Sata3 SSD with Asus P7P55D-E EVO Mobo

[MephiSkA]

Hello,

I just bought a Corsair Force GT SSD (Sata3) and I plan on installing it on my Asus P7P55D-E Evo Motherboard. The thing is, this motherboard has the Sata3 Marvell 9123/9120 Controller and an Intel Sata2 controller. I have read that the Marvell controller is not stable, does not support trim and has pretty bad performance. I also know I can either keep the Windows MSAHCI drivers (win 7) or install the Marvell ones with both different performance and reliability.

My question is : Does anyone know which is best for me ? Installing the SSD on the Marvell Sata3 port with the AHCI driver ? the Marvell driver ? or install the SSD on the Intel Sata2 port ?

Also, does anyone know if the AHCI drivers, if used on the Marvell Sata3 ports, will support TRIM ? (I know the Marvell drivers don't) If not, am I better using Sata2 ports with probably slower results but TRIM enabled ?

On a side note, in order to enable the Marvell Sata3 port on that motherboard, it automatically changes the pci-x lane from 16x to 8x, nothing to do about that but I am ready to lose a couple % graphic power for a faster SSD.

----
System config :
Intel Core i5-750
Asus P7P55D-E Evo
Corsair Force GT 120GB SSD
AMD Sapphire HD6950 Video Card
OCZ Fatal1ty 700W PSU
4GB OCZ gold DDR3 Ram
Windows 7 64bit

 

[MephiSkA]

To narrow it down into two simple questions :
Sata3 SSD, better on Sata 3 Maxell controller or Sata 2 Intel Controller ?
and
Sata3 SSD on a Marvell Controller, better with MSAHCI driver or Marvell Driver ?
Thanks

 

[tweakboy]

It has issues with marvel controller , if you really need it to be enabled then use 3Gbps. I promise you won't notice the diff between 3 and 6gbps, Large file transfer 3 would give you 300mbps ,,,, If you use 6gbps then thats 500mbps, however it might interfere with marvel, so once again, if you need it then just conn the SSD to sata 2 and enjoy! trust me on this one... gl

 

[MephiSkA]

Thanks for the tip tweakboy. I will install the ssd on the Intel Sata2 controller.

And if anyone else has any more tips or info for me don't hesitate to add it in my post!

 

[truepurple]

I found this thread doing a search for this same motherboard, issues of trim and adding a new SSD.

I am confused that you are talking about a tip when I don't see anyone else having replied.

Is there no way to get trim working on my P7P55D-E LX? Is any SSD I put on my Sata6gb doomed to slow down to a crawl because it isn't triming?

Should I connect my SSD's that I recently bought to my Sata 3gb connections, even though they are Sata6gb drive that far out pace the sata3gb? (and even push sata6gb a bit)

 

[Cerb]

Is there no way to get trim working on my P7P55D-E LX?

Use MS' AHCI driver, and you'll definitely be OK. Intel's probably, too, but I'm not 100% sure of that, with the older chipset.

Is any SSD I put on my Sata6gb doomed to slow down to a crawl because it isn't triming?

No. Even w/o TRIM, most drives today slow down to what used to be decent speeds for drives of 2+ years ago. Look at AT's reviews, FI, where they give the drives a multi-pass 4K random writes, after filling the drive up. That's not a realistic client scenario. That's a, "the S3700 broke our testing methods, so we need a new one, that can keep up with upcoming drives."

The Seagate 600, Corsair Neutron, and Sandisk Extreme II are pretty much tailored to that kind of heavy usage, but the worries of past generations, like SSD slowing to a crawl, are all but gone. Even without TRIM, a Samsung 840 Evo, Crucial M500, Sandisk Ultra Plus, or other value-priced drive, will still be fine, for a desktop or notebook.

If needing to use XP or Vista, though, make sure the partitions are aligned (7 and 8's installers automatically do this). Newer drives seem to slow down from misalignment much worse than older ones, IME, HDDs included (probably just a matter of not optimizing for that use case, anymore).

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6884/crucial-micron-m500-review-960gb-480gb-240gb-120gb/3

Check that out. First, notice how no new drive could be brought to a crawl. A lot slower than with some free space and TRIM, but only the older M4 could be brought to a crawl. Also notice how much of an improvement is made by giving it some more spare area (an easy way to do it in Windows is described right there in the article). Also, keep in mind that outside of going cheap in a random-writing server (which the M500 and Extreme II are good choices for ), you'll never get the drive even as slow as that testing. Most of the time, the spare space they have from the factory will be fine, but if you want to stack the deck in your favor, you can.

