[advice needed] SataII devices arrangement

[gorr30]

I will be building a new system based on EVGA's X58 Classified3 mobo and I would like some advice on if it matters where I'll plug my Sata devices in. The mobo has 6x SATAII ports (controlled by the south bridge, ICH10) and 2x SATAIII ports (controlled by Marvell 88SE9128). The SATA devices that I will be connecting are:

1x SSD - Intel X25-M G2 80gb Postville (SataII)
2x HDDs - WD RE3 750gb and WD Caviar Black 640gb (SataII) and
1x DVD-ROM/RW (SATA or SataII, not sure, but I can check if it makes any difference)

Shall I connect everything to the South Bridge or is it better (concerning performance or chipset temperatures or some other reason) to connect any of these to any of the 2x SATAIII ports that are controlled by the Marvell controller?

 

[taltamir]

you could perform speed tests on those, or find out who has already done that, Off the top of my head I only recall the relative performance of intel and AMD sata controllers, not that particular marvel chip.

Generally speaking intel has one of the better controllers. While it helps that the intel controller has fewer hops, its not necessarily a big deal. if you plug a SATAII drive to a SATAIII controller it will work in SATAII speeds.

Besides speed there is robustness of the controller, usually I find that the intel is better than the additional controllers (best AHCI implementation, only one AFAIK that properly passes TRIM to non RAIDed drives while in RAID mode, etc).
But all I can offer is an educated guess here, and I don't trust those until they have been verified experimentally. So I just don't know.

A little googling though and I found this; http://www.anandtech.com/show/2973/6gbps-sata-performance-amd-890gx-vs-intel-x58-p55
do note that they only compare performance of the controllers, and that it appears to be using an older marvel controller than the one you have.

 

[gorr30]

Nice link, thanks for all the info, still... if for example I ended up to the conclusion that the intel controller is what I would be wanting for performance. Any idea if it would be better to plug in there my SSD and my better HDD (the one I will be often using) and the rest to the marvell one? (Like my DVD and 2nd HDD that I will be rarely using).
Any idea if that (splitting the 4 devices to the 2 controllers) could potentially lead to less load for the south bridge and thus have a possitive effect to its temperatures and maybe performance? This is mostly what I was wondering Probably not a big difference if any at all, but still thought to ask in case someone (of the experienced) has encountered something like this and knows to tell me from experience, if it matters at all. I mean, after reading about some weird stuff (like that MSI board and the 1,3,5 post thingie)... makes you a bit paranoid

 

[taltamir]

in theory it shouldn't matter since each SATA is supposed to be able to give full bandwidth (aka, concurrently)
in practice, I have never seen a review actually test that.

 

[gorr30]

Thanks, I'll look around, although it's like... a trivial matter probably and won't have any impact. Yet another trivial mater brought up by me in some forums, I have a telent at this Anyway, thanks for your time, appreciate it