SATA3 Controller for X58 Board

AlexD

AlexD

AlexD

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Joined
3 Jan 2003
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342
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Hi All,

I want to get myself 2 of the crucial M4 SSD drives but I know there is issues with performance on the marvel sata3 controller so i'd like to avoid using it. I don't want to use the intel controller due to the fact that it's fully loaded with regular drives already in a large raid array.

I know that asus used to produce the u3s6 pci-e 4x controller but I can't seem to find any place with them in stock so what options do I have? Since the market is now flooded with SB supporting mobos I don't see many options available to me if I want to get these drives working at their best performance.
 
I didnt think the issue was with the marvel chipset, more so with the speed of the pci-e lane being just 1x.
 
AlexD said:
I didnt think the issue was with the marvel chipset, more so with the speed of the pci-e lane being just 1x.
Click to expand...

The speed of the PCI-E lane only limits the sequential speeds to a maximum of 500MB/sec (which the Marvell won't quite reach). The sequential speeds aren't the problem, the Marvell will do decent speeds in that sense, it's the fact that the Marvell controller fails at random reads/writes, which is the whole point of having an SSD versus a mechanical drive. The PCI-E X1 interface can be a limitation when running multiple SSDs on that controller, though. I'd choose an Intel 3Gb/sec port over a Marvell 9128 6Gb/sec port as the Intel's random speeds and access times are better, an extra 100MB/sec sequential isn't something I would notice in every day use as around 280MB/sec is fast enough for me. There's also the question of reliability.
 
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