How does one know if a given motherboard's SATA supports external port expanders

[stevech]

How does one know if a given motherboard's SATA supports external port expanders? So that an external drive bay can be plugged into the eSATA port and one doesn't have to add a controller card?

And for SATA 2 vs. SATA 3?

 

[Rifter]

good question, i can tell you AMD's 8xx/7xx chipsets do not as i tried it, im unsure about intels perhaps someone can let us know. You can buy a cheap(under $20) PCIe card with 2 esata ports that does though so its not a huge deal.