Motherboards Marvell Controller on Asus P8P67 Mobo Any Good?

I have the basic Asus P8P67 motherboard. And am looking to increase current storage capacity with a larger SSD as my main drive. Possibly keeping the 120gb Corsair Force 3 that I have as my boot drive at the moment. The issue is I have a Sata 3 SSD and Mech HDD.

Wanting to keep the Sata 3 speeds I am considering using the Marvell Controlled Sata 3 ports. I know I was told by someone that the Marvel controller wasn't fantastic. it obviously has been superseded on the later chipsets.

Is it ok to use it to connect my Mech HDD which I will use as a storage/scratch disk?

All other motherboards I have seen only have two Intel Sata 3 Ports and the other Sata 3 being ASMEDIA or Marvell.

So I would have a 240gb as C: 120gb D: HDD as E: drives respectively.

 

just plugged my new 830 SSD into the Marvell ports on my motherboard. Seems fine. Don't think there'd be any reason not to use them.

 

Ok, I think I will give my HDD a go on it and see how it fairs before I buy another SSD. Plus I need to wait till I have been paid. Will be end of July I buy my 2nd SSD. As long as I can keep my high write speeds to my HDD I will be happy. The recording software needs it else I will end up with a bottlekneck during recording.

 

Don't forget to set the SATA controller to AHCI mode for the Marvel controller (well you want it for all used controllers).

 

Hey Goodbytes i know this ;-) plus i need to turn it back on as i got a message during boot screen when it didn't detect a drive! As long as my HDD has writes 100mbs I will be happy with it! I say 100mbs because that's what DxTory requires for writing the video to disk!

 

I think the main difference between the Intel SATA 3 ports and the Marvell SATA 3 ports is illustrated here - make sure you have your SSDs on the Intel ports and the mechanical on one of the other ports to get the best out of your SSDs

 

btw you CAN enable AHCI after you`ve installed windows - you need to change a registry entry first , then reboot and switch it to AHCI - on start up it installs the standard ahci drives , reboot again then you can install the latest motherboard ones

 

Great!, Well the reason why I am pushing this, is because sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo many people here never did. I recall back a couple of years ago, when NCQ for HDD was new, and people here on this very forum, was choosing HDD that had NCQ for greater performance (of course), but the great majority of them NEVER turned AHCI on, so they never got the full potential speed out of their HDD (which is noticeable).

 

I actually get better performance on my SATA2 Intel ports than on the SATA3 Marvell on my Z68 board (with a SATA3 mechanical drive).

 

Well i have been running in AHCI mode since my system was built. The marvell controller was never used. I have time today to test my Mechanical HDD on both Sata 2 and Marvell Controller as are what the performance is like!

Edit: Crystal Disk doesn't do what i want it too do. Finding an other HDD benching tool!

I am using Atto to benchmark my Mech HDD right now. Then switching to different ports. Sata 2 and marvell and comparing results.

Testing Marvell Controller now! I will screen shot for comparison of results.

Having Benched my Mechanical hard Drive on all three Sata Ports I found that there is no major difference between Marvell and Sata 2 with a Mechanical Drive. The proof is in the results.



So I need not worry about which ports to use. And when I do buy a larger SSD I can use either Intel or Marvell or even Sata 2. I haven't benched my SSD on different ports simply because I don't want to kill it's life.

 

This 'should' be repeatable across any system...

Well, alongside no HDDs actually exceeding 3Gb/s speeds (albeit that if you had one with a large SSD cache then, depending on the specs, it 'could' for the data read from that), the huge difference comes from the increase in latency with the Marvell controllers (vs intel or amd ones).


it's also why, with 6Gb/s SSDs, you will get better performance for most uses (well, unless you're simply copying large files on & off which would be unusual - though could be the case if you were using a SSD for something like video editing) using a 3Gb/s intel/AMD controller than a 6Gb/s Marvell one...

This being d.t. the impact of the increase in latency on small i/os outweighing the gains on larger ones.

[NB with enough SSDs in R0, it is possible for the balance to be shifted, but it's not going to happen with 1 or 2 SSDs...]​

 

I intend on adding a second SSD to my rig, most likely as a larger boot drive. As a 120gb is too small to be honest and I want all my games in one place. Currently I have large games like BF3/BC2 installed on my SSD oh and Diablo 3. And all other Steam games moved onto my Mech HDD.

