HighPoint Announces Availability of First SATA 6 Gb/s Host Adapter Based on PCI-E 2.0

[btarunr]

HighPoint Technologies - an industry pioneer of innovative SATA and SAS RAID host adapter manufacturing, today unleashes the Rocket 600 series - the industry's first SATA 6 Gb/s host adapter based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology. The Rocket 600 series delivers the next generation of SATA performance with robust SATA connectivity and will be available at the beginning of November 2009.

The Rocket 600 series brings a new level of cost effective pricing and will help drive mass adoption to the next generation of SATA 6 Gb/s technology. They are fully industry standard AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface) compliant and deliver Out-of-Box Ready installation for the majority of operating systems. The Rocket 600 series are backward compatible to PCI-Express 1.0 technology and (SATA 3 Gb/s & 1.5 Gb/s) devices. They use the same cable and connectors as previous SATA generations to ease integration.



Pricing and Availability: The MSRP for the Rocket 620 Series is $69.99 and the Rocket 622 $79.99 and will be available at end of October 2009. All HighPoint RocketRAID products are available through channel distribution partners (Bell Micro, D and H, MaLabs and ASI).

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[WarEagleAU]

ok, awesome on the release but what is the difference between the 620 and the 622? I would get this of course, but just curious what 10 extra bucks gets me.

 

[Sihastru]

ok, awesome on the release but what is the difference between the 620 and the 622? I would get this of course, but just curious what 10 extra bucks gets me.

It seems that one is 2 x SATA (internal) and the other is 2 x eSATA...

 

[twicksisted]

looks like its got 2 ports.... and 6Gb/s throughput..hmmm.. wonder what 2 hardrives would actually make a difference on this as opposed to on a 3Gb/s controller?

 

[newtekie1]

The RAID controller in my main Rig is a Highpoint. They make good inexpensive controllers.

 

[WarEagleAU]

Ha ha, ok thanks guys.

 

[Deleted member 3]

Are there any boards out with x1/x4/x8 PCIe 2.0 slots? Can't say I've seen them around yet. Apart from that they're just 2 port controllers, can't imagine PCIe 2.0 being a selling point there.

 

[newtekie1]

Are there any boards out with x1/x4/x8 PCIe 2.0 slots? Can't say I've seen them around yet. Apart from that they're just 2 port controllers, can't imagine PCIe 2.0 being a selling point there.

I haven't seen any, but there are plenty with extra x16 2.0 slots.

 

[wiak]

Marvell chip
btw PCIe x1 card work fine in x4/x8/x16 slots

 

[twicksisted]

Marvell chip
btw PCIe x1 card work fine in x4/x8/x16 slots

Yeah but then it goes down to 3Gb/s in a 1X 1.0 slot and not 6Gb/s which is the selling feature...
Still have no idea why youd want 6Gb/s on a raid controller with only 2 ports though

 

[newtekie1]

Yeah but then it goes down to 3Gb/s in a 1X 1.0 slot and not 6Gb/s which is the selling feature...
Still have no idea why youd want 6Gb/s on a raid controller with only 2 ports though

What does it matter if it has 1 port, 2 ports, or 20 ports?

 

[wiak]

more bandwith pr port?
and you do know that graphics cards do go down to pcie 1.0 slot to?

 

[LittleLizard]

Yeah but then it goes down to 3Gb/s in a 1X 1.0 slot and not 6Gb/s which is the selling feature...
Still have no idea why youd want 6Gb/s on a raid controller with only 2 ports though

cheap and fast raid 0 or 1. Ex: you have a gigabyte ep45-ud3l (common low end in us, common HIGH END here). it cant do raid, so what do you do?. buy a raid card and do raid 0 and get good performance out of a good'n cheap mobo

 

[twicksisted]

What does it matter if it has 1 port, 2 ports, or 20 ports?

well with more ports than 2 you can add more than 2 hardrives... youd have a better chance of using some of that extra bandwidth of 6Gb/s... currently 2 hardrives wouldnt even come close to even a 2port 3Gb/s controllers bandwidth

cheap and fast raid 0 or 1. Ex: you have a gigabyte ep45-ud3l (common low end in us, common HIGH END here). it cant do raid, so what do you do?. buy a raid card and do raid 0 and get good performance out of a good'n cheap mobo

No youre missing the point... its 6Gb/s controller but it only has 2 ports.... so you can only use 2 hardrives... what hardrives are going to use 6Gb/s in bandwidth even in raid 0?
surely this is more for larger raid cards in server setups where they using multiple hardrives and pushing a lot of data... not just 2 sata drives

 

[newtekie1]

well with more ports than 2 you can add more than 2 hardrives... youd have a better chance of using some of that extra bandwidth of 6Gb/s... currently 2 hardrives wouldnt even come close to even a 2port 3Gb/s controllers bandwidth



No youre missing the point... its 6Gb/s controller but it only has 2 ports.... so you can only use 2 hardrives... what hardrives are going to use 6Gb/s in bandwidth even in raid 0?
surely this is more for larger raid cards in server setups where they using multiple hardrives and pushing a lot of data... not just 2 sata drives

I don't think you understand how it works.

