Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: mokkabonna on May 05, 2011, 02:45:11 pm
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I have the GA-X58A-UD3 motherboard and I just got my new 120 GB Vertex 3 SSD, which is capable of very high speeds 550MB/s ish sequential read, from tests I've read.
So I plugged my SSD into one of the sata 3 ports and made sure AHCI was turned on and then I did a clean reinstall of win 7 ultimate. Also installed the marvell drivers during the install. (that's the way to do it right?)
After install I run AS SSD and I get the following results:
(http://bildr.no/image/877106.jpeg)
This is much less than expected and I am scratching my head trying to figure out why.
I've found this messageboard and I keep hearing that the marvell controller is crap. Still.. is that the reason for my low speeds?
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2277.msg11813.html#msg11813
Should I just accept that in reality my motherboard don't really have sata 3 speeds even though it says so? and then plug my vertex 3 into one of the standard sata 2 ports? Any help appreciated! :)
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Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.
Obviously you haven't searched the forum before asking your question or you would have soon found the answer. The SATA3 on your motherboiard is controlled by the Meavell 9128 chip. This controller was not up to the standard it should have been and never worked at proper SATA3 speeds. It just wouldn't handle the throughput of anything more than SATA2. In fact the Intel ICH10R SATA2 controller was actually faster so I would suggest that you put your nice shiny new SSD onto the first SATA2_0 port as that is where you will get the best speeds out of it.
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Thanks for the fast reply.
Well I did search the forums quite a lot before I posted, and what I got from that was that the marvell chip was, as you just said now, was not performing well for sata 3 standards. And in most of the cases, people got encouraged to put it on a sata 2 port, but all the posts I found about it was for drives that AFAIK wasn't even capable of performing over 3Gbps anyway.
So the question I was left with was "are people encouraged to do so since anyway their drives don't utilize sata 3 really, and for sata 2 the intel controller is better?" But you basically answered that pretty clearly now. I was hoping that even if the marvell controller don't deliver on the promise of full 6 Gbps, at least it would maybe deliver more than SATA 2 speeds. It was just a bit hard to believe that it wouldn't, since when my motherboard clearly boasts SATA 3.. :/
Thanks for your help. Does anyone have a quick tip on what motherboard I could get that ACTUALLY have sata 3 support AND delivers the 6 Gbps speed?
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I wasn't getting at you just making an observation. It's just I wish I had a pound for every time I had written that out! ;)
I was caught out byt he SATA3 problem as well as absic and several other members I could mention. It just doesn't work with SATA3 drives.
If you want to get a motherboard that definitely supports it the new P67 boards and the inpending Z68 boards wil all support SATA3 with the new Marvell chip and the Intel SATA3 chip as well.
I have the P67 board beside me and I can vberify the ability of the SATA3 chipset on that board as I am running a RAID0 array with SATA3 disks with no problems whatsoever.
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Poor DM! you might want to consider a form letter For Marvell 9128 that you can sticky in on every second post at the moment! Tee Hee!
Mokkabonna ! everybody is in the same boat over this one, it still astounds me there's not a party/civil action running for all the problems that has rippled through the industry over this one......I personally think a £50 discount on my next purchase would soften the blow it caused me, I probably spent close to £220 and a month in labour with "NO" result for my labours...........you have to deal with the reality of what you presently have!
Your options are ICH10R, a RAID Card or a new MoBo..........I went for a raid card and a PCI-X Drive.........Yes I have the same board as you!
Hope This Helps
Aussie Allan
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Thanks all for the replies, I guess I will just accept the board I have now and maybe buy a new motherboard in the future.
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I think that is probably the most sensible way to go and you can always use an addon card if you feel it is necessary in the future.
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I don't mean to thread-jack, but being in the exact situation, I was wondering if any of you would recommend a good add-on card. I have the C300 CTFDDAC128MAG. Thanks in advance.
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Not at all Mr Holic
Bang for buck has to be the Rocket Raid 640........... with 4 sata ports......SataIII too!.......and bootable.......I think they'd be around the $120-140 US mark for you guys.......I got one (640) for storage in my box with a RevoDrive x2 for C:Drive.....Lightning!
Aussie Allan
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That one looks great Allan. Are there any with less ports that might be a little more affordable, or is that one so good that it would be worth saving up for? (It's $180 on newegg.com the US's best tech store, though I've seen it for around $90 at a site I never used before.) Is there something in the $50-$60 dollar range? 47.3440 to 56.8128 in Australian dollars according to Google. Thanks for you help. I don't want to end up in the same situation by buying something crappy, but I really only need it to power my single ssd when it comes down to it.
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Gimmy a day or two to have a hunt around for you.....wish I was paying in OZ dollars instead of British pounds.........everything is stupid expensive here in the UK presently........probably twice what you pay for the same item after conversion.........not many places in the world left where you pay $2.30US for petrol.............and that PER LITRE!....I kid you not!
