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[Solved] PCI vs. SATA SSDs?

Forum Storage : Flash Media - [Solved] PCI vs. SATA SSDs?

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Best answer from PsyKhiqZero.

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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   10-15-2009 at 09:15:18 AM

What particular advantages do SSDs that plug into PCI slots have over their SATA counterparts? More direct access to the motherboard / better throughput right?

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Best answer from PsyKhiqZero
Devices like the OCZ Z-drive which go into the pci-e slots are essentially tuned hardware raid controllers with SSD's attached. The manufacturers use the pci-e slot. (in the case of the Z-drive it's a 8x slot) to overcome the 3 Gb/s limit with the SATA interface. 3 Gb/s is about 300 MB/s where the z Drive does somwhere around 500+ MB/s of data throughput.
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vibe   10-15-2009 at 12:06:33 PM

can you link an example?

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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   10-15-2009 at 12:27:42 PM

Sorry sorry, here's one.


Message edited by r_manic on 10-15-2009 at 12:30:51 PM
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vibe   10-15-2009 at 01:14:30 PM

Interesting, wasn't aware of such a thing - very cool

Found this...
http://it-review.net/article/hardw [...] ive_review

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Bronze Storage badge sub mesa   10-15-2009 at 03:29:26 PM

Let's get this straight; its PCI-express or 3GIO; not PCI. Those two interfaces couldn't be different from eachother; they are the exacty opposite in numbers of ways.

Ive seen cheaper ones posted in these forums too, with PCIe x1 link. The wait is for good third-party SSD controllers, so we can use PCI-express as interface instead of SATA for our SSDs. It would make sense to do it via PCIe, especially if you're breaking the 1GB/s boundary which is great for marketing.

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Bronze Storage badge r_manic   10-16-2009 at 08:32:12 AM

Thanks for clearing that up! So are you saying the best configuration is to still use SATA SSDs, but plug them into a PCIe RAID controller instead of the motherboard?

------------------------------ Desktop | E7300 | P5KPL-AM | 2GB DDR2 667MHz | NVIDIA 9500 GT | ST3320613AS | w2228h
XPS M1330 | T8300 | Dell 0U8042 | 2GB DDR2 800MHz | NVIDIA 8400M GS | WD2500BEVS-75US | 1280 x 800
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PsyKhiqZero   10-16-2009 at 08:50:58 AM
Best answer

Devices like the OCZ Z-drive which go into the pci-e slots are essentially tuned hardware raid controllers with SSD's attached. The manufacturers use the pci-e slot. (in the case of the Z-drive it's a 8x slot) to overcome the 3 Gb/s limit with the SATA interface. 3 Gb/s is about 300 MB/s where the z Drive does somwhere around 500+ MB/s of data throughput.

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