Crucial 128GB M4 on Marvell 9126 6G controller

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

Heya,

I've been looking at getting an SSD for a while for my PC to improve BF3 load times - I've had and Intel 320 on my Macbook Pro for a while and it's all good, so figured I'd upgrade my PC's boot drive. Have been reading a lot on the forums here and went for the Crucial M4 128GB which arrived yesterday.

Got it all installed (had a few problems, but nailed it in the end!) and it now works fine... only problem is that I'm running it on a Marvell 9162 controller.

While it is a SATA3 controller, as people seem to be saying, it's not exactly the best, but unfortunately this is the only 6G port that my mobo has (Asus P6X58D-E - http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6X58DE/#specifications) and I don't really fancy changing my board for a bit more bandwidth.

Just wondering what people's thoughts are? I ran ATTO and it sat at about the 450 mark, where others seem to be topping 500.

Have looked at PCI-E SATA cards but they all seem to use the Marvell controller, or cost more than the motherboard itself!

 

[Wucked]

This is going to sound counter-intuitive, but given your options personally I'd switch the SSD over to the SATA2 Intel controller. Its the better of the two, and more suited to the SSD. If you run any mech drives then switch as many as possible to the Marvell controller.

People throw around sequential read / write benchmarks on these forums like they're the only thing that matters. But arguably what is much more important is random access performance. It's not often that you're writing large files sequentially to your disk, but you do encounter allot of small file reads/writes every time you use your PC, and this is what really gives you the sense of high performance. And for the average user its very rare that even a SATA3 drive will saturate the bandwidth of a SATA2 interface.

 

[Jobe]

Hi Doug

i have the same mobo as you and have just installed a 256mb M4 on the sata 2 port.

i only get around 260 so i don't suggest you change to another port unless my score is particularly low.

looking enviously at your score i shall be plugging mine into the marvel port to see if i can get it to run faster.

jb

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Wucked, how is the Intel more suited to the SSD? People seem to mention that a lot, but I don't really understand why... to me it's Sata 2 vs 3! Also at boot it says that it's running 6GB/s.

Jobe, I had trouble installing the OS to the drive, but ended up plugging it to a SATA 2 port, installing windows, then switching it to the Marvell. I used one of the black SATA 3 cables that came with the MoBo... don't know if they make a difference, but why not! Also I've always had the Intel ports set to AHCI, but did not realise that you need to set the Marvell to AHCI separately. It's in the Advanced section of the BIOS - you prob already know that, but had me scratching my head for a bit!

TBH, I think that I'm going to be leaving it where it is. I know it's not the perfect port or anything, but it's quick and seems to suit me ok. It's only been a day and I haven't tested it on games yet, but it's obviously faster than my old drive.

 

[Jobe]

Thanks for the replies guys.

but did not realise that you need to set the Marvell to AHCI separately. It's in the Advanced section of the BIOS - you prob already know that.

didn't know that.

i swapped over to the marvel controller. Seq reads were quicker but thats all. the rest were slightly slower tho will put it back on the marvel and find ahci again.

ta

jb