Been trying to find a socket 1366 board with Intel SATA 3 6gb/s connectors and so far have found none. All I seem to find is Marvell PCIe 9128 controllers. Am I right in thinking theses are in no way as fast as Intel controllers?
Unfortunately no there aren't any as it's not supported by the chipset. &, yes, you are correct that the 9128 controller is noticeably slower than the intel or amd 6Gb/s controllers... ...for general use (ie unless you have an odd usage that's *very* reliant upon sequential r/w), you are better off using the 3Gb/s intel controller.
Awesome, thanks for that Pocket, you always seem to help me with my many issues/problems +rep BTW, does everyday use and gaming count as "odd usage" which will be reliant on sequential r/w?
the reason (or 1 of) the Mravel 88SE9128 sata 3 controller is a poor design , is , thats its internally limited to PCIE 1x - meaning its headline speed wont be anything like a `native` chipset with more PCIE lanes available. but , in real world useage you wont really see alot of difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3 anway - just getting an SSD is `wizbang` enough. oh and the marvell controller doesnt support TRIM , so its back to an SSD built in garbage collection.... and getting an answer out of marvell is like bang my head against a wall - my bext email to marvell earlier today: *no sir i do not want a link to your drivers , of which you dont have mine listed - i want to know why it doesnt support TRIM with your drivers and when it will be fixed*
Thanks for a more in-depth reason. Bit silly that its limited to 1 PCI-E lane even though its built into the motherboard. Guess im sticking to my SATA 2
its the same for the addon sata 3 cards you can buy - they all pretty much use the same 9128 chip.... i swapped mine to sata 2 for the TRIM , didnt notice any speed difference anyway.
Well, that's without spending large amounts of money on a 'proper' raid card... ...no trim, slightly slower small random r/ws but faster overall. However, unless you got incredibly lucky on eBay, it'd probably cost at least the same as a 256GB 830, so really not an economical choice unless you had money to burn or some other need for a 6Gb/s SAS raid card. &, by an "odd usage" - it certainly wouldn't be the OS & (most) apps & games & whatnot. More if you were using a SSD predominantly for video editing or huge amounts of audio conversion or whatever where there was a particular need to be able to r/w large files as quickly as possible... ...& you'd gain more time there than you'd lose from the OS being slower or had a 2nd SSD solely for it.
I installed my ssd on the marvell controller on my x58 board first, ran a few benches and found it performing almost the same as my sammy f3, switched over to the intel and it was much better, plus booted quicker as I switched off the additional chipset
Honestly dude, the difference between 3Gbps and 6Gbps is totally unnoticable for me, outside of benchies.
Mmmmm... Well, the (128GB) C300 (as the only SSD listed in your sig) was barely a 6Gb/s SSD... Overall, it was no better than a 3Gb/s 100GB V2 (or other 1st gen SF) - & had the disadvantage at the time of only approaching full speeds on either a very modern AMD system or an über expensive raid card; since intel didn't have a 6Gb/s controller & the marvell 9128 was/is a bit shonky. The 1st gen SFs also had the advantage, at the time, of being much more robust in non-trim - so you could get far better results by sticking several in a R0 array... ...which is what i did at the time instead of going with C300s; despite having a proper 6Gb/s raid card. So you're not comparing a decent modern SSD on the two controllers - but something that can only run at much less than half the average r.l. data rate of a current higher end 256GB 6Gb/s SSD (830/V4/PP/etc) when both are on a 6Gb/s intel controller... ...&, dependent upon your usage, a SSD that is *that* much slower to start with 'may' actually not show much of a difference. [NB i'm not saying that it's not possible to notice a difference - just that there's much less of a difference to notice d.t. the limitations of the C300 as a SSD... Well, again, i chose to go the SF R0 route &, as the smaller random r/ws don't scale particularly with r.l. QDs, there was still a noticeable difference just from the larger r/ws being faster - though naturally, with 4 of them in the array, they were much faster than a single C300 so it's not a fair comparison.] Whereas the OP's 256GB M4 (assuming it's on the latest f/w) the loss is going to be between 11.5% & 17.5%, as it's a faster (both d.t. f/w & capacity) mid range SSD, by only being on a 3Gb/s controller. More generally, as pointed out in the other current threads, when you move onto the higher end of the current consumer models then you'd be losing somewhere around 22-33% of the average r.l. data rates (rather than 'chocolate teapot', for a general OS/apps/etc usage, AS SSD/CDM/etc b/m speeds), depending upon usage level, by sticking it onto a 3Gb/s controller rather than 6Gb/s one. Now, (again - well, from the other threads) that's *not* to say that a decent 256GB 6Gb/s SSD would be a waste of money if you're ltd to a 3Gb/s controller (imho at least) as there is still enough of a difference to notice between a mid range & a high end SSD with r.l. average data rates - & it also means that you will gain more significantly if you update to a later cpu/board during its lifespan.
Agreed. Apart from the fact I'm talking about real life experience of two 550MB/S OCZ Agility 3s, and how in real world usage I couldn't tell the difference between the one on 3GBps and 6GBps. Thus... I personally wouldn't recommend changing motherboards just to gain 6GBps ports.
i certainly wasn't suggesting changing the cpu & board just to get a couple of 6Gb/s ports as that would be a little bit of overkill... ...instead it's about the advantage being there 'if' you upgrade during the lifespan. Just as a note, the 550Mb/s for the A3 is nonsense irl unless you're only using 100% compressible data on them - they are much slower than the sync nand 2nd gen SFs for incompressible data... Then, as said, it all depends both upon overall & specific usage - well, looking at the specific, are you using both of them identically as duplicate OS/apps/games SSDs where there's a random chance that you will boot to one rather than the other & do whatever you'd normally do to spot any difference or, more sensibly, is the second to hold more apps/games? Assuming it's the latter, you're then not comparing them as OS drives - though, again, it's overall usage. & i assume they were both on intel/amd controllers - not a (shonky) marvell thing where you would tend to see the 3Gb/s one being quicker... ...if you noticed anything of course. & also what size the two A3s you have are - well, i've based comparisons upon 240/256GB SSDs w. the latest f/ws (as these are the best value for money SSDs if you're buying atm - esp as they are faster than the 128GB ones) - whereas there will be normally be much less of a difference with 120/128GB ones.
the C300 uses the same marvel 88SS9174 controller chip that the M4 uses - the differences though is a cahce on the M4 and better firmware
