Intel Desktop Board D946GZIS Technical Product Specification
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1.5.3
Serial ATA Interfaces
The board provides four Serial ATA (SATA) connectors, which support one device per
connector.
1.5.3.1
Serial ATA Support
The ICH7’s Serial ATA controller offers four independent Serial ATA ports with a
theoretical maximum transfer rate of 3 Gbits/sec per port. One device can be installed
on each port for a maximum of four Serial ATA devices. A point-to-point interface is
used for host to device connections, unlike Parallel ATA IDE which supports a
master/slave configuration and two devices per channel.
For compatibility, the underlying Serial ATA functionality is transparent to the
operating system. The Serial ATA controller can operate in both legacy and native
modes. In legacy mode, standard IDE I/O and IRQ resources are assigned (IRQ 14
and 15). In Native mode, standard PCI Conventional bus resource steering is used.
Native mode is the preferred mode for configurations using the Windows* XP and
Windows 2000 operating systems.
NOTE
Many Serial ATA drives use new low-voltage power connectors and require adaptors or
power supplies equipped with low-voltage power connectors.
For more information, see:
http://www.serialata.org/
.
For information about
Refer to
The location of the Serial ATA connectors
Figure 14, page 52