Card
http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5Q_PRO/

Love to hear from someone who's done this, to know it's not likely to bork something up! Just want to plug it in and go. No OS re-installs :eek:
 
I'm saying that the controller it's based on isn't very good.

Without knowing what controller the card at OcUK uses I couldn't say if that was any good or not but the cards in that price range will tend to use the cheaper Marvell or similar controllers which aren't brilliant.

The Marvell controller in the M4 SSD is a completely different product to the cheap SATA 3 controllers on this type of add in card.
 
Surveyor said:
Without knowing what controller the card at OcUK uses I couldn't say if that was any good or not but the cards in that price range will tend to use the cheaper Marvell or similar controllers which aren't brilliant.
Click to expand...
Marvell 88SE9123, so the same?

They all seem to use that, except one which seems to use the 9128?
 
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NeilFawcett said:
Marvell 88SE9123, so the same?

They all seem to use that, except one which seems to use the 9128?
Click to expand...

The same then.

Only the Marvell 9182 controller comes close to matching Intel's SATA 3.

The 9120 and 9123 you've seen in action.

The more recent 9128, used on a lot of motherboards, may give a bit better performance than Intel SATA 2 but not as good as Intel SATA 3 and would it be anything you'd actually notice?

The only thing you're not getting is the headline grabbing maximum sequential speeds.

In day to day use you probably wouldn't notice the difference if you did have a controller which allowed you to achieve the maximum sequential read and write speeds.

Certainly if you're only looking to spend ~£30 on one of these cards then you might as well stay as you are for what real difference it makes.
 
Surveyor said:
The same then.

Only the Marvell 9182 controller comes close to matching Intel's SATA 3.

The 9120 and 9123 you've seen in action.

The more recent 9128, used on a lot of motherboards, may give a bit better performance than Intel SATA 2 but not as good as Intel SATA 3 and would it be anything you'd actually notice?

The only thing you're not getting is the headline grabbing maximum sequential speeds.

In day to day use you probably wouldn't notice the difference if you did have a controller which allowed you to achieve the maximum sequential read and write speeds.

Certainly if you're only looking to spend ~£30 on one of these cards then you might as well stay as you are for what real difference it makes.
Click to expand...

So basically you don't recon bootup speed and general access speed would be much improved with a SATA 3 PCIe card?
 
Surveyor said:
Not with a "cheap" one.

And even then you should still be seeing pretty good boot and access times with what you have now.
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At the moment...

scaled.php
 
This is from the OcUK SSD Mega Test.

2qtfwww.jpg


As you can see your numbers are worse but you should still be seeing/feeling the difference between your SSD and what you experienced with a HDD.

Your access times, for example, are probably 50 times less than a HDD, the 4K speeds 10 times as fast and your sequential read speed is double.

The only way to get the sort of benchmark numbers shown above would be to use a good native SATA 3 port (new motherboard, processor etc.) or invest in an expensive SATA 3 add in card.
 
I'm using that same SSD on my P45 mobo which is also SATA II and I'm getting considerably higher numbers than yours Neil
SSD-M4.jpg


If I had to guess the difference would be from the notes on the top left you appear to be using the Microsoft AHCI driver, whereas I'm using Intels driver from the Intel Rapid Storage pack. This is likely heavily optimised compared to MS's. I'd recommend you try Intel's driver!
 
Stonedofmoo said:
I'm using that same SSD on my P45 mobo which is also SATA II and I'm getting considerably higher numbers than yours Neil
SSD-M4.jpg


If I had to guess the difference would be from the notes on the top left you appear to be using the Microsoft AHCI driver, whereas I'm using Intels driver from the Intel Rapid Storage pack. This is likely heavily optimised compared to MS's. I'd recommend you try Intel's driver!
Click to expand...

Is it easy to swap drivers back and forth? ie: So I try the Intel one(s), and then want to revert to the M$ ones?

Sounds risky? Sounds like OS won't boot sort of territory?
 
Why would there be any problem fella? It's Intel who made the chipset controlling your SATA ports, not Microsoft.
I've been using Intel chipsets/chipset drivers since the Intel 430FX days and never once had an issue with their drivers. I can confidentally say you'll be fine. :cool:
 
Stonedofmoo said:
Why would there be any problem fella? It's Intel who made the chipset controlling your SATA ports, not Microsoft.
I've been using Intel chipsets/chipset drivers since the Intel 430FX days and never once had an issue with their drivers. I can confidentally say you'll be fine. :cool:
Click to expand...

So you specifically downloaded your AHCI driver from intel? Where would I find it?
 
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