The SSD manual suggests the drive be plugged into a 6gb/s port. Reading my mboard manual says I only have 3gb/s ports. What are my options? Is there a 6gb/s adapter card using a pci slot?
(I know I can use the 3gb port, but won't get full performance)

This post was edited on 9/6/14 at 4:26 pm

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Posted by Spock's Eyebrow

Member since May 2012

12300 posts

Posted on 9/6/14 at 4:26 pm to 70345

I would just use the 3 Gb ports. It may benchmark slower, but it's unlikely you will notice any difference in actual use.

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Posted by 70345

Member since May 2009

435 posts

Posted on 9/6/14 at 4:47 pm to Spock's Eyebrow

You mean I won't notice any difference using a 6gb pci adapter card?...thanks.

Answer my own question

This post was edited on 9/6/14 at 5:05 pm

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Posted by ILikeLSUToo

Central, LA

Member since Jan 2008

18018 posts

Posted on 9/6/14 at 5:09 pm to 70345

First, conventional PCI bus does not have the bandwidth to support SATA 6gbps. You need at least 4 PCI express lanes to get the full bandwidth of SATA 6gbps. Second, the cheap SATA 6gbps PCI express cards are not going to give you better performance than your native SATA 3gbps ports. You'd have to spend too much on a good controller card for it to be worth it, and at that point you'd might as well buy a new motherboard. Your SSD will saturate the bandwidth of your 3gbps port, yes, but this will mostly be obvious in sequential read/write speeds (and only noticeable in benchmarks), which is not as important as your SSD's access latency and random read/write performance on small data blocks. You won't notice a difference in day-to-day use in that respect. Not worth it.

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