Serial ATA Is Here: Seagate Barracuda ATA V and Five of the Latest Controllers Reviewed

HighPoint RocketRAID 1520

HighPoint's two-channel controller goes by the name of RocketRAID 1520, and it offers the fewest connection options - only two Serial ATA drives can be connected. You can see from the photograph that Highpoint uses bridge chips for both channels. This does not do the performance any harm: at 84 MBytes/sec, it provides the highest interface transfer rate of the group - on both of our test platforms!

While the competition just provides data cables, HighPoint also includes the power adapter cables that the Serial ATA drives need.

This controller comes with two adapters, allowing the use of drives with a 40-pin ATA interface.

The package includes SATA to IDE converters, which allow conventional hard disks to be connected to the RocketRAID controllers.