Connect Your Solid State Drive to the Correct SATA Port For Best Performance!

Great decision you have opted to upgrade your PC with an SSD drive. Did you know that connecting the SSD SATA data cable to the wrong motherboard port can slow down performance.  For example; late version Intel based motherboard will usually contain two 6 Gbps (SATA 3) ports. Some of these ports are designated to the chip itself and others that are controlled by Marvell or LAMD (SATA 3) controllers. 

Motherboard Sata Ports

Your much prized SSD Drive will perform slower when you connect it to the SATA 3 Marvell/LAMD port, rather than the Intel port.

The ports (Intel) that are native to the chip itself are the top performing and should be used first. Save the Native SSD ports for your SSD and Hard Drives and use the secondary (Marvell/LAMD) SATA ports for CD/DVD drives.

Consult your motherboard documentation to determine which ports to use first!

More Information on the revisions of the SATA interface.

SATA revision 1.0 – 1.5 Gbit/s – 150 MB/s

Revision 1.0a was released on January 7, 2003. First-generation SATA interfaces, now known as SATA 1.5 Gbit/s, communicate at a rate of 1.5 Gbit/s, and do not support Native Command Queuing (NCQ). Taking 8b/10b encoding overhead into account, they have an actual uncoded transfer rate of 1.2 Gbit/s (150 MB/s). The theoretical burst throughput of SATA 1.5 Gbit/s is similar to that of PATA/133, but newer SATA devices offer enhancements such as NCQ, which improve performance in a multitasking environment.

 

During the initial period after SATA 1.5 Gbit/s finalization, adapter and drive manufacturers used a “bridge chip” to convert existing PATA designs for use with the SATA interface.[citation needed] Bridged drives have a SATA connector, may include either or both kinds of power connectors, and, in general, perform identically to their PATA equivalents. Most lack support for some SATA-specific features such as NCQ. Native SATA products quickly eclipsed bridged products with the introduction of the second generation of SATA drives.

 

As of April 2010 the fastest 10,000 RPM SATA mechanical hard disk drives could transfer data at maximum (not average) rates of up to 157 MB/s, which is beyond the capabilities of the older PATA/133 specification and also exceeds a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link.

 

SATA revision 2.0 – 3 Gbit/s – 300 MB/s

Second generation SATA interfaces run with a native transfer rate of 3.0 Gbit/s, and taking 8b/10b encoding into account, the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 2.4 Gbit/s (300 MB/s). The theoretical burst throughput of SATA 3.0 Gbit/s is double that of SATA revision 1.0.

All SATA data cables meeting the SATA spec are rated for 3.0 Gbit/s and handle current mechanical drives without any loss of sustained and burst data transfer performance. However, high-performance flash drives can exceed the SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate; this is addressed with the SATA 6 Gbit/s interoperability standard.

SATA 3 Gbit/s is backward compatible with SATA 1.5 Gbit/s.

 

SATA revision 3.0 – 6 Gbit/s – 600 MB/s

Serial ATA International Organization presented the draft specification of SATA 6 Gbit/s physical layer in July 2008, and ratified its physical layer specification on August 18, 2008. The full 3.0 standard was released on May 27, 2009. It runs with a native transfer rate of 6.0 Gbit/s, and taking 8b/10b encoding into account, the maximum uncoded transfer rate is 4.8 Gbit/s (600 MB/s). The theoretical burst throughput of SATA 6.0 Gbit/s is double that of SATA revision 2.0. The 3.0 specification contains the following changes:

  • 6 Gbit/s for scalable performance.
  • Continued compatibility with SAS, including SAS 6 Gbit/s. “A SAS domain may support attachment to and control of unmodified SATA devices connected directly into the SAS domain using the Serial ATA Tunneled Protocol (STP)” from the SATA Revision 3 .0 Gold specification.
  • Isochronous Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command to enable isochronous quality of service data transfers for streaming digital content applications.
  • An NCQ Management feature that helps optimize performance by enabling host processing and management of outstanding NCQ commands.
  • Improved power management capabilities.
  • A small low insertion force (LIF) connector for more compact 1.8-inch storage devices.
  • A connector designed to accommodate 7 mm optical disk drives for thinner and lighter notebooks.
  • Alignment with the INCITS ATA8-ACS standard.

In general, the enhancements are aimed at improving quality of service for video streaming and high-priority interrupts. In addition, the standard continues to support distances up to one meter. The newer speeds may require higher power consumption for supporting chips, though improved process technologies and power management techniques may mitigate this. The later specification can use existing SATA cables and connectors, though it was reported in 2008 that some OEMs were expected to upgrade host connectors for the higher speeds.

The later standard is backward compatible with SATA 3 Gbit/s.

Get all the speed you paid for our of your new SSD drive, and connect it to the fastest SATA port!