SATA 6Gbps Intel P67 vs Marvell controller

[Athadeus]

So, I haven't even seen any mention of the Intel P67 SATA 6Gbps controller except in the specs of the Asus P67 motherboards. Is synthetic performance of most SSDs equivalent between it and the Marvell 912x controllers? Are there any odd situations where there is noticable real world performance difference with a particular drive and application? How about compatibility, any stories where a drive worked on one but not the other?

I keep thinking that new MB based controllers and drivers will have as much performance impact as new drive controllers and firmware. Am I even making much sense?

 

[Rifter]

Well the Marvell last time i checked didnt support TRIM so if thats important to you i would not use it.

EDIT here is a HUGE post on the TRIM issue, it seems it still is not supported

http://www.forum.crucial.com/t5/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Marvell-9123-9128-TRIM-yes-no/td-p/11109

 

[Old Hippie]

I keep thinking that new MB based controllers and drivers will have as much performance impact as new drive controllers and firmware.

ATM there's very few single drives that have a SATA 6Gb/s controller and can take advantage of the new tech.

I've used an Asus U3S6 expansion card with a Marvell 9123 chipset and it was horrible.

 

[Burner27]

ATM there's very few single drives that have a SATA 6Gb/s controller and can take advantage of the new tech.

I've used an Asus U3S6 expansion card with a Marvell 9123 chipset and it was horrible.

Yeah, I told you it would be......

 

[Old Hippie]

Yeah, I told you it would be......

OH, I see how it goes.....Go ahead and rub salt in the wound! :'( :biggrin:

I'm ready for SATA 6Gb/s now.

I purchased an LSI 9240-4i which does work well.

I'm on the lookout for a RAID0 companion drive to my Crucial 256GB unit.

I dunno if I'll get a C300 128GB or just try to sell the 256GB and get 2 C400 128GB units.

I've been seeing 256GB units on Ebay for @ 410.00 to 430.00 but I'd rather have a smaller unit. I'll waste 128GB while running in RAID0 but I don't care.

I'll be watching for your Corsair review! :biggrin:

 

[Burner27]

OH, I see how it goes.....Go ahead and rub salt in the wound! :'( :biggrin:

I'm ready for SATA 6Gb/s now.

I purchased an LSI 9240-4i which does work well.

I'm on the lookout for a RAID0 companion drive to my Crucial 256GB unit.

I dunno if I'll get a C300 128GB or just try to sell the 256GB and get 2 C400 128GB units.

I've been seeing 256GB units on Ebay for @ 410.00 to 430.00 but I'd rather have a smaller unit. I'll waste 128GB while running in RAID0 but I don't care.

I'll be watching for your Corsair review! :biggrin:

It's only money!!!!! You have more of it than me though!!!

 

[pjkenned]

Newegg has/had the C300 64GB drives for $100 this morning. Those are smaller drives. BTW Old Hippie how do you like the 9240? I can imagine what those things do as I was able to coax over 2GB/s from a onboard 9211-8i equivalent w/ 8x Sandforce drives.

Frankly, those LSI SAS 2008 cards are not terrible SATA controllers.

 

[Old Hippie]

BTW Old Hippie how do you like the 9240?

I'm only running a single 256GB C300 ATM but the card seems fine.

Before with ICH10....

After with LSI card....

 

[createdAmonster]

Well, I have found a perfect use for the Marvell SATA ports; use them for optical drives!
That leaves me with 4 SATA2 and 2 SATA3.
Overkill? Yes. But I won't have to worry about issues that might hurt SSD performance, if that is even possible. But lack of trim support is definitely a major reason not to use the Marvell ports.

 

[Athadeus]

Heh, I thought the Marvell controllers did support TRIM, but only performed better with specific drives, and only in seq tests. I'm not sure how important TRIM is for the Crucial drives, and I'm not particularly interested anyways.

I have just been trying hard to resist purchasing this first SB stuff, and searching for info like how 22nm quads might not be supported on current 1155 boards, whether socket 2011 boards will have ICH11R chipset that has a beast SATA controller, how much better the 28nm GPUs might be, etc.

 

[hclarkjr]

what boards have the intel P67 chipset SATA controllers? just the high end boards? do you think marvell will improve trim performance with driver update?

 

[Synomenon]

The U3S6 doesn't look so bad:
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036788453&postcount=33
http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1036789207&postcount=37

 

[Athadeus]

Yeah, especially with the chipset problem

 

[Synomenon]

With the newer Marvell SATA drivers, it looks like the U3S6 performs decently. I'm only going to be using it for an optical drive and some spindle drives. Hopefully I can still boot from my optical drives when they're connected to the U3S6.

 

[MKZA]

I hope someone can help me understand the Marvell controller. I'm currently looking at a new ASUS board which has 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), 4 x SATA 3Gb/s port(s) and 2 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s) (on a Marvell PCIe 9128 Controller)

Does this mean I can use the extra 2 ports provided by the Marvell Controller to have another 2 drives in my system or does the Marvell have to be run as RAID or something like that?

I've tried to find a simple answer on Google but cannot seem to find something explaining exactly what these extra 2 sata ports will do for me. I'd love to have the extra option of 2 additional SATA drives versus the standard of 6 only on most motherboards.

Appreciate if someone can shed some light on this for me.

 

[Burner27]

I currently run 3 x 256GB Crucial M4s on my P67 controller. 2 of them are RAIDed on the 2 SATA6 ports. 1 is on the SATA3 port. I also have a Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive, a 64GB M4 SSD, and a DVD Burner on my P67 as well.

The only thing I have on my Marvell controller is a 1TB HDD.

Very similar to what you are asking about.

 

[Old Hippie]

They're probably for eSATA.

 

[groberts101]

wow.. reviving such an old thread just to ask such a simple question like this one.

Marvell ports can be run as individual or raided on boards that support it. Whether or not the board uses the chip for internal or external ports would be dependant on the board with most currently using them as internal.

 

[MKZA]

Thanks very much groberts, Old Hippie and Burner27 for the replies, asked and answered much obliged.

Sorry to have revived an old thread but this is what came up on Google and seemed the most appropriate place to ask.

 

[GotNoRice]

I have not really had much success with the Marvell controller. It's adequate for basic needs but even if I had a 6Gbps drive and my choices were the Marvel 6Gbps controller or the Intel 3Gbps controller, I'd still choose the Intel controller.

 

[groberts101]

I have not really had much success with the Marvell controller. It's adequate for basic needs but even if I had a 6Gbps drive and my choices were the Marvel 6Gbps controller or the Intel 3Gbps controller, I'd still choose the Intel controller.

Although I have had 0 issues with my 9128 chip.. I would pretty much mirror that advice as well since Intel has stronger writes, steeper deep q-depth performance, and slightly improved latency over Marvell's.

The one place that Marvell really shines is in its response to PCI-E overclocks because it runs directly off that bus. You also gain from using the Marvell over Intel's 3G chip if you have raided storage that can make use of it's faster sequential read speeds.