Home : December 28 2012 Computer News : Velocity Solo X2 review: Teach an old PC new SATA 6-gbps tricks

Velocity Solo X2 review: Teach an old PC new SATA 6-gbps tricks

December 28, 2012

If your PC lacks a SATA 6-gigabits-per-second interface, you can't get top performance out of any of the latest consumer-grade solid-state drives. Such drives bump up against the 6-gbps limit of that bus, while the older second-generation SATA interface maxes out at just 3 gbps. Apricorn's Velocity x2 should remove that roadblock for you. My main system sports a circa-2009 Intel D58SO motherboard. It has a great feature set, but it predates third-generation, 6-gbps SATA. The only way to upgrade such a beast is via a PCIe adapter card with a SATA 6-gbps interface, of which the market has plenty to choose from. I tried installing one of those a couple of years ago, but it gave me blue screens. SSDs at that time weren’t nearly as fast as they are today, so I saw no real reason to upgrade. But with SSD performance now topping 600 MBps, it’s time. Lo and behold, Apricorn contacted me about its Velocity Solo PCIe cards. These will not only add SATA 6-gbps capability to any system with an available PCIe slot, but they’ll also serve as a caddy for a single SSD. Apricorn sent two cards for me to evaluate: the $50 Velocity x1 and the $99 Velocity x2. I tried both, and recommend one. Apricorn's Velocity Solo x2 will endow your older computer with two SATA 6-gbps interfaces. You can bolt one 2.5- or 3.5-inch SSD right to the card. A Kingston HyperX 3K drive attached to my motherboard’s second-generation SATA interface, which is capable of delivering maximum performance of only 3 gbps, read data at 227 MBps and wrote data at 236 MBps while running the synthetic benchmark CrystalDiskMark 3. Surprisingly enough, a much faster OCZ Vertex 4 SSD mounted on the Velocity x1 delivered slower performance: It read at only 203.3 MBps and wrote at 196.5 MBps. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2022805/velocity-solo-x2-review-teach-an-old-pc-new-sata-6-gbps-tricks.html