virtualbox.org

What is the difference in using PIIX3, PIIX4 or ICH6 as SATA adapter ?
Is there a performance gain with ICH6 or is there any specific recommendation when to use that adapter type ?

Any recommendation which version of the Intel Matrix Storage Driver to or is the latest one just fine ?

ICH6? VB doesn't use ICH6, it uses ICH8M. And the latest storage manager doesn't work as intended. Please check the Windows Guests forum for a link to a working version. Any will do.
Search the forums for the performance differences of using IDE and SATA. SATA is a bit faster.

Thanks for the reply.

The selection box for the SATA controller says ICH6 but ICH8 is of course part of the chipset family.
Any particular reason why they introduced that chipset in Virtualbox?

I read in the manual that SATA in general is faster than IDE due to less CPU overhead. I was just wondering whether the ICHx code had any advantage over PIIXx.

The USB controller is from ICH6, but the SATA is still ICH8. Check attached screenshot with the output of lspci from my Linux Guest. USB is not enabled on this VM.

i think vboxadmin made a mistake.
he's doesn't mean the sata controller, but the ide controller setting.
in general -> advanced -> ide controller type you can select piix3, piix4 and ich6.

-andy-

Oh, that, never looked there. I think it's best to read the manual about that. It might be added due to current hardware changes, where the normal IDE controller is removed from the main chipset and a separate chip is responsible for that. I wouldn't expect any performance changes, or at least considarable.

The manual doesn't have any information on PIIX3, PIXX4, or ICH6. So when should ICH6 be used over the other two IDE controller types (PIIX3 and PIIX4)? What are advantages/disadvantages? It appears to me that you can configure a SATA controller by selecting ICH6 as the "IDE Controller Type" (under General > Advanced section) and not have to "Enable Additional Controller" (under Hard Disk section) in order to connect a SATA drive.

There is no difference between the three IDE types. They just represent different controllers for guest OSes that expect a controller of a specific kind.
E.g. VMWare provides a PIIX4 controller to the guest (default for VBox as well). Certain guest OSes (Windows in particular) will crash when the IDE controller is not what they expect. (relevant when using VMDK files created by VMWare)

The PIIX and ICH6 types only apply to the IDE controller and have no effect for SATA, which is always ICH8.