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HighPoint serves up PCIe-based SATA 6Gb expansion cards

by Parm Mann on 28 October 2009, 10:51

Tags: Rocket 620, Rocket 622, HighPoint

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qaunc

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We've seen a few motherboards surface with built-in support for SATA 6Gb, but if you're hoping to add third-generation SATA performance to an existing board, take a look at HighPoint's Rocket 620 and Rocket 622 PCIe expansion cards.

Arriving as part of the Rocket 600 Series, the low-profile cards slow into an existing PCIe 2.0 slot to provide a pair of SATA 6Gb connectors. The difference between the two is that the Rocket 620 (pictured above, left) offers two internal SATA 6Gb ports, whilst the Rocket 622 (pictured above, right) offers two third-gen eSATA ports.

Both cards are AHCI compliant, and support hot-plug capability and Native Command Queueing (NCQ). They're compatible with drives of up to 2TB, and both the Rocket 620 and Rocket 622 are expected to filter through to U.S. retail later this month priced at $69.99 and $79.99, respectively.

HEXUS Forums :: 10 Comments

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Posted by miniyazz - Wed 28 Oct 2009 16:50
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no way the PCI-e bandwidth available to those cards can handle even one of those ports on full whack, let alone two.
Posted by spoon_ - Wed 28 Oct 2009 16:53
You're wrong :P
PCI-E 16 lane slot:

* v1.x: 4 GB/s
* v2.0: 8 GB/s
* v3.0: 16 GB/s
Posted by johnzo - Wed 28 Oct 2009 16:57
Scan list the following, Don't know how good it is
Posted by scaryjim - Wed 28 Oct 2009 22:07
spoon_
You're wrong :P
Oooh, so close. But unfortunately those would be PCIe x1 connectors (rather than PCIe x16) on the cards, which means you need these figures instead:
Capacity Per lane:
v1.x: 250 MB/s
v2.0: 500 MB/s
v3.0: 1 GB/s

Actually, it gets interesting when you look at storage evaluation in Hexus's motherboard reviews. Most SATA II controllers average around 90MB/s, but can hit well in excess of 200MB/s in bursts. That meanas that 2 SATA II drives in full flow could just about max out the PCIe x1 bandwidth. So, in terms of sustained data rate the cards can probably (just) cope, but they'll almost certainly be bus-bottlenecked for peak bandwidth. Now, if they knock up a PCIe x4 version with 4 ports on it, you'd be good to go :D
Posted by TooNice - Thu 29 Oct 2009 04:12
But when does burst speed actually matter? I tend to disregard it completely unless it is very similar to the sustained speed (that happened to me once, basically my Raptor was running at 10MB/sec if that due to a compatibility issue with a controller).

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