Vertex 3 and SATA III

jhnorth

jhnorth

jhnorth

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Joined
30 Aug 2011
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8
Hi Guys,

I just recently bought the Vertex 3 120GB SSD. I have (unfortunately) an old school motherboard (Asus P5Q Pro Turbo) which doesn't support SATA III (6gbp/s) so I took the initiative to buy a Xenta 2 port PCI-e (6gbp/s) SATA controller, only to find out when installing the SSD that my PCI-e slot (the small one) is PCI 1x, so the read speed of the drive is max'd out at 180MB/s - ooohh the fail, this was tested on a new install of Windows 7 64bit with ACHI enabled and the SSD has firmware version 2.11. I've currently plugged the SSD into the motherboard SATA port and I'm getting 260MB/s read (SATA II board), which I can understand.

Anyway, I'm looking at taking the controller back and possibly buying a PCI-e x16 controller (I have a gfx card in the first slot and a spare just below for crossfire/SLI configuration). Does anyone recommend a controller for SATA III or have any experience with it, and is it even possible to buy a PCI-e x16 controller card for SATA drives (it must be able to fit a GFX slot)?

Perhaps the only way to benefit from the Vertex 3 speed is to upgrade my mobo to i7 with SATA III ports but ya know, money is a bit low at the moment.

Any suggestions appreciated.

Dave
 
Hi and welcome to the forum.

I can't recommend you a particular add in card as I don't use one.

If you have a spare x16 slot then you can put any size PCI-E card in it. A x4 speed card, for example, would fit and work fine.

The cheaper add in cards are usually based on a Marvell controller which isn't particularly good. Spending £30 on an add in card may not reap great rewards.

Another thing to consider is that, depending on your particular system, if both x16 slots are used then they may be reduced to x8 speed or on some motherboards the second x16 slot only runs at x4 speed.
 
I was in the same boat as you a few weeks ago, but I found it best to just upgrade to Sandy Bridge to take advantage of the native Intel SATA III controller. As Surveyor mentioned, the Marvell controllers are not the best. I've tried both the native Marvell controller and the one on the Asus U3S6, not worth using I'm afraid.
 
I totally agree with guys about the Marvell controllers. I knew I should've listened to my brother as he's had horrible problems with Raid rebuilds after certain types of Marvell controllers refusing to play nice.

Judging by the price of PCI-E 8x/16x SATA III controllers (£180+), I might as well spend double that and get an i7 with DDR3 with on board SATA III. Thanks both for your comments :)
 
Surveyor said:
16GB is overkill for most users.

Yes RAM is reasonably cheap at the moment but you can still save over £60 by getting an 8GB kit.

That Corsair Vengeance kit has very tall heat spreaders. These can interfere with large CPU coolers.
Click to expand...

You're definitely correct, all I need for now is 8GB, I can always upgrade in future when they finally release 8GB modules. Over 4GB for most people is enough but I like to run 10VM's at once while testing various things so the extra RAM helps.

Was thinking about these particular parts:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-444-AS
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-305-CS
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-365-IN

I prefer to stay with Asus as I've used them for over 10 years and never really had any major issues with them.

The DDR3 2133mhz (OC) RAM is a bit excessive but oh well.

Annndd, I read through the Vertex 3 performance thread today and saw many people with the same motherboard reach over 500mb read and write, for the higher 12k files. Exciting.

Thanks again guys.
 
Last edited:
Cheers, you're right, I was looking at the 4GB option :P

Anyway, does anyone know if the "Asus P8P67 DELUXE Intel P67" motherboard SATA III ports are using the Marvell chipset? I noticed the Asrock ones have 4 SATA III ports, two being Intel and two of them Marvell.

Never mind, answered my own question.

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8P67_WS_Revolution/#specifications

Intel® P67(B3) chipset :
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s), blue
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10

Marvell® PCIe 9128 controller : *1
2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), navy blue
Support Raid 0, 1

Hope this helps other people.
 
I agree actually the 16gigs is perhaps overkill if you're not using any heavy applications on RAM such as Visual Studio, Photoshop, Premiere, 3DS Max etc etc.
Thing is as well if you are not up for buying 16gigs of RAM, you most certainly do not need a 2600k. Stick with the 2500k I linked you.

8gigs is a good amount for you, but definitely not worth buying Dominator. If you really want the extra performance out of your ram, overclock!
I suggest the 8gigs of the Corsair Vengence, fantastic value for money.


As for the motherboard, I would have said the same thing a couple of months ago. I've used Asus forever, but the recent Asrock boards have a lot better value for money.
Recently Asrock has started to sort of overcompensate, high quality for not so much money. A marketing idea to help them become more popular I guess, but I'm not going to disagree with higher quality if my wallet is heavier at the end of the day!
Comparing the Extreme 4 Gen 3 and the Asus P8P67 DELUXE off the top of my head, the Asus does not have PCI-E 3, it doesn't have the NF200 chip, it has worse quality capacitors and it has an awful colour scheme! I'm sure there is more, but they are some extremely good reasons to shell out the extra tenner.

I've personally gone ahead and ordered an Extreme7 Gen3 (arriving this morning, yay!) and I strongly suggest you consider the Extreme4 Gen3 or the Extreme7 Gen3. Money well spent over Asus.
 
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