First SATA 6Gbps chipset is likely bottlenecked

COMPUTEX 09: In discussion with EVGA this afternoon we asked why, considering the company is a leader in the latest fastest technologies, the company wasn’t combining the latest X58 and P55 motherboards with SATA 6Gbps.

EVGA replied it had looked into the first generation Silicon Image chipset but reckons that since it’ll be only connected via a PCI-Express x1 interface, it’ll likely be bottlenecked.

Not only that, but the SATA 6Gbps specification was only recently finalised, so there will be no products to take advantage of it for a while yet and the benefit versus cost to end user is limited for now.

With only Silicon Image launching a SATA 6Gbps chipset for now – and we’ve not heard any other chipset in the works yet – it’s likely to be somewhat expensive.

With only SSDs realistically pushing the limits of the SATA 3Gbps specification, but no SSDs yet committed to the 6Gbps spec, we can certainly see EVGA’s reasoning - especially if the claim of a performance bottleneck is true.

We’ll be sure to test it when the boards and hard drives are available. Until then, discuss it in the forums.