Friday, January 6th 2012

AREA Also Intros SATA 6 Gb/s Card with Switchable Internal/External Ports

by
btarunr
 Discuss (19 Comments)
Apart from the powerful little Mr. Clone 3.0 drive-cloning and docking device, Japanese company AREA also launched the SATA 6 Gb/s TwinTurbo Hybrid addon-card. 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s cards aren't new, but they either come in 2-port internal SATA, or 2-port eSATA forms, making you have to choose between the two types. This addon-card from AREA features two internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports, two eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, and uses a common 2-port SATA 6 Gb/s controller.

The ingenuity here is a simple jumper-based way of configuring those two SATA channels to individually work as internal SATA or eSATA. So now you can set the card to have two eSATA 6 Gb/s ports, two internal SATA ports, or one internal SATA and an eSATA, whichever way you'd like, by simply toggling two sets of four jumpers switching which way the data traces of each SATA channel end up. The card uses an ASMedia ASM1061 2-port PCIe SATA 6 Gb/s controller, which supports IDE, AHCI, and simple RAID modes. It connects to the host over PCI-Express 2.0 x1. Slated for May 2012, the AREA SATA TwinTurbo Hybrid will be priced at 2,980 JPY, or $38.
Source: Hermitage Akihabara

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19 Comments on AREA Also Intros SATA 6 Gb/s Card with Switchable Internal/External Ports

#1
radrok
Doesn't PCIe 1x bottleneck your configuration when using both ports at near max bandwidth?
Posted on Reply
#2
Milky
Yes it will bottle neck, I use a card similar to this with a 1x interface and i cant reach the max bandwidth on my SSD.

1x pci-e 2.0 is up to 5Gb/s
Posted on Reply
#3
stupido
this should be a good add-in card for small miniITX build to add extra storage capability...:cool:
Posted on Reply
#4
radrok
Still they should make a Pcie 4x version, but then you'd be better off picking one with more ports :)
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#5
Rnot
I believe you can use ASM1061-based PCIe 1x cards in a 4x slot to avoid the 1x bottleneck on your SSD though it seems the ASM1061 controller peaks around 402MB/s read - 368 MB/s write (still better writes than the Marvell 9128 found everywhere) . I may be wrong, but there is a video on Youtube demo-ing this (search "asm1061 unboxing" by cpukid00).
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#6
Disparia
Interesting. If I ever have a need for additional external or internal ports, I'll think of this card.
Posted on Reply
#7
Milky
RnotI believe you can use ASM1061-based PCIe 1x cards in a 4x slot and it will upscale for the full bandwidth of your SSD (within limits of 4x). I may be wrong, but there is a video on Youtube demo-ing this (search "asm1061 unboxing" by cpukid00).
You cant get faster than 1x pci-e 2 no matter what pci-e port you use on the motherboard. 4x is faster than SATA 3 so more than enough for any SSD.
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#8
Rnot
Sure, what I mean is, it seems people has tested and used ASM1061 1x cards in PCIe 2.0 4x slots and have seen the performance of their SSDs increase to meet the bottlenecks of the ASM1061 controller (402MB/s read - 368 MB/s write) instead of the 1x port. I said "within limits of 4x" in case futures SSDs and Sata controllers exceed 4x bandwidth (agreed, wishful thinking :)
Posted on Reply
#9
Disparia
I saw part of the video. He's only using it in x16 slots so that it will run @ 2.x speeds and not 1.x

He says the model of his board, but I didn't bother to look up whether his x1 slots are 2.x or not.
Posted on Reply
#10
Static~Charge
RnotI believe you can use ASM1061-based PCIe 1x cards in a 4x slot to avoid the 1x bottleneck on your SSD though it seems the ASM1061 controller peaks around 402MB/s read - 368 MB/s write (still better writes than the Marvell 9128 found everywhere) . I may be wrong, but there is a video on Youtube demo-ing this (search "asm1061 unboxing" by cpukid00).
The "x?" label tells you how many data lanes a PCI Express device has (see here for the details). That is an x1 card - just one data lane. Plugging it into an x4 slot won't speed up the transfer rate; the other 3 data lanes in the slot won't be used.
Posted on Reply
#11
TheLostSwede
News Editor
No-one's making cheap SATA 6Gbps controllers with anything but a PCI Express x1 interface, same goes for USB 3.0, as it's complex and "too expensive" as there's no real demand for it as it goes. If we ever get a x2 PCI Express interface, something Intel is apparently thinking about, then we should see faster devices as that would be less complex and cheaper to make controllers for.
Posted on Reply
#12
Rnot
I see. Thanks for the correction guys. You're right Jizzler, that guys MB only has PCIe 1.1 1x slots so as you say, he's only using 4x slot for PCIe 2.0 speeds (500mb/s per lane?).

Does that mean that a high performance SSD on a ASM1061 in a 1x PCIe 2.0 slot will not even reach the 402MB/s read - 368 MB/s write bottlenecks of the ASM1061? Surely the bottleneck mentioned by redrok also applies when the SSD reads and writes simultaneously (i.e. a max of 770MB/s on ASM sata card but only 500MB/s through 1x port?)

Sorry for the mistake. I think I'm confusing myself.
Posted on Reply
#14
Milky
Sorry if i did not make sense before, all I was trying to say is it does not matter how many lanes the port on the mother board has, you will never be able to exceed 1x PCI-e which is 5Gb/s. So for fast SSDs there will be a bottle neck :)
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#15
Thefumigator
I would use one of these cards to connect my DVD writers and leave my mobo's sata ports for SSD drives or HDD drives or whatever. DVDs waste sata ports in a way I can't stand.
Posted on Reply
#16
Covert_Death
ThefumigatorI would use one of these cards to connect my DVD writers and leave my mobo's sata ports for SSD drives or HDD drives or whatever. DVDs waste sata ports in a way I can't stand.
? where would you like to plug in the DVD writers?
Posted on Reply
#17
btarunr
Editor & Senior Moderator
puma99dk|yes ofc PCI-Express x1 is a bottle neck that's why i got the Asus U3S6 card that's PCI-E x4 ^^

www.asus.com/websites/global/products/lGYmelQ8mJvPtYTv/P_500.jpg

www.asus.com/Motherboards/Accessories/U3S6/
The SATA 6 Gbps controller on that card connects to the PLX bridge chip over PCI Express 2.0 x1. The only use of that card was with slightly older systems that had PCIe 1.1 slots. That bridge chip takes in PCIe 1.1 x4 and gives out three PCIe 2.0 x1. So there's a PCIe 2.0 x1 connection to the SATA 6 Gb/s chip, and a PCIe 2.0 x1 to the USB 3.0 chip.

So no, you've not eliminated the x1 bottleneck.
Posted on Reply
#18
Thefumigator
Covert_Death? where would you like to plug in the DVD writers?
If your motherboard has SATA III ports, and you add an pcie 1x card, then the logic place to plug dvd writers is in the card and not in the motherboard. As dvd writers barely reach 20Mb/s when reading and/or writing. Unless its a bluray writer. But even in that case you will never botleneck a pcie 1x card with these writers.
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