Sata PCI Card Questions

1) How can i get the best out of my Agility 60GB SSD with my Asus P5Q Pro Turbo MB. I heard using a sata 3 card like the RocketRaid 620 i can use the Microsoft drivers instead of the marvel ones to allow for TRIM to work and i would still get a performance increase; right?

2) I am using one PCIe 2.0x16 for my graphics card; can i plug the sata card into the other "black" slot; which runs at x8; even though it uses a different connection (one long connector rather than two tiny parts for the PCI card?) If i cannot put it in there then i would be limited to 250MBPS since I only have PCIe x1 right?

3) May be a noob question but can i add more than one of these cards to my system; and have up to six additional drives; (if buying three 2-port cards). Would that 250MB PCIx1 speed limitation be for all PCI slots altogether or individually?

Thanks

bump.

Question... Which Agility drive is that you have?
From your previous thread, I had assumed is was a generation 1 Agility drive.
I might be missing something here (more than likely) but why are your not using it one one of the 5 ports that the ICH10R supports? Or are these all used by other drives! As if this is a gen 1/2 drive, then sata 3gb is more than enough bandwidth for these drives and I would have thought that you would not see any benefit from an add in card.

As to the RocketRaid add in cards.

I think the 620 uses a PCI-E 1x connector and the 640 has a PCI-E 4x (and yes this goes in your x8 slot).

To quote an article on bit-tech.net

"With this in mind, we recommended that buyers of SATA 6Gbps devices capable of surpassing SATA 3Gbps speeds, such as Crucial's C300 SSDs, picked up a HighPoint Rocket 620; a two-port, PCI-E 1x SATA 6Gbps expansion card. SATA 6Gbps hard drives such as Western Digital's recent Caviar disks don't require the HighPoint, as their speeds get nowhere near the limit of SATA 3Gbps anyway.

However, while the HighPoint 620 offers great performance, it also has its limitations, not least the cap of 500MB/sec bandwidth afforded by the single-lane PCI-E connection. As Crucial's C300 drives are capable of sequential read speeds upwards of 350MB/sec, adding a second drive would theoretically cause problems when both drives are being thrashed. The HighPoint Rocket 620 didn't support RAID either, although HighPoint does make a RAID-supporting version.

HighPoint RocketRAID 640 Review

HighPoint's answer to this conundrum is its higher-spec PCI-E 4x SATA 6Gbps card; the RocketRaid 640. As well as featuring a slightly longer connector, which either requires a full-size graphics slot, or a rarer four-lane slot if your motherboard has one, the card also sports two Marvell 9128 SATA 6Gbps controllers, which are connected to a central RAID controller chip. Each controller handles the data from a pair of SATA 6Gbps ports, with two arranged on the top of the card, and another two on the front.
"

PS. If it was me and I was looking at a large outlay for multiple SSD's (I wish), then I think that I would want to be moving over to a platform (mobo/CPU) that natively supports several Sata 6Gb channels.

Hi, thanks for your detailed responses. I have the Agility 3 6GB, 60GB so i should benefit from an add in card. I am a noob when it comes to PCI cards so please bear with me! I intend on getting a new pc some time in the future with sandy bridge etc but for now its just about getting as much performance as i can. According to the Asus website my mobo has:

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5Q_PRO_Turbo/#specifications
2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 support at x8 link (PCIe x16_1 blue, PCIe x16_2 black*)
3 x PCIe x1
2 x PCI
*PCI Express x16_2 slot (black at max. x8 link)

1) Does this mean i have to put the 620 into a PCIe x1 meaning i would only get 250MB bandwidth? since the PCIe 2.0 is a graphics card-type connector or can the 620 go in there or am i getting confused? According to overlooked the rocket raid uses "PCI-Express 2.0 x1" And the only "2.0 version/type" i have on my mobo is the graphics connector?

2) With regards to the 640; does this mean i would have NO limitations on speed; even if thrashing multiple drives since the PCI X4 is that much faster and can go into the black graphics card slot? As a side note i heard that doing this would reduce the bandwidth of my graphics port; is this true? Thanks again

Hi

I'd maybe suggest giving the bit-tech review a read:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2011/01/04/high-point-rocketraid-640-review/1

This should answer most of your questions.

I wouldn't bother.

Using an add-in card isn't going to alter the responsiveness of the drive (the advantage of a SSD); it's only going to potentially increase sustained read/write. But unless you copy and paste large files to and from SSD then you won't notice any difference. Also having an add-in card is likely to increase boot-up time by a second or two if worried about that.

Bane makes some good points.

Just in the middle of reading the article and discovered that the 640 increases boot time by 40 seconds! So that's out of the question. Any ideas if the 620 increases time by this much?

The thing is i need more sata ports anyway so was thinking may as well get a sata3 port and get a bit more out of the agility3. So my options are the 620 or the Startech 6GB 2-port card for £32 which do you think?

Does anyone know if i can put a PCIe 2.0 card into a graphics card slot; if i cannot then afaik i would only get 250MB speed since the other slots on my mobo are only PCIe X1. And if that's the case then i would get the sata 2 version and leave my SSD connected to my mobo? Thanks

Going by the sort of card these are, I would expect some increase in boot time for any of them!

The 620 is limited to a x1 slot. The 640 will fit either a 4x (rare) or x8/x16 slot.

As to which would be better, not a clue (never used either of them), I'd have a dig around on the WEB and see what you can find out. Though I have used a fair bit of Startech kit over the years (usually cheap and cheerful but do the job).

And yes, from what I understand you would be limited to 250MB/s on a x1 slot. 500MB/s for the latest boards (IE. PCIe 2.0).

Though the Startech card is also meant for a x1 slot.

So to be honest, I can't see you getting any improvement for your Agility by using either the 620, or the Startech card.

The only one that would help, is the 640 and you've discounted this.

Unless there is something else out there.

PS. Might just be worthwhile throwing into the pot that OCZ SSD's have not traditionally given their best when working with a Marvell controller. Just going by complaints that I've seen on the OCZ user forum here, no personal experience. So if anyone has any other opinion on this, then feel free to rebuke me. The first solution that most people recommend if running on a Marvell controller and not getting the expected speed, is to move it to an Intel controller! Just thought that I had better warn you.....