SATA 3.0 or 1.5??

[Krusty]

I've got an ASUS P5P800 and I'm looking to get a SATA HD. Problem is I've scoured the manual and done a couple of searches online and I can't figure out if my SATA is 1.5GB or can support 3.0GB.

How can I tell which my mobo can support? Motherboard is relatively new (say, less than 5 months) so it should support the higher speed, but I'd like to be sure.

EDIT: Uh, I think it's 1.5 and 3.0 GB, or is that MB? Whatever, I want the faster speed, that's the point.

[JTs]

your m/b has the intel 865 chipset. its sata is 1.5 megabytes per sec. sorry. you can always get an add on controller

[Krusty]

As in a PCI card? I'm unfamiliar with how that would work. From what I understand PCI bus isn't anywhere near as fast as 3 GB/sec.

[Sloehand]

FYI -
I have two Western Digital 36GB Raptors that spin at 10K rpm and they are excellent and screaming fast.  There is also a 74GB version and they've recently come out with the new WD1500ADFD Raptor 150GB ($299), which adds some improvements over the first two (like doubling the cache to 16MB).  All of these are 1.5MB SATA drives
Anyway, an article in the March06 issue of CPU mag states that these HD's, even running over the older 1.5MB SATA interface, consistantly and significantly outperformed all 3.0MB SATA drives they were tested against.  This is primarily due to the speed of its 10,00 rpm disks over the standard 7,200 rpm high end drives.  This ostensibly makes the 1.5/3.0MB a non-issue in finding the fastest drive/interface combination.  The one mitigating factor of course, is price.  The Raptors are a little more expensive per GB, but not IMO, exceedingly so.
When I bought the 36GB Raptors they was touted as the fastest non-SCSI drives available, comparable to SCSI server HDs, and I think that is still true.

[eagl]

You can buy the faster hard drive, it should just run at the slower speed.