SerialATA Interface stalks along as if it were the second-year soldier. The time of press-releases has come to an end and real controller cards from numerous manufacturers have already got to the stores. In order to help you find your way in this diverse variety of SATA RAID controllers, we decided to undertake a brief express-testing.

Of course, among our testing participants will be the solutions from Promise and HighPoint. Could you imagine a roundup without them? Of course not!

However, now there are quite many newcomers in this market. Take Intel Company, for instance. They integrated a RAID controller into their chipset South Bridge. This innocent prank at first glance, can change the situation in the low-cost RAID controllers market really drastically. First, since RAID controller is integrated into the chipset, the necessity to buy an external RAID solution will not be evident for the user: he already has one controller, why buy another one?

Secondly, Intel is not going to remain the only developer and manufacturer of chipsets equipped with an integrated RAID controller. Very soon all chipset guys will be ready to boast the same cool feature. As a result, the prices of external add-on RAID controller cards will crash and the products will either disappear or will be pushed to a more expensive market segment, which is currently occupied SCSI RAID controllers for workstations. All in all, hard times are coming...

The only thing that makes me happy, is that I will still have a lot to work on :)

Well, let me list all SATA RAID controllers, which are going to participate in our today’s test session. If we do it in alphabetical order, the first one will be a solution from 3ware.

3ware Escalade 8500-4

Although this is formally a four-channel controller, I considered it possible to include it in this roundup, to express my deepest respect towards the company, which does know how to make RAID controllers.

The controller is designed as a PCI64/33 card of half-length. The PCB is equipped with quite many chips, which makes it stand out among our today’s testing participants. To tell the truth, it doesn’t make much sense to go into details about this card, because it is none other but a slightly revised card from 3ware 7500 product family. The only innovation it boasts compared with the predecessors is ATA-to-SATA converters (Marvel 88i8030). If you are looking for more detailed coverage on 3ware 7850 controller and its performance please check our 3ware Escalade 7850 Controller Review.

I managed to get a retail version of 3ware controller (in other words, a boxed version):

Inside this box I found everything necessary: drivers, a set of SATA-cables, and the most important thing – the controller card.