Should I connect my SSD's that I recently bought to my Sata 3gb connections, even though they are Sata6gb drive that far out pace the sata3gb? (and even push sata6gb a bit)

By the time the Marvell controllers were able to use enough bandwidth to make good use of 6Gbps, the integrated controller had sufficiently improved (and, back then, the Marvells could be kind of buggy, but that's mostly been sorted out, between firmware and driver updates). You will only see a difference in synthetic benchmarks; and in some applications, the Intel can actually be faster. IMO, plug it into one of the Intels and move on. You won't get the performance you see in reviews anyway, with an old chipset, and hobbled Marvell controller.

 

[d4a2n0k]

I am confused that you are talking about a tip when I don't see anyone else having replied.

Just an FYI, Tweakboy, who must have replied at some point, was a troll. The Mods have wiped out every single post he made. Thats why you see the OP reply to a post you cannot see.

 

[truepurple]

So trim will work and bugs have been worked out, yet I should plug my sata6gb SSD into a sata 3gb port?

So said sata6gb port is slower then a sata3gb port, even with trim and without bugs, that about sum up everything you said?

What you said about drivers, what about linux?

P.S. No I don't plan on using either of those OS (linux and win7) but what do you mean about misaligned partitions?

 

[Cerb]

SSDs and new HDDs use 4096 byte sectors. Old HDDs used 512 byte sectors. NTFS defaults to using 4096 byte clusters. So, a partition not starting on a 4K boundary will require at least one more sector to be read or written to, since each filesystem block spans parts of two logical disk blocks. If the whole block isn't cached at the moment, that means an additional read from the drive, as well. SSDs from a few years ago, before OSes supporting alignment were common, were fast enough when emulating 512B sectors that it was more worried over than actually affected anyone's performance. New ones are relatively slower, compared to properly aligned sectors.

Vista should do it, but won't necessarily get it right. XP and older won't, but getting a new OS drive is a good excuse to get away from XP, if that's what you're still on. If you're on Vista, and it works well enough for you, IMO, stick it out until they fix the annoying GUIs from Windows 8.

 

[truepurple]

I use Linux (ubuntu specifically) and Win7 I said. What about ext4 with your sectors? How big is a sector? What do you mean "whole cached block"? Would Gparted "get it right" whatever you are talking about.

Anyway I don't need a answer to all that very much, so let's pass by that issue for now since it is mostly unrelated to the current issue of this MoBo, sata 3gb, offbrand maxwel sata 6gb, Fast SSD sata 6gb drive, what port to plug it in, whether to replace it altogether, etc.

 

[Cerb]

P.S. No I don't plan on using either of those OS (linux and win7)

Bit of a typo, then.

Pretty much every major, and now almost all, even esoteric, Linux distros' installers align by default. If you add, "discard" to your mount options in fstab, TRIM will work in Linux, too (or, you can periodically run fstrim).

I'd use the Intels ports, but support is good enough all-around, today, that you probably won't see a bit of practical difference between any of them.

 

[truepurple]

If needing to use XP or Vista

No I don't plan on using either of those OS

(linux and win7)

Explanation of what I do use, that is why I put them in parenthesis. I apologize if you found that confusing.

I'd use the Intels ports, but support is good enough all-around, today, that you probably won't see a bit of practical difference between any of them.

Any of what? Are you saying the maxwel SATA6gb ports run at half speed or less then?

I apologized for being unclear earlier but many of these replies are also unclear to me.

 

[Cerb]

The Marvell ports run at 6Gbps, or 600MBps, as advertised. The Marvell controller is either hooked to a 250MBps PCI-e link, and thus slower than the Intel ports no matter what, or has to go through an added bridge chip for 500MBps, the added latency of which reduces non-burst performance to around that of the Intel ports, or less.

Marvell 6Gbps controllers were added to motherboards entirely as an advertising feature.

Here's someone testing with the Pro version of that mobo:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/271605-32-patriot-wildfire-120gb-review-marvell-controller

 

[truepurple]

Seems like you are playing semantics with me, the port isn't running at that speed if it is bottle necked to a PCI-e link or bridge chip.

I am so disappointed with Asus right now, did all the major manufactures also do this farce or were there one or two that stayed honest with all their boards?

How do I avoid buying something like this in the future, a motherboard with a fake feature like this? whether it be sata or something else.

Also, how much bursting is involved with booting and running a OS? Any?

 

[Cerb]

I am so disappointed with Asus right now, did all the major manufactures also do this farce or were there one or two that stayed honest with all their boards?

All of them did it. Asus actually did it better than most, at least.

How do I avoid buying something like this in the future, a motherboard with a fake feature like this? whether it be sata or something else.

Good question. Most reviews just skip over things like extra drive controllers these days.

Also, how much bursting is involved with booting and running a OS? Any?

Sure, but again, it's not worth worrying about.

 

[truepurple]

How did asus do it better?

 

[Cerb]

How did asus do it better?

Using an added bridge chip with PCI-e 2.0, so that it could have 500MBps instead of 250MBps.