Is there really such a thing as SATA II and SATA III rated cables?

[AliceN1derland]

I just noticed a couple of my newest SATA cables are clearly listed as SATA 6G/B's. Gosh, I used some older SATA cables on my last two builds with Intel 520 series SSD III's Cherryvilles.

Two questions:

Can an SATA cable limit the transfer rates?

Is there really such a thing as SATA II and SATA III rated cables?

Alice Wondering in SSD Land

[alex80386]

From Wikipedia (without checking all the references)...

SATA revision 3.0 (SATA 6 Gbit/s)

In general, the enhancements are aimed at improving quality of service for video streaming and high-priority interrupts. In addition, the standard continues to support distances up to one meter. The newer speeds may require higher power consumption for supporting chips, although improved process technologies and power management techniques may mitigate this. The later specification can use existing SATA cables and connectors, although it was reported in 2008 that some OEMs were expected to upgrade host connectors for the higher speeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

[AliceN1derland]

Thank you for your post.

Well, I did a little Google search and discovered an interesting article here:

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/your_sata_cable_slowing_down_your_data_transfers_max_pc_investigates

The title of the article is: Is Your SATA Cable Slowing Down Your Data Transfers? Max PC Investigates

And here is their conclusion after doing significant testing:

The Verdict

Let’s first say that when we started this, we were absolutely sure we’d see a difference. Afterall, moving to an authentic SATA 6Gb/s cable cleared up our problems the first time right? Wrong. As we worked our way through the first few cables, we began to realize that the SATA I/O did its work when it first put together the Serial ATA spec for cables. There is virtually no difference between a brand-new SATA 6Gb/s marked cable made this year and one produced nearly eight years ago as far as performance goes. Expensive cable, cheap cable; long cable, short cable—none of it seemingly made a real difference. If anything, the minor variances in performance can be attributed to variances in the benchmark or the SSD.

During our testing, we also tested out a couple of often not recommended practices: bending your SATA cable at right angles. Many motherboard vendors recommend against putting right-angles into the cables during system builds so we took a cable and put about 15 right-angle kinks in it: no difference. We also took a 36-inch cable and tightly wrapped around a hot PSU cable: no difference.

Hope this helps!

AlIcE

[Dark Mantis]

Hi AliceN1derland and thanks for that. It was indeed interesting and whilst I didn't expect there to be much difference I was surprised to see none at all. I was especially shocked to find that the data cable wrapped around a hot power cable had no effect on data throughput. I would have expected some corruption at least.