SATA 3 Question

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

Greetings to the community.   I am thinking of going for 2 Velociraptor 600gb drives which are SATA 3. My mobo is an XFX790i ultra which is SATA 2.  Will the SATA 2 ports on the board handle the 6gbs transfer rate or should I use a PCIe SATA 3 adapter card for SATA 3 connectivity ?

Thanks, Busterbvi.

2

Given the minimal performance gains you would get by purchasing the add-on card, I can’t imagine it would be worthwhile.

3

I believe the XFX 790i is an old board that doesn’t come with SATA 6Gbps controller, it will work with your 6Gbps drives but not perform at it full speed because the throughput is bottle neck and stuck at the 3Gbps.  I owned 2 of these 2TB Black drive @ 6Gbps and plug them in the SATA 3 controller…copying 800mb file takes less then 5 secs. Speed is amazing.

I would recommend you buying an extra SATA 3 controller PCI-X and plug these drives in so it can give you best result. Good Luck.

4

Thanks for the reply, I was thinking the same, Asus do a SATA 3 PCIe adapter card for about $50. The problem is that they only have 2 external  USB and 2 internal SATA 3 ports. My boot drive is a Corsair F60 64gb SSD which is SATA 3.

Will I have any problems using 2 adapter cards in my 2 spare PCIe slots, 1 for the boot drive and another for the 2 Velociraptors.  Will I need special SATA3 cables ?

Thanks again, Busterbvi.

5

SATA-II means it will only communicate at 3 Gbps.  Since the drive can’t transfer faster than that though, there is no point in getting an add in card.  Just plug it in and it will work fine.