Recommended SATA card?

[Owen Townend]

On 17/06/2008, David Abrahams <dave at boostpro.com> wrote:
>
>  on Mon Jun 16 2008, David Abrahams <dave-AT-boostpro.com> wrote:
>
>  >>   To get around the pci bandwidth limit the options are limited to
>  >> PCI-E and PCI-X which should both give ample headroom.
>  >
>  > My x16 PCI-E slots should give 4GB/s and my fastest PCI-X slot is 133Mhz
>  > are about 1GB per second.  Okay, I guess PCI-X is fast enough for now;
>  > the cards are a lot cheaper than PCI-E cards.
>
>
> Hmm, so http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/adsa3gx4r.asp
>  is looking pretty good to me.  I like that Ubuntu appears in their list
>  of compatible linuxes (No Gutsy or Hardy, though; I assume it's just
>  outdated).
>
>  Anyone want to advise me against that one?
>
>  Thanks again,
>
>
>  --
>  Dave Abrahams

Hey,
  Ubuntu can quite happily sit in their support list as the Silicon
Image chip has support in the kernel[1]. I haven't had any experience
the Addonics specifically, but card looks to be very similar to the
others using the same chipset and the price is also similar. Looking
to ebay there is something similar for US$30 cheaper and the only
difference looks to be the colour, though sometimes having a known
entity to deal with warranty issues/DOA/etc is worth the premium.

Cheers,
Owen.

Footnotes:
--
[1] From:
http://www.sci-worx.com/support/supportsearchresults.aspx?pid=27&cid=3&ctid=2&osid=1&

"Pre-compiled Linux kernels with driver support for the SiIxxxx SATA
controller chips can be found on the Linux ATA development site:
http://kernel.org/. You must use a kernel version of 2.4.18-14 or
later to have SATA support for the SiI3x12. More recent kernel support
SiI3114, SiI3124, and SiI3132. If your distribution already uses a
current kernel , please use the SiIxxxx driver included with the
dsitribution. "