The new storage interface SATA 6Gbps was one of the attractions at Computex earlier this month and motherboard maker ASUS was one that showed products, and live demos, with the new technology. Information surrounding EVGA and its first generation SATA 6Gbps controller, from Silicon Image, said that it had limited speed since it used only a single PCIe x1 channel, setting the cap at 250MB/s.
This was stated to be a problem for others as well, including ASUS and Gigabyte. Something that was a bit hard to believe when ASUS demonstrated the SATA 6Gbps interface and transfer rates above 300MB/s.
ASUS informed us that its P6X58 motherboard has a SATA 6Gbps controller from Marvell, which is also limited somewhat but with two PCIe x1 channels the limitation is at more reasonable 500MB/s. Performance no regular storage devices can achieve today.
So far there aren’t even any SATA 6Gbps drives on the retail market, but when they do appear ASUS says it will offer motherboards enabling the full range of features and performance made possible from SATA 6Gbps. It is still uncertain which controller Gigabyte and other competing companies have chosen to go with.
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