Recent days were rich with news about the introduction of SATA-600 and USB 3.0 support in two most important Taiwan motherboard producers . asus company added SATA-600 support with the participation of PEX PLX8613 chip, which increased the capacity of PCI express x1 interface to 500 mb/s due to the use PCI express 2.0 interface, whereas Intel p55 chipset supports only the channel PCI express x1 first generation, working at the rate 250 mb./s. For the SATA-600 controller from Marvell production this could become the limitation, which decreases the transmission data speed . Theoretically, SATA-600 interface data can transfer with 600 mb./s.
According to test results , made by asus company , the use of hard disk with SATA-600 interface together with asus P7P55D premium raise the disk speed according to the separate operations types to the value from 66% to 80%. According to gigabyte company , similar increase will be limited to 30%. More objective picture had to propose independent tests of Seagate barracuda XT.
Associates conducted the appropriate tests, and the speed results of HDD with SATA-600 support can be strange for many users. HDD with SATA-600 support, as show the tests results , they demonstrate a noticeable advantage, but sometimes lose SATA-300 interface . The existing SSD controllers are not also ready to work with the SATA-600 speeds, and therefore, for disclosing at least a part of this interface potential must be replaced not one generation disk and controllers.