Trim support

[VI3L]

Hello friends at Anandtech

I have been searching for several hours on google to find the answer to my question with no luck! Hopefully one of you smart fellers here knows...

Question: Does the Marvell 9182 controller support TRIM or not? and can you prove it?

Also, I purchased the Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120gb SSD along with the G1 Assasin from Gigabyte. Was wondering if anyone had experience with either of these products, mainly the Mushkin. I was debating between 2 64gb Crucial M4s in raid 0 or the Mushkin Deluxe. Decided to give Mushkin a shot!


http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820226225

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813128472


Any input is greatly appreciated!

Thanks for your time, Chad

 

[Shmee]

nice motherboard, AND nice SSD

not sure positive about the marvel controller, but I think there is a simple enough way to figure it out. If there is an option in the BIOS, enable AHCI for everything. It often defaults to IDE on secondary sata controllers and sometimes even ICH10R.

If AHCI is enabled, I THINK TRIM will work, so long as your OS supports it.

 

[sub.mesa]

The problem is not the controller - on Linux or BSD platform it will be TRIM capable - but the drivers. Using AS SSD, you can look what driver is active, it probably starts with "mv" which indicates Marvell drivers. There has been some talk about the most recent Marvell drivers supporting TRIM, but I've not seen anything substantive yet. For all intents and purposes, consider the Marvell drivers to lack support for TRIM.

Regardless, you should have better performance on the Intel controller; do not use Marvell ports on your motherboard for SSDs, even if they are 6Gbps. For several reasons, the Intel 3Gbps ports are actually faster than the 6Gbps Marvell ports. If your motherboard does not have a chipset with 6Gbps SATA support, then you simply have no 6Gbps SATA, period. Those Marvell chips are added so that motherboard makers can claim 6Gbps SATA support on boards that use older chipsets.

 

[VI3L]

Regardless, you should have better performance on the Intel controller; do not use Marvell ports on your motherboard for SSDs, even if they are 6Gbps. For several reasons, the Intel 3Gbps ports are actually faster than the 6Gbps Marvell ports. If your motherboard does not have a chipset with 6Gbps SATA support, then you simply have no 6Gbps SATA, period. Those Marvell chips are added so that motherboard makers can claim 6Gbps SATA support on boards that use older chipsets.

I believe you are thinking of the marvell 9123 and 9128 controllers, very similar name. The new "9182" controller has twice the PCI E lanes and runs at true sata 3 speeds. That's the main reason i bought this motherboard.

 

[Meghan54]

In an answer to your question, your best bet is dealing with Gigabyte.

I say this because, in a discussion about the same issue with an Asus motherboard, one person contacted Marvell and this was the end result of that:

I contacted Marvell, and now ASUS directly; Marvell claims their contracts with OEMs makes it the OEM's responsibility to document and support these chips -- in this case ASUS.

What that means is Marvell sells the chip to the OEM and it's the OEM that will or won't enable features of that chip on a particular motherboard. The real answer will have to come from Gigabyte. You and everyone else can speculate until the sun goes down, but only Gigabyte truly knows.

Good luck.

 

[sub.mesa]

I believe you are thinking of the marvell 9123 and 9128 controllers, very similar name. The new "9182" controller has twice the PCI E lanes and runs at true sata 3 speeds. That's the main reason i bought this motherboard.

Ah indeed you are right. That chip appears to roughly be double as fast with a single SSD. Not sure if the added PCIe bandwidth is the only variable that made that happen, but it appears to be a tight match with Intels 6Gbps controller which is alot better than the previous generation Marvell controllers.

Then the question of TRIM support remains, if Marvell drivers offer no TRIM the performance of your SSD might drop gradually. There have been some sources that claim to have done tests which should indicate TRIM support, but I'm not very convinced yet. To be on the safe side, it wouldn't hurt to set aside some extra space for overprovisioning, by making your partition smaller than the full capacity. This can only work on a new SSD which have not been used before, or you have to perform a secure erase procedure first.

TRIM support is not dependent on the actual hardware chip, but rather on the software drivers. Previously Microsoft AHCI/IDE driver was the only driver supporting TRIM, after that Intel and AMD followed. Marvell drivers would be a logical next candidate, but I've not seen any authoritative claims about it having gained TRIM support yet.

 

[jhansman]

I have an email into tech support for my mobo to see if the Marvell (9120) controller on it supports TRIM. If I learn anything seemingly of value, I'll post it here. Right now, it seems the only use for the two SATA3 ports it controls is RAID.

I was all set to get another M4 to pair up with my existing for RAID 0 until I read up on the whole thing. I am now instead saving my shekels for a second, larger SSD for apps and such in hopes of replacing my 1 TB spinner.