It's really not that significant for a number of reasons.Tzupy wrote:According to an article at Anandtech, the AMD southbridges offer inferior SATA performance when compared with Intel's.
This wasn't much of an issue with hard-disks, but with SSDs it's obvious. Link:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/sh ... i=3755&p=5
First current SSDs that are less than $400 don't even push the chipset anywhere near this bottleneck. Since there are dozens of models of SSDs that don't make it measurable AT ALL it's overreaching to say it without further qualification.
Second even when it is measurable it's not noticeable in real world usage. It's barely a blip on the radar with insanely expensive SSDs. In 2012 or 2013 there might be cheap SSDs that push this issue. Anand's take on the issue was:
As a mainstream chipset, the SATA issues don’t really matter.
Either way (old chipset with 3GB SATA or new chipset with 6GB SATA) you can drop in a PCIe card down the road to get better SATA speeds.
It would have been more helpful if he would have tested the same basic setup with one more variable. Just add in a $30 card such as http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813995004 and see if it performs better than the AMD and Intel chipsets.
I'm sure there will be better options for add in 6GB SATA controllers by the time faster SSDs really push this issue a few years down the road.
Since that (and likely any other comparable solution) is an x4 card it will only be useful to those who have a dual x16/x8 slots with only 1 discrete video card, the rare MB with 3 x16/x8 slots with 2 or less discrete video cards, or those who plan to run on the integrated graphics and don't mind using the x16 slot for a faster SATA controller. But seriously if you are running integrated graphics you shouldn't be kvetching about an unnoticeable difference in performance.
If anybody wants to sell me a perfectly functioning AMD chipset based system for half cost or less just because of this SATA "issue" I'll happily buy it. It could save me the trouble of deciding between buying a 785G or 770 board in the near future.
I've been kind of eying http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813128419 as a possible board knowing that its a shot in the dark as to the true performance of the Marvel 6GB SATA controller on board and I might want a faster SATA controller some time down the road.
Honestly if I can buy a sub $200 SSD that can saturate my SATA controller all by itself I'd be very very happy. I wouldn't be complaining because somewhere else on the planet there was a newer controller that could make my existing SSD work a couple of percent faster.