What is with the lack of SATA 3 ports?

[Daniel ~]

Unfortunitly I'm having to return my P8Z68-PRO/Gen 3... would Not change OC settings! So I was looking for a replacement board. Hard to find the type of board I want with more than Two SATA 3 connects, 4 at most! Usually without a port multiplier that would allow for stringing drives in a series off one port. (haven't actually seen this done myself!)

It's ALSO hard to get boards that still support even one IDE channel! Or have a standard PCI slot, for older controllers.

I was using Neweggs search filters which really are quite useful to find my new board. I punched in all my requirements and one board came up... My old one, Just one board met all my requirement, but it was listed around a dozen times...I look closer, One NEW board, the rest are all open Box returns of my P8Z68-PRO/Gen 3...I guess mine will be there soon...

So I decide to try Ivy boards (Z77) as my CPU will run on them, How did Intel manage backward compatibility with the 32N process while implementing
the 22N???

So what do I end up with at the end of my quest for a stable BIOS...A new BIOS!

To get the SATA ports I needed and the overclocking I wanted and still work with my New CPU and RAM... was a round of crushing disappointments as board after board failed me in one respect or another...

So like everyone else...I settle. It's got what I need, but with one reservation ( that's known at this time)

It's the Asus Z77-V Pro. I've had truely great Asus boards in the past (P5Q) So maybe better luck this time with Asus.

Back to my question, Why So few SATA 3 ports? Intel supports just two, the other two have be thrird party off the motherboards feature set. In most cases Sata two isn't really a substitue for Fast SSD Drives.

[Gizmo]

SATA 3 is 6 Gb/s transfer rates or about 600 MB/s. There aren't any mechanical drives that can support a sustained transfer rate that high. In fact, I don't think there are any SSD drives that can support a sustained transfer rate that high. The few drives of either type that can support a burst rate that high are not generally considered 'consumer' drives, either, and so you don't get support for SATA 3 on most mobos.

In other words, SATA 3 is a luxury that only a very few motherboard buyers would even care about. In the real world, I doubt you'd notice much performance difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3, as SATA 2 will give you transfer rates of up to 300 MB/s, which is still faster than pretty much any drive out there can sustain.

[Daniel ~]

As Aedan pointed out, I don't know what or how it was benched in my Linux "Disk Tool" but my performance about doubled going from 3 gig to 6 with the new board from my old 3 gig SATA II... was this just a measure of the pipe rather than the water in it?

[Daniel ~]

Man losing that board kinda messed me up, I worked hard to get the best matched parts I could in my price range.... Now it's kind of wait and see, how well Asus has implemented Support for Sandy bridge chips in their new Ivy motherboard... some good success reported, no failures reported, but it's a new chip on an old board...it's almost identical to the P8Z68-v Pro.

Newegg/Intel's Replace only policy on the CPU, forces me to move around the CPU if anything needs changing out, and to be honest I hate to RMA. But I'm stuck in the middle here trying to fill in for a defective board, I no longer trust as a model of motherboard, See Newegg recent complaints and returns...

One lesson learned:

If you get a defective part, ask for a refund, then you can buy another and have it shipped to you in 3 days to a week reasonably priced.

If you, as I did on my SSD return, ask for a replacement, you must first ship to them, wait while they inspect and then ship to you.

I RAMed my Mother board for a refund and bought a new one, a week after I RMAed the SSD. My MB it will be here Monday, my SSD? still a week or two away...ouch!

Patti's school has kept us from sending it out untill today.... so some of that is us, but stilll...":O}

A BIG BTW:

*Patti got a 4.0 in both the classes that comprise the first half of her certification course in quality control and Inspection.

It's a brand New City of Seattle/Boeing/University of Washington Sate/ course designed to produce QA for Boeing and it's almost infinite subcontractors.

So we paid our money, nearly 5 grand! and we will takes are chances...":O}

Second half compeletes in late Aug.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

As Aedan pointed out, I don't know what or how it was benched in my Linux "Disk Tool" but my performance about doubled going from 3 gig to 6 with the new board from my old 3 gig SATA II... was this just a measure of the pipe rather than the water in it?

Ok, I stand corrected (been a little while since I last looked into this).

Used to be that the controllers interfacing with the flash, coupled with the way the flash itself was working, limited throughput to rates roughly equivalent to or slightly better than high-end hard drives.

Apparently, those issues have been largely addressed over the last 18 months or so.

Looks like current SSDs are capable of pretty well saturating even SATA 3.

That being said, my earlier comments regarding SATA 3 being a luxury item are still pretty relevant: low-end and even most mid-range computers are still coming with mechanical storage, with SSD being a costly add-on. For mechanical storage, SATA 2 is plenty. Until the market shifts more to SSDs, there's really not a lot of incentive to add the extra resource requirements of SATA 3 to the board. (Remember, SATA 3 has to have the bandwidth in the chipset, or it's just a fancy plug).

