SATA III controller cards?

LostSoul · 4 Jan 2013 at 15:34

Hi all,

Does anyone have much experience of Sata 3 Controller cards? I have a Samgsung 840 500gb ssd to put in my desktop to replace my ageing WD drive, but have a Asus P6T Delux which dosnt support SATA III just II. It has a spare PCI slot.

Given the potential read and write speeds I could obtain and the fact the cards seem cheap, I thought I'd look into it.

Can anyone recommend one? Are they more trouble then they are worth? Is there anything aprticular to watch out for?

Also, were I to do it, should I try installing and imaging my OS across before or after installing the card?

Edit - I'm on Win 7 64 bit.

wazza300 · 4 Jan 2013 at 15:40

trouble with those cards they use cheap and nasty early marvell controllers/ports

you still wont see the full speeds,youll see around 350 read 250mb per sec write,your better off sticking to the intel sata2 ports for now

to see true rated speeds of the drive you need intel sata3 ports,and to my knowlegde there isnt any add in cards with those controllers/ports on them,just sandybridge/ivy bridge motherboards

Addicted · 4 Jan 2013 at 15:54

There's nothing wrong with the SATA 2 ports, you honestly won't notice any difference day to day.

LostSoul · 4 Jan 2013 at 16:13

Thanks guys - From this advice and a very quick google I dont think I'll bother with any PCI card shenanigans.

I'll probably be back very soon if I have any technical hitches with the migration, although I have already got a load of data from browsing the forums.