Asus PCIe GEN2 SATA6G expansion card
Test Setup
Published: 31st October 2009 | Source: Asus | Price: £30 (TBC) |
Test Setup
The test setup we will be using today for evaluation of the GSkill Falcon drive is fully optimised for compatibility and performance for testing SSD drives:
Processor: Intel Core i7 870 @ 2.93
Motherboard: MSI P55-GD80
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT
SATA Controller: Asus PCIe GEN2 SATA6G
Hard Drive: Seagate Barracuda 2TB XT
Chipset Drivers: Intel 9.1.0.1007
Operating System: Windows Vista x64 Ultimate SP1 + most recent Updates
The BIOS was left pretty much stock but the usual Intel power saving features were disabled along with C-State technology. The hard drive used is Seagate's latest in the Barracuda series and is built around four 500MB platters running at 7200rpm with ramp loading for the heads and 64MB of cache. This drive is the first drive to offer support for the SATA 6GB/s interface and as such was the ideal drive to use in the testing of the Asus expansion card.
Installation
Installation was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, due to the lack of a x4 PCIe slot on our test mainboard, we were forced to use a spare PCIe x16 port. This is not an issue with the card though as it is compatible with the card but will still only run at x4 speed. The driver CD is as basic as the instruction booklet but as you can see from the screen shots below installed without issue on Windows Vista 64bit:
Testing
Along with many other synthetic benchmarks run today, I decided to perform several day-to-day operations (such as file transfer and Windows start up) in addition to the synthetic benchmarks. The full set of tests can be seen below
Synthetic Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34
PCMark Vantage HDD benchmarks
CrystalDiskMark 2.2.0f
File Write & Manipulation
Random file creation (15GB)
Sequential file creation (100GB)
OS & Gaming
Windows Vista Startup time.
Windows Vista Shutdown time.
Unreal Tournament III map load time.
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.34
PCMark Vantage HDD benchmarks
CrystalDiskMark 2.2.0f
File Write & Manipulation
Random file creation (15GB)
Sequential file creation (100GB)
OS & Gaming
Windows Vista Startup time.
Windows Vista Shutdown time.
Unreal Tournament III map load time.
Let's see how the Asus PCIe GEN2 SATA6G card and Seagate Barracuda XT combo performed...
Most Recent Comments
Be nice to see if this affected Crossfire or SLI performance as the Gigabyte solution does.
Good review as usual though Rich
Good review as usual though Rich
It all depends on how many slots you have available. With P55 having 16 lanes available, taking 4 up with the SATA6 card will have some effect on SLI performance, if indeed you have a spare slot to begin with on P55. X58 however has more lanes so SLI/xfire performance will not be affected unless you intend on running 2x dual GPU cards that require the full 16 lanes or indeed triSLI/crossfireX.
Amazes me that the population on a close up look is for USB. The parts are ofc missing.
I did think, looking at another manufacturer, that the un-soldered bits were for eSATA of sorts. Apparently not.
Nice review.
Not a bad price tbh. Online stores may massage that a little. Wouldn't be too suprized if a fully populated version comes out afterwards. They're *******s for doing that. Bring out the lesser - get u to buy it - then out comes the trump card.
I did think, looking at another manufacturer, that the un-soldered bits were for eSATA of sorts. Apparently not.
Nice review.
Not a bad price tbh. Online stores may massage that a little. Wouldn't be too suprized if a fully populated version comes out afterwards. They're *******s for doing that. Bring out the lesser - get u to buy it - then out comes the trump card.
Great idea for those on older tech but still want the speed. Once some drives come out at a decent price, or I pick up a 6G capable SSD I may grab this too
I'd be interested to see this card with a RAID setup of SSD's.
Just found out there will be an add-in card that does USB 3.0 as well - It'll be released at the same time.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by name='tinytomlogan'
Just found out there will be an add-in card that does USB 3.0 as well - It'll be released at the same time.
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the much hyped Asus U3S6 which DOES have USB3 was expected to retail around the $30 so I would expect this card to come in a little cheaper.
Breaking news - on the grapevine ofc - is that MSI are disregarding both SATA 6g and USB 3.0 for this generation of mobos.
When the full articles appear as to their reasonage, u'll understand why.
When the full articles appear as to their reasonage, u'll understand why.
http://www.techspot.com/news/36821-nvidia-confirms-intel-wont-back-usb-30-until-2011.html
It's not a good article, but I have known that Intel aren't packaging USB3.0 for a while.
It's not a good article, but I have known that Intel aren't packaging USB3.0 for a while.
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