Choice of controller for SSD

[MDavis-PA]

I'lll soon be adding a 256GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD to a MSI 7666 Big Bang Xpower mobo with i7 950 at 3.1 GHz. The SSD will be for Win7 Pro x64 and main apps. The other drive is a 3 TB 7200rpm SATA III HDD.

The board has two nominally 6Gb/sec SATA ports on a Marvell 91XX controller, and six nominally 3Gb/sec ports on Intel ICH10. It's my understanding that the SSD can actually use most of 6GB/sec under some circumstances, while the HDD isn't likely to push even 3Gb/sec. Would you put the SSD on Marvell and HDD on Intel, or both on Marvell? I recall some gripes about the Marvell when the board was new, but ISTR they concerned its RAID 0/1 handling, not an issue here.

 

[Cerb]

Given that you have an ICH10, you may as well hook the SSD to the Marvel (~450MB/s max), and HDD to the Intel. The 6 series and newer controllers are as fast at worst, and faster most of the time, but the ICH10 predates chipsets with controllers sped up to keep pace w/ SSDs.

Either way, the SSD itself will make more of a practical difference than the difference between 3Gbps and 6Gbps.