GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 2.0) - Doubt SSD SATA III (6Gb) Marvell / ICH drivers

[mmmbopzombie]

Hi everybody,

I hope you can help me. I've got a GA-X58A-UD3R (rev. 2.0) motherboard with a Intel i7 processor. I have just bought this VTX4-25SAT3-128G SATA III (6Gb) SSD and I want to get the best performances of it. (I also have 2 other 2TB WD 7200 SATA III HDD which will be used for storage purposes and a Bluray RW SATA III drive).

I will install Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate x64 in my SSD. According to the motherboard's user manual, I should install the SSD in SATA ports GSATA3_6 or GSATA3_7 as they are SATA III 6Gb/s ports.

In fact I have already intalled everything as follows:

SATA2_0 (2TB WD 7200 SATA III HD)
SATA2_1 (2TB WD 7200 SATA III HD)

GSATA3_6 (128 GB VTX4-25SAT3-128G SSD) (Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64)
GSATA3_6 (Bluray RW SATA III drive)


I have the latest Motherboard BIOS FH and I checked that all the SATA Ports are set to AHCI.

My doubt is the following, I read on the internet and other forums that Marvell drivers are not suggested for SATA III Ports/drives as they cannot deliver the best performance and that the ICH10R drivers are more suitable and recommended. Is this true? Can I uninstall the marvell drivers and install the ICH10R drivers onces Windows is installed? Should it be only before installing Windows?

Any help will be usefull and appreciated

[appie]

Good day,
Do not install your SSD on the Marvell ports as you will have problems in the long run, rather install the SSD on port 0 (ICH10R) and then reinstall your OS making sure that you load the 64 bit  AHCI drivers just before you you install the OS. Then put you two 2TB drives on ports 2 & 3 (ICH10R) and your Bluray on 4 or 5

[GoodBytes]

Exactly.

The Marvel chip is crap, and will provide you with LOWER performance than your Intel SATA-2 controller.

You see, what happen is that Marvel worked on SATA-3 controller, but someone had the brilliant idea of making it for PCI-E 1x. The result, is that you are blocked at SATA-2 speed by the lack of PCI-E lanes. Genius, I know. He should get an award.So we have all been had. And for teh simple fact that its seperate chip, its performance is reduced. Hence why the Intel SATA controller, will be faster.

But it's ok. Your SSD even if its SATA-3, will not be limited by the SATA-2 controller in everyday use, because small file performance is really far from reaching anywhere close to SATA-2 speed. So unless you work with GB files, like doing video editing and such, you will not be affected. Including games.

So Windows will fly, same for your programs, including PhotoShop, and other large programs, and games will have a noticeably faster startup time (varies between game to game, as it depends if the loading process is due of loading multiple files, or your CPU/GPU is at work in loading the stage/level/match/syncing other players).