New mainboard with Sata-III instead of board with Sata-II with PCI Addon-card for Samsung SSD?

[THZ]

Hello
I've got an AMD board F2A55-M with only Sata-II and therefore added an ASUS U3S6 PCI-Addon card with Sata-III. My Samsung SSD 840 Evo has nevertheless quite poor benchmarks of 285 only.
Would I experience better results with a new board with native Sata-III?

 

[GhislainG]

You would, but are benchmarks that important and was it the primary reason to buy the SSD? It's a lot faster than a hard disk and you probably won't notice much performance difference with a new motherboard when using the system. I have SSDs connected to new SATA III and older SATA II motherboards and I don't perceive a difference when using the PCs.

 

[THZ]

No, benchmarks were not the primary reason. But I only later on realized that SSD's should be preferably connected to SATA III, so I ordered the ASUS U3S6 addon card, but didn't really perceive any difference. I've read about these addon cards not to be as good as onboard controllers.

 

[GhislainG]

You are correct, but in everyday use you won't notice the difference. A good reason to buy that controller is to add USB 3.0 ports and SATA Hot Plug ports. For optimal performance the controller has to be installed in a x4 slot (or x16), but that's possible only if you don't use the x16 slot on your motherboard. Are the motherboard's SATA II ports much slower than the SATA III controller?

 

[THZ]

I personally don't need these USB 3 ports, as they are on the board itself. I installed the card in the x4 slot, and not in the x16. The card itself is only for x4.
I think it was 285 when using Sata-II, and with AS-SS benchmark I actually reach 315.
Samsung Magician's benchmark tells me actually 285, but I think this software has compatibility issues with the card, so the benchmarks may be wrong.
In the earlier version of Magician (4.4), the software did not detect the Samsung EVO when connected to the controller card, now with 4.5 it's being detected.

 

[Calvin7]

The F2A55-M is a low end model motherboard with the AMD A55 FCH (Hudson D2) chipset.

Using a motherboard with a better chipset (higher number than A5x series) will give you SATA 6Gb/s port(s).
AMD A68H (Bolton D2H)
AMD A78 (Bolton D3)
AMD A88X (Bolton D4)

 

[GhislainG]

The F2A55-M is a low end model motherboard with the AMD A55 FCH (Hudson D2) chipset.

Using a motherboard with a better chipset (higher number than A5x series) will give you SATA 6Gb/s port(s).
AMD A68H (Bolton D2H)
AMD A78 (Bolton D3)
AMD A88X (Bolton D4)

Is it worth it only to get better benchmark results? I don't think so because it makes little difference under normal system utilization unless the application is very I/O intensive. 99% of users can't tell if the SSD is connected to a SATA II or a SATA III port.