It is 6Gb/s per port. Just like a SATA 3.0Gb/s is 3.0Gb/s per port. The 6.0Gb/s is not shared between all the ports, each port gets its own 6.0Gb/s. This card for instance gives 12Gb/s total, due to having two ports at 6.0Gb/s each.

Now as for what drives use this type of speed. None, yet. However, SSDs are already starting to nearly max out SATA 3.0Gb/s ports. So something better than 3.0Gb/s will be required in the near future, hence 6.0Gb/s is hitting the market.

And before it is even said, yes even a PCI-E 2.0 x1 slot would end up being the bottleneck for this card, the slot would only provide about 5.0Gb/s shared by both drives. IMO, a SATA 6.0Gb/s card should have at least a PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot to eliminate the bottleneck from the PCI-E slot.

 

[twicksisted]

However, SSDs are already starting to nearly max out SATA 3.0Gb/s ports. So something better than 3.0Gb/s will be required in the near future, hence 6.0Gb/s is hitting the market.

brings me back to my original post...

looks like its got 2 ports.... and 6Gb/s throughput..hmmm.. wonder what 2 hardrives would actually make a difference on this as opposed to on a 3Gb/s controller?

 

[newtekie1]

brings me back to my original post...

Yes, and my comment already answers that. No hard drive, even in the near future, will make a difference on this controller vs. a 3.0Gb/s controller.

However, we are probably only months away from seeing SSDs that will see a difference on this controller(or any 6.0Gb/s controller) compared to a 3.0Gb/s controller.

Right now all 6.0Gb/s controllers are useless, as they provide nothing over a 3.0Gb/s controller, even with SSDs. However, there seems to be a new faster SSD released almost daily, so it will not be long before we see SSDs that need a 6.0Gb/s controller to achieve their maximum performance. Buying a 6.0Gb/s controller is a future proofing move by people that use SSDs, and must have the fastest one on the market.

If you just plan to hook hard drives up to it, this isn't the controller for you.

 

[twicksisted]

surely then your best bet is to buy a motherboard with 6Gb/s controller on it... i see theres already a P55 with just that... rather than having an extra card and more cable mess

 

[newtekie1]

surely then your best bet is to buy a motherboard with 6Gb/s controller on it... i see theres already a P55 with just that... rather than having an extra card and more cable mess

Since Highpoint doesn't make motherboard, they make dedicated controller cards, that solution doesn't exactly benefit them.

And while buying a board with a 6.0Gb/s controller onboard would be nice, it kind of limits what boards you can buy(to one $260 P55 board currently). Leaving all the AMD and 775/1366 users in the dark.

And the same argument can be made with SATA 3.0GB/s card, but even more so since pretty much every board sold today has built in SATA 3.0Gb/s ports. Doesn't stop the add-in SATA controller manufacturers from selling tons of dedicated SATA 3.0Gb/s cards. for using a single drive, I'll use onboard without hesitation, but for doing RAID, I'd take a dedicated card over an onboard anyday.

Cable clutter is a non-issue unless you are one that absolutely can't stand the site of a cable anywhere in your case. The extra 2 inches of cable showing by moving the SATA port from the edge of the board to the PCI-E slot probably won't even be noticeable, especially if you use black SATA cables.

 

[Disparia]

Take out the details and we have same debate that happened when ATA33, ATA66, ATA100, ATA133, SATA 1.5Gb, and SATA 3.0Gb were introduced.

I suppose it keeps us in practice and ready for when SATA 12Gb starts to show

 

[newtekie1]

Take out the details and we have same debate that happened when ATA33, ATA66, ATA100, ATA133, SATA 1.5Gb, and SATA 3.0Gb were introduced.

I suppose it keeps us in practice and ready for when SATA 12Gb starts to show

The difference now is that we actually have drives that are showing they can use the extra speed. Where before we didn't have drives that would benefit from the extra speed. Hell, if it wasn't for SSDs, we still wouldn't be seeing a benefit from SATA 3.0Gb/s.

 

[Fx]

this is kind of random but does anyone know if AMD has sorted out their AHCI probs? if not, would getting this card circumvent that?

 

[Static~Charge]

No RAID support on these cards

Still have no idea why youd want 6Gb/s on a raid controller with only 2 ports though

Any discussion about RAID with the Rocket 620/622 cards is pointless. They are SATA 6 Gb/s host adapters, not RAID controllers. Check out the specs:

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/r620.htm
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/r622.htm

There is no mention of RAID support (hence the name "Rocket" instead of "RocketRAID").

 

[Static~Charge]

this is kind of random but does anyone know if AMD has sorted out their AHCI probs? if not, would getting this card circumvent that?

I don't know about AMD's AHCI problems, but using a third-party host adapter should bypass that (assuming that the adapter's hardware and drivers aren't f'ed up). Your hard drive(s) would be under the host adapter's control, not the BIOS's.

 

[Fx]

I don't know about AMD's AHCI problems, but using a third-party host adapter should bypass that (assuming that the adapter's hardware and drivers aren't f'ed up). Your hard drive(s) would be under the host adapter's control, not the BIOS's.

thanks. that is what I was inclined to think but wanted to make sure