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Where to place an SSD?

A

Ararat

Member
Hi all. I am currently running an X58/ICH10R system. My motherboard has the 6x SATA2 ports from the southbridge, plus an additional 6x SATA3 ports via add-in chips (4 of them are from Marvell SE9120 chips, and the other 2 are from a Marvell SE9128 chip). In addition to these, I have an Asus U3S6 PCIe 2.0 x4 card that has another 2 ports (I believe they are from a Marvell SE9123).

It is currently running a 60GB Vertex 2 as the boot drive (attached to one of the ICH10R ports). I have a 120GB Agility 3 in my laptop, which has been recently replaced with a Zenbook that came with an SSD, so I think it's time to take the 120GB SSD out, and place it into my desktop machine.

So my question is, should I attach this SATA3 drive to one of my native (southbridge) SATA2 ports, or to one of the SATA3 ports? I assume that there is additional latency associated with these ports compared to the southbridge ports? Does any increase in bandwidth make up for the increased latency?

Thanks.
 
Coup27 said:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2216267

This thread may shed some light on the limitations of those Marvell chips.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Yes, I had read this comment:

"don't waste your time. The Marvell chip is limited by INTERNAL PCI-E restrictions of x1 speeds. Has nothing to do with the board its utilized on. Typical speeds are capped at 400/250 regardless of 1 fast sata3 SSD.. or 2 slower sata2 SSD's in raid."

However, he does not specify whether he is talking about PCIe 1.1 or 2.0 at x1. Because that makes all the difference. Your implication is that it is 1.1, and therefore may as well go with the ICH10 port, however his comment states transfer rates of 400/250 (the 400 indicating 2.0?). PCIe 2.0 x1 would be enough to get almost all of the transfer rate of the Agility3, but 1.1 would be pointless.

Of course if I were to run 2 of these on the card, then x1 would be limiting, even at 2.0, but if the chip is internally limited to x1 @ PCIe 1.1, then it raises the question of why they even made them SATA3, as 250MB/s is slower than the previous standard.

I guess my question still stands?
 
I've read different stories/theories/explanations from different people. What I would do in your situation is to try the agillity 3 in each of the ports and run crystal diskmark/ATTO or another ssd speed measurement tool, then report back here with results.
 
Ok. It'll be a couple of weeks before i get a break long enough to do that (I wouldn't have had time to do the transplant until then anyway), but I'll report the results here.
 
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