• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

SATA II 3Gb/s

S

sheepdogjd

Junior Member
yo,

i am currently sitting on my computer building project because i decided i wanted to wait until the nForce4 motherboards finally come out. one of the main things that is attracting me to the nForce4 Ultra and SLI is the support for 3Gb/s SATA drives. (i'll probably go with the Ultra, since i'm cheap and really won't be doing a great deal of gaming with my next computer.) I figure with hyper transport going up to 1000MHz (maybe?) and DRR400 RAM on the market which can acheive CAS of 2, the biggest bottleneck in computers these days is the interface between the Hard Drive and the Mobo (Drives themselves have greatly increased in performance, yet still use sluggish 100 to 150 MB/s transfer rates). But, i have some questions.

1) Does anyone know when drives will be available on the market that will actually use the 3Gb/s spec?

2) Is there a proven performance difference with the 3Gb/s spec for hard drives over the existing 1.5Gb/s drives? I've seen reports on storage arrays, but I can't find much on individual drives.
 
I don't project that those transfer rates will increase performance much, if at all--hell, we haven't even completely maxed out ATA 100 or 133, much less SATA 150. Since you're not gaming, you may as well buy an NF3 board now--maybe even on Socket 754 if you're looking for the most bang for the buck.
 
1) Does anyone know when drives will be available on the market that will actually use the 3Gb/s spec?
Click to expand...

At the current rate of improvement, SCSI could hit 300MB/s some time around 2010. ATA, probably 2013 to 2014.
 
Originally posted by: ts3433
I don't project that those transfer rates will increase performance much, if at all--hell, we haven't even completely maxed out ATA 100 or 133, much less SATA 150. Since you're not gaming, you may as well buy an NF3 board now--maybe even on Socket 754 if you're looking for the most bang for the buck.
Click to expand...

really, ts? i wonder why that is (i'll have to see if i can find any primers on HDD performance).

Pariah, i could have sworn they already had SCSI out at 320Gb/s. Or are you thinking performnance wise? (The first question was about specifications, the second was about performance).

thank you for the prompt replies, so far
 
Pariah, i could have sworn they already had SCSI out at 320Gb/s. Or are you thinking performnance wise? (The first question was about specifications, the second was about performance).
Click to expand...

They have had the SCSI interface running at 320 for a couple of years now, but that has little to
do with drive speed.

Your first question was about performance, since you are asking about a specific (performance
related) part of the SATA-II spec. If you were asking when drives will come out that can make
use of new features in SATA-II, then the answer would have been a lot closer to now.
 
Interface bandwidth is paramount to SCSI devices. Why? Because the newest drives will do ~100MB/S EACH. Mid end configurations and up may use dozens of these drives. Three current 15k drives is the practical limit per SCSI channel right now for U320. Kind of a waste when you can have 14 drives on that channel!

Of course you can add more but if your application requires a logical disk consisting of more than three drives striped and these three members are hung on a single channel the peak STR will be bottlenecked by the interface.

SATAII with its 300MB/S bandwidth is about as useful as tits on a bull with a single drive pushing 72MB/S max!

Cheers!
 
In reading the spec's at http://www.serialata.org, it appears vendors can claim SATA II capability if they conform to any of the SATA II spec's. While the drive you are looking at still runs at 1.5Gb/s since it supports NCQ, Seagate can claim SATA II. Command Queueing has just as much, if not more, promise as the 3Gb interface in my mind.

In any case, I'm currently running SCSI 160 drives as Raid 0 and will probably go to SATA II 3Gb when drives can take advantage of the datarate. I'm awaiting my new ASUS A8N-SLI Mobo which supports SATA II.

SCSI has been shipping Ultra 320 for a couple of years and there are even tape drives that can run at 200+ MB/Second today. So, don't believe for a second that disk drives won't be able to take advantage of speeds greater than the current 1.5Gb/s SATA I speed.
 
The mobo Im currently using has an extra PCIe slot and does not support SATA II. Will there be a PCIe SATA II expansion card? Im also running a Seagate NCQ raid setup with 2x160gb and would love to be able to take advantage of SATA II when it becomes available.
 
WOOAAAHHHHH pardner, you're saying Gb/s The only way drives will be that fast is if they were solid state.

We are clsoing in on the limitations of drives, 15K rpm is pretty damn fast for that sucker to be spinning. I can't imagine them upping drive speeds unless there is a major improvement in cooling.
 
Longkid,
Actually, PCI-X 2.0 (266MHz) has a rated capacity of 2.1GB (That's a big "B") per second.
More than enough bandwith for a SATA II 3Gb/Sec. adapter and anything else you have on the PCI bus. Probably a lot cheaper than a PCIe card as well.

I'm assuming since your Mobo has PCIe, then you probably also have PCI-X 2.0.
 
Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
WOOAAAHHHHH pardner, you're saying Gb/s.
Click to expand...


I think he's talking about gigabits, which is the unit used in the spec measurement, not gigabytes. I'm all for increasing the throughput rate, since a relaxed bottleneck will encourage manufacturers to take advantage of the available bandwidth by making faster drives.
 
Yes.

Gb = Gigabit
GB = Gigabyte

You will typically see serial interfaces rated in bits per second and parallel interfaces rated in bytes per second since that is how they reach the device. i.e. Serial ATA hits the drive a bit at a time and Parallel ATA a byte at a time. Other serial interfaces include ethernet, SAS, Fibre Channel, FICON, etc. All of which are rated in bits per second.

Since SATA uses 8b/10b encoding you can simply divide bits/s by 10 to get bytes/s.
i.e. SATA II is 3Gb/second which equals .3GB or 300MB/second.

SAS and Fibre Channel also use 8b/10b which keeps it simple.
i.e. SAS = 3Gb/Second (Not by coincidence is this the same as SATA II)
FC = 4, 2 or 1 Gb/Second which equals 400, 200 or 100 MB/Second respectively.

Ultra ATA and SCSI, since they are parallel, do not use 8b/10b.
Ever notice how you see them quoted in Bytes/Second.
i.e. Ultra ATA/133 = 133 MB/Second
Ultra SCSI 320 = 320 MB/Second

Just to clarify.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top