Thinking of getting a 256gb SSD in the future. Would you suggest raiding the 120 and the larger together for even more capacity or selling the smaller SSD?

 

i really wouldn't suggest doing a JBOD array with SSDs... Just too much arsing about & you're doubling the risk of failure with no real gain...

...in fact there'd almost certainly be a major downside since you couldn't maintain free space on either SSD - just over the array - so you could easily end up with a much slower setup d.t. lack of free space on one or the other.


Personally, i'd use the new SSD for the OS - since, unless you buy something that's shonky, it'll be faster...

...& unless you *really* need the money from flogging the 120GB, use that one's capacity to install the first x amount of your games (where the data will be effectively static) - leaving more space on the new one...

Maybe allowing you to consider extra OP & leaving a decent amount of free space on the new one(?) - allowing the quicker maintenance of speeds & increased longevity.

 

I tried benchmarks in Windows 7 and Linux (so radically different drivers), and the performance on the Intel SATA2 port was about 10-20% better than on the Marvell SATA3 port for this particular SATA3 HDD. Of course with an SSD the situation would reverse, but in all cases the SATA3 HDD performed best on the Intel SATA3 port.

 

Again, it depends on the use of the SSD.

For a general OS, apps, etc use, you'll gain more irl by losing the sequential speeds but lowering the latency & increasing the small r/ws by using a 3Gb/s intel/amd controller than you would by using the marvell controller to up the sequentials.


You are completely correct though that the 6Gb/s intel controller is really quite fabulous.

Whilst with more than 3 SSDs in R0, my lsi card should be faster, irl, than a 2x 6Gb/s intel & 2x 3Gb/s intel mix, with my 2 new 830s then the 6Gb/s intel controller blew the lsi card away.

The up-side of that is that, along with still needing it for my SAS HDDs, i can now stick 4 other HDDs on the lsi controller in h/w R5.

 

I'm talking about a mechanical SATA3 HDD here, not an SSD. The Marvell controller should (hopefully!) outperform the Intel SATA2 with an SSD, but I think the overhead of the Marvell controller harms performance, at least on this motherboard, with lower speed devices. There was a performance bump on the Intel SATA3, even with the mechanical HDD, probably from cache transfers.

 

You'd written -

"...and the performance on the Intel SATA2 port was about 10-20% better than on the Marvell SATA3 port for this particular SATA3 HDD. Of course with an SSD the situation would reverse..."

- which is saying that the Marvell controller would be faster than a 3Gb/s intel controller with a SSD.


&, again, unless you have a pretty unusual usage which is based around highly sequential r/ws, irl the 3Gb/s intel controller will outperform the 6Gb/s Marvell one...

...again d.t. the increased latency impacting on (esp) small file transfers - which make up a huge proportion or rl usage for an OS/apps/etc drive.

 

You're saying that the Intel SATA2 controller would still outperform the Marvell SATA3 on an SSD for average use? I've never tried any benchmarks for that but it's surprising to hear.

 

Yet again PocketDemon drops some useful information. I will most likely do as you have suggested.

One question which I have been meaning to ask. When Win7 was installed it setup the undersizing for trim. What is the minimum trim partition value you would suggest for a 120gb SSD. Currently under partitioned by 9gb.

 

Yes.

For most OS, apps, etc uses (obviously ignoring mass storage which is what HDDs are for & specialised usages on either end of the i/o range), less than 50% of all r/ws are going to be sequential...

...& with a heavy workstation usage (games, photoshop, etc, etc), you'd be looking at >50% of i/os being <=64K.


So, whilst it may appear, from looking at AS SSD or whatever results that it's faster (d.t. the higher sequential speeds) by using the Marvell controller, irl, a 3Gb/s intel (or AMD) one will be faster d.t. the lower latency & increased small i/o speeds.


Obviously it's a trade off though - & we're both agreed that the 6Gb/s intel one is the much better option (the 6Gb/s AMD being a little behind but still much better than a Marvell controller).


Tbh, i would only use a Marvell controller for either long term storage or a optical drive - & then only if there's not an intel/amd controller to stick them on instead.