GA-P55A-UD4P SATA Ports

[ronbo613]

I have a Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4P ver. 1, I have some issues with the SATA ports. All six of the ports have drives plugged in. The drives on the six blue ports run by the Intel P55 chipset run fine, no problems. The hard drives plugged into the two white ports on the Marvell 9128 controller seem to work OK but fail SMART tests and don't show up in imaging/cloning software like Acronis.
My questions are:
I assume the Marvell-controlled ports are running at 3Gb/s. How do they get to the advertised 6Gb/s? I'm guessing it's best to run my boot drive and optical drive off the P55 controller. If I run the optical drive off the Marvell controller, would that negatively affect the drive's ability to write discs and, more importantly, affect the optical drive's capacity to act as first boot device? The computer is running in IDE mode, does switching to AHCI change the Marvell port's performance?
I plan to get an SSD as a boot drive soon. I assume the best place to have it is on the P55 controller in AHCI mode? If there was a 6Gb/s SATA SSD, is there any way to run it off the Marvell controller to get the full 6Gb/s speed? Since the current drives on the Marvell controller don't respond to SMART protocol, will it work with Windows 7 SSD management procedures(like TRIM)?
One last question about the optical drive. Running it off the P55 chip is best; what do you think about running it off the Marvell chipset or a PCI-E SATA port card?

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the GIgabyte Forum.

Bit like "War and Peace" that but let's see if we can cover most of the questions.

Your boot drive, whether magnetic or SSD, is best run off the SATA2_0 port. These ports will pass TRIM commands which the Marvell 9128 controller wont.

AHCI will give you a slightly better throughput than IDE but not by a tremendous amount.

Optical drives often have a problem with running under AHCI mode so IDE is better for them. Doesn't really matter where you put them though.

Forget 6 Gbs as that is a purely theortical value that the Marvell controller can't manage. Besides which no SSD and certainly no magnetic disk will get anywhgere near that speed.

[ronbo613]

Thanks for that info. I haven't had too many problems with the motherboard, this isn't really a major issue, but I've been occupied with SATA drives with a new 2TB disc drive and planning for the SSD.
Any way to have the hard drives on AHCI and optical drive on IDE?

[Dark Mantis]

No problem just have them on different controllers.

[ronbo613]

No problem just have them on different controllers.

So, run the hard drives, including an SSD boot drive on the Intel P55 chipset, with the PCH Control Mode set to AHCI and the optical drive on the Marvell 9128 controller with the GSATA Control Mode set to IDE? Then, the blue SATA ports(0-5) will be AHCI and the two white SATA ports(6-7) will be IDE?
If I may ask, what do most people use the GSATA(Marvell 9128) configuration for; a RAID 0 or RAID 1?
Thanks again for your help.

[Dark Mantis]

No it is not advisable to use the Marvell 9128 controller for RAID especially 6 GBs disks. It just isn't stable enough.

[ronbo613]

That Marvell controller doesn't seem to do much.
I noticed there is no Marvell controller listed anywhere in the Device Manager. Since I knew I wouldn't be running a RAID, I wonder if I didn't install any Marvell drivers. I have the Marvell Tray installed, but I can't log in because I don't have the correct password. Will installing the more recent Marvell Console driver and RAID Utility make the two GSATA ports any more functional for use with non-RAID hard drives?
Looks like I will install the latest Intel RST drivers, run the P55 SATA ports on AHCI and run an SSD boot drive on SATA2_0 and set the Marvell GSATA ports to IDE and run the optical drive there.
One might think a 6Gb/s SSD with a Marvell controller, like the Crucial RealSSD, would work on a Marvell 6Gb/s storage controller.

[Fire_Marshall13]

Does this go for the GA-790XTA -UD4 board as well.
I want to insall SSD and Optical (1 EA.) in IDE configuration on SATA 6 and 7
And 3, 1.TB HDD's in SATA 0 tru 5 in  AHCI configuration.
Need so split the load and operate most efficently.
What do you think??

[ronbo613]

I think SSDs need to run on AHCI in order for TRIM to work. If the Marvell controller does not support TRIM, it does not seem like the best choice for an SSD, either under AHCI or IDE. Without TRIM, the SSD will slow down over time.

[Fire_Marshall13]

Thank you
I realieze I have a problem and now I am not sure what to do. I want the best possible configuration, but it looks impossble with this board.
SSD and DVD (2) on one controller set at AHCI Prefered. This makes the AMD chip the only choice
and (3) WD HDS on the other controller in AHCI mode if possible but I can't put three items into 2 ports, So Marvell sit idle on this board for ever. What a waist.
I was looking to split the load on the chips but that looks unlikley.
So why the Marvell chip why not 2 AMDs? 
If this board won't do the job any idears what Gig board may work?
Thanks for the input. Helps alot. Learning as we go I guess lol.

[ronbo613]

Learning as we go I guess lol.

So true for everyone.

Another section of this forum is dedicated to AMD motherboards, you may find additional information there:

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/board,6.0.html

[Fire_Marshall13]

Thanks will do

[Dark Mantis]

I think SSDs need to run on AHCI in order for TRIM to work. If the Marvell controller does not support TRIM, it does not seem like the best choice for an SSD, either under AHCI or IDE. Without TRIM, the SSD will slow down over time.

This is not quite correct. TRIM will also work on IDE as well as AHCI. Although you are quite right about the Marvell controller not passing the TRIM commands. AHCI is a bit faster than IDE though so there is also a speed benefit.

@Fire_Marshall13
I wouldn't worry about splitting the load across the various controllers as it really wont make much difference. Just try and get the drives that need AHCI on one controller and the optical drives on another that you can set to IDE mode.
As ronbo613 suggested try the AMD section for more information on your particular board.

[ronbo613]

This is not quite correct. TRIM will also work on IDE as well as AHCI. Although you are quite right about the Marvell controller not passing the TRIM commands. AHCI is a bit faster than IDE though so there is also a speed benefit.

Wrong again. Not a big shock.
I thought that running on IDE, SSD functions like TRIM had to be run manually, where as with AHCI and Windows 7, they run automatically.

I noticed there is no Marvell controller listed anywhere in the Device Manager. Since I knew I wouldn't be running a RAID, I wonder if I didn't install any Marvell drivers. I have the Marvell Tray installed, but I can't log in because I don't have the correct password. Will installing the more recent Marvell Console driver and RAID Utility make the two GSATA ports any more functional for use with non-RAID hard drives?

What do you think about installing the latest Marvell drivers? I'm not getting any SMART info through the GSATA ports(maybe like this thread: http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,4035.0.html ) maybe more recent drivers will help?
I've been looking around; seems like nearly all the 6Gb/s controller hardware uses the Marvell 9128 chip.

[Dark Mantis]

To be perfectly honest I would just say forget the Marvell ports as far as 6 Gbs goes. If you just treat them as SATA2 ports then fine but they are a dead loss as far as anything else goes. Until just recently the Marvell chip was the only "SATA3" solution and that is why it has been implimented on so many different makes of board. It's just a shame that it couldn't be fixed by a software update.