SATA PCI Controllers

Guys, i need an advice on PCI Serial-ATA Controllers.
My current motherboard is a Slotek SL-85MIV3-L (Old, i know ) with VIA P4M266A chipset, Sapphire ATI Radeon 9250 128MB DDR GPU and 1GB PC3200 DDR ram. My current setup is: 80GB Maxtor HD (P-ATA) on Primary Master, ACER 16x DVD-ROM on Primary Slave, NEC ND-3540a on Secondary Master & LG GCE-8310B CD-RW on Secondary Slave running WinXP SP2.
I'm planning to add another HD, probably a 250 or 300GB Maxtor 16Mb cache with SATA interface, since 80Gb isn't enough for me. The reason of picking a SATA one is purely for "future upgrades".I don't care for Serial-ATA's superior speed compared to old Parallel-ATA or RAID setup for now. When & if i'll change m/b, cpu, etc. i'll be able to use this SATA HD in my new system setting up i.e. RAID arrays, etc.

Now, since my current m/b doesn't have Sata support, i'll need a PCI Sata controller.

After checking various online shops, my questions are these:
1.Where's the difference between, for example a HIGHPOINT RocketRAID 1520 (found for about 59€) and those really cheap unbranded sata controllers (around 20€)?
2.I tried on eBay and i found many cheap & unbranded sata controllers.Most of them had a Silicon Image 3112A chipset.Are these good for what i need?

Any clarification will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

I'm running a cheap SIL 3112 SATA card right now. Cost about £10 from Ebuyer.
I've no complaints about it at all.

What I actually bought was the raid version but flashing it non-Raid was easy.

I've heard various negative things about Highpoint cards in the past, don't know how true they were though.

Nice to hear that TimC :-).
May i ask you where's the advantage on flashing it to non-RAID?
As for Highpoint, it could be like u said.Dunno.It was just an example of a cheap vs. non-cheap controller.It could have been Promise instead of Highpoint...I'm just trying to understand why the difference in price.
Cheers

The SiL 3112 is the worst POS controller you can get, you can find controllers using either ULi (ALi) and Promise that are much more decent and not that expensive. What you get from a more expensive PCI controller (Promise and HPT for instance) is better stability and driver support.

These should be rather safe though...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815124022
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815124020
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816102039
//Danne

what's wrong with sil3112? i tried the sil3112 not much complaints, and had a board with sil3114 onboard and it was fine....

http://www.google.com/search?hl=sv&q...S%C3%B6k&meta=
For instance...
//Danne

hmm ... never noticed this - had no problems with a friends computer though....

It has hardware bugs, even the manufactorer has admitted it so why purchase a bad controller when you can get a better one?
//Danne

Stay away from RAID cards unless you want to RAID. If you want to boot to the card (recommended considering your loaded IDE controller), just be sure it's bootable. Both Promise and Highpoint make fine 4-port SATA cards that are inexpensive. You can also move your current HD to a SATA controller with a SATA converter, also available from Highpoint.

Ok...thanks for the reply guys. You've been helpful
I guess i'll take rdgrimes advice.

I found at my local supplier's shop a Hamlet PCI SATA Controller (2 Sata Ports, 1 external and 1 internal + 1 IDE port + RAID) and after searching a bit it has an ALi M5281/M5283 chip...It's really cheap 20€..
Any thoughts on ALi chips?
thx

As far as I can tell it's decent
//Danne

Ok, thanks DiiZzY