SATA Ports with add-on card and speed

[hunter13in]

Hey guys, I have trolled here for years and now have a specific question that I would like an opinion on:

My MB is an abitIP35 PRo. This MB's SATA ports are 3gb/s. Over the years I have upgraded and most of my drives now are 6gb/s. If I install a PCIe card with 6gb/s ports will this actually be faster than just using the 3gb/s ports on the MB?

I ask because many reviews of different PCI cards have comments regarding the speed of the card ports not even being as fast as the slower 3gb/s ports on the MB. Any info would be great, thanks!

 

[GhislainG]

Are you using hard disks? If so, then it won't help because they can't saturate a 3 Gb/s port.

 

[hunter13in]

2 optical and 5 HDD. 3 of the HDD are 6gb/s.

 

[GhislainG]

Hard disks have a transfer rate way below 3 Gb/s. View the benchmarks of a VelociRaptor (which probably is faster than your hard disks): http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/first_look_6gbs_sata_western_digital_velociraptor_600gb_benchmarked

 

[hunter13in]

two of my HDD are velociraptors. What is the purpose of the 3gb/s and 6gb/s ratings if it will not affect anything in my system?

 

[a4mula]

SATA 6Gb/s controllers have their uses. They are required to to give modern day SSDs the required bandwidth (which is quickly running out!). But slapping a 6Gb/s compatible sticker on a mechanical drive is nothing short of a misleading guise designed for no other reason than to extract more money from unknowing consumers.

 

[hunter13in]

Wow that's very interesting. The last drive I got was the the WD30EZRX which is a 3tb green drive with a 6gb/s interface. They still sell the WD30EZRS which is the exact same drive but says it has an interface of 3gb/s.

And you guys are saying that there is absolutely zero difference between the performance of these 2 drives? Thank you again...

 

[GhislainG]

Same performance, but it's easier to sell a 6Gb/s drive.