[Daniel ~]

Hmmm.... If someone really needs massive disk space they remain pretty expensive... But if one is willing and able to trade disk space for speed, the 90 to 120 gig SSDs are pretty reasonable.

I'm just one of those guys who can't imagine needing more than 40 -50 gigs....Actually I've never used more than thrity and that's when I had a bunch Games loaded.

And SSDs are very very quite, save massively on power AND they come in Red if you buy Corsair! ":O}

But if you need the space, I can't blame anyone for holding off while prices drop...I sure did! So get one just for the fun of it...":O}

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

Hmmm.... If someone really needs massive disk space they remain pretty expensive... But if one is willing and able to trade disk space for speed, the 90 to 120 gig SSDs are pretty reasonable.

True, but the 300+ gig mechanicals are the same price, and the customer sees more storage. The average buyer has been programmed to the idea that they need massive storage, even if it is slow, relatively speaking.

[Daniel ~]

I'm starting anew thread and everybody better post! ":O}

[cloasters]

Looks like you really need/want the speed that SSD's provide. Are most up to date mainboards providing one SATA 3 port for an SSD?

[Daniel ~]

Most boards are offering two (Intel on chip) or four, two Intel and two By a third party. Asmedia (I think that's the name) handles two Sata 3 and two Sata 2 ports. Then they play the same game with USB 2 and 3...I tell ya Its hard to tell whose doing what without your buy a program!

[Aedan]

Taking a quick look at Intel chipsets - There's only three chips that manage two SATA 3 ports and PCI as well as PCI-Express. Those are the Q67 (Cougar Point), Q77 (Panther Point) and H77 (Panther Point) chipsets.

Any boards that have more than two SATA 3 ports have to be using a third party chip. The Marvell chips aren't well known for performance. I had a quick look around, and it looks like they're something like 20 to 35% slower than the Intel SATA 3 ports. The Asmedia chip looks like it's a lot better than the Marvell chip, providing near similar performance to the Intel ports, as long as they've got a suitable connection (IE, not a PCI-E x1) back to the chipset.

If you do have a PCI-E x8 slot free, then LSI make their MegaRAID SAS 9260-4i card, which supports four SATA 3 connectors. People are claiming to have seen 2500MB/sec with this card and four SSDs! The downside is the $400 cost of the card.

Also, do you really need an IDE controller onboard the motherboard? I presume you are using it for an optical drive? If so, why not consider using a SATA version?

[Gizmo]

I can vouch for the LSI MegaRAID cards in general; I've used them for years and love them. The 9200 and 8800 series cards are very nice, as were the MegaRAID 1200, 1400, and 1600-series SCSI cards. . The command-line management tool (MegaCLI) has a rather peculiar and somewhat inconsistent syntax, though. Linux support is also fairly decent.

Many OEMs (including Dell and HP) have used the LSI cards for a long time.

[Daniel ~]

Aedan:

Also, do you really need an IDE controller onboard the motherboard? I presume you are using it for an optical drive? If so, why not consider using a SATA version?

I'm using it for a 500 gig non SATA mechanical drive, I just plug it in when I do my back ups. Card does slow my boot though, as does Marvel and ASmedia and JB something or other. SATA SSD Storge seem to pricy at this time. Also I have all these hard drives being replaced by small SSDs. For back up, I can give up the speed to save money":O}

This new chip boots backwards! It list all the controllers and then the last thing before OS boot, they show the boot screen, backwards to all that went before! ":O}

[cloasters]

Yep, that's different!

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by Daniel ~

I'm using it for a 500 gig non SATA mechanical drive, I just plug it in when I do my back ups.

For a hard disk, you could always get a SATA to IDE converter, so you can plug the drive into a SATA port. Something like Newegg.com - Vantec IDE to SATA Converter - Model CB-IS100 might well do the job and saves you having to have an IDE port.

[Daniel ~]

You da man A!!

Should be here in 5-7 days...One less boot delay!

BTW what is the proper way to set up IDE drives in AHCI

IDE or disabled?

[Aedan]

Leave it set to AHCI. The setting refers to how the SATA hardware appears to the OS, not to how the drives are connected.

The SATA to IDE converter makes your IDE drive appear as if it were a SATA drive. As far as your computer is concerned, it *IS* a SATA drive.

[Daniel ~]

Very cool! I love deceiving my OS! ":O}

[Aedan]

I don't know if you remember the first Western Digital Raptor SATA hard disks? WD pulled the same stunt - the controller on the drive was an IDE controller, but they put a SATA to IDE converter in front of it (on the circuit board!) so that it looked like it was a SATA drive.

You're just doing the same thing, but with a separate circuit board.

[Daniel ~]

On a less commercially viable scale...":O}