Aussie Allan
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The 622 (RocketRaid PCI-X card) is almost half the price of the one I quoted with 2 ports.........seems to be the only real ones out there with 6GB/s .....cheaper then a new mobo and has JBOD ,0,1,5 and 10 raid support
Aussie Allan
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Both of them are nice cards but in my opinion I would pay the extra and buy the RocketRaid 640 which gives more ports for the future.
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Gotta agree with Mantus there as it was my original "Gut" recommendation......It really does future proof you no end, but at the end of the day you buy what you can afford......Bugger the recession, ... where all feeling it!
Aussie Allan
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Don't the Rocket Raid cards use Marvell controllers? As far as I know the cheapest cards that will perform correctly start at about $360 USD. IMO too much money. I'm in the same situation and I'm going to live with it until socket 2011 or Bulldozer come out.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118107&cm_re=sata_controller-_-16-118-107-_-Product
Bill
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Yup they use 2 Marvell 9128 controller chips and a PCI-E 4x connection. Should be faster than onboard solutions on X58 boards but still crippled.
Bill
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Explain crippled!
Aussie Allan
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The Marvell 9128 controller was never designed to support SSD's. If you use one of the latest SATA 3 SSD's on any Marvell controller available today it will limit its performance. The Marvell controllers just can't handle the bandwidth and massive IOPS.
Bill
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The Marvell 9128 controller was never designed to support SSD's. If you use one of the latest SATA 3 SSD's on any Marvell controller available today it will limit its performance. The Marvell controllers just can't handle the bandwidth and massive IOPS.
Bill
Either was the ICH10R which out performs the 9128, 2:1...so what Sata ports do you recommend using for SSD then ? .... None!... We just have a new bottleneck in the industry that developers/manufactures are just going to have to work through.
Marvells next implementation, we know as the 9182 has reported to have ironed out more bugs but still lacks the performance that 6GB/S SataIII invokes in all of us, Marketing departments have been ruthless on this mark where most people I talk too can't understand why they pay the premium buying Sata III equipment and are then convinced there's something wrong because there not getting the performance the salesmen stated ...SataIII ( 6GB/s) is theoretical...... and probably won't be achieved for some time yet from a single drive, SSD or otherwise.
Where there has been marked improvement is PCI-X based drives.... I have one (RevoDrive X2) that is to be honest, pretty amazing, at bog stock settings , I was enjoying 600mb/s write and 800mb/s read out of the box and they tout 120,000 IOPS ....Cool!
Marvell have something else up there sleeve similar in nature to Seagate's Momentus XT Hybrid drive with the 9130 chip/controller..... have a read about it here: http://www.marvell.com/products/storage/storage_system_solutions/sata_controllers_pc_consumer/hyper_duo_productbrief.pdf
Effectively connecting up a SSD and a HDD to the same controller....Result!......80% of SSD performance with all the storage of the Platter drive....reducing costs by a factor of 300%..... Things just get more exciting every day!
Aussie Allan
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There is a lot of innovations around at the moment like the Marvell one Allan just posted the link to and the Momentus along with upgrades to SSD technology. It is all helping to bring down the price and speed up the performance so that it is available to more people.
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Too right DM, I have one of those XTs in the laptop now .... way cool!
AA
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I wasn't aware that they did it in 2.5" drives as well. How does that compare to the standard drive then ?
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DM......I wasn't aware that they did it in a 3.5" .....they look no different to a standard 9mm thick 2.5 laptop drive, but that's where it ends, inside you have 4GB of Flash NAND Storage, with the adaptive learning capability of the drive, they fly buy the 3rd boot, the more you use them in a repetitive many with the programs you use regularly the faster thing go.....250, 320 and 500Gb ........you can pick the 500s up for about 88 squid now including and delivery. if you need any more info ....yell!
Aussie Allan
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The Marvell 9128 controller was never designed to support SSD's. If you use one of the latest SATA 3 SSD's on any Marvell controller available today it will limit its performance. The Marvell controllers just can't handle the bandwidth and massive IOPS.
Bill
Either was the ICH10R which out performs the 9128, 2:1...so what Sata ports do you recommend using for SSD then ? .... None!... We just have a new bottleneck in the industry that developers/manufactures are just going to have to work through.
Marvells next implementation, we know as the 9182 has reported to have ironed out more bugs but still lacks the performance that 6GB/S SataIII invokes in all of us, Marketing departments have been ruthless on this mark where most people I talk too can't understand why they pay the premium buying Sata III equipment and are then convinced there's something wrong because there not getting the performance the salesmen stated ...SataIII ( 6GB/s) is theoretical...... and probably won't be achieved for some time yet from a single drive, SSD or otherwise.
Where there has been marked improvement is PCI-X based drives.... I have one (RevoDrive X2) that is to be honest, pretty amazing, at bog stock settings , I was enjoying 600mb/s write and 800mb/s read out of the box and they tout 120,000 IOPS ....Cool!
Marvell have something else up there sleeve similar in nature to Seagate's Momentus XT Hybrid drive with the 9130 chip/controller..... have a read about it here: http://www.marvell.com/products/storage/storage_system_solutions/sata_controllers_pc_consumer/hyper_duo_productbrief.pdf
Effectively connecting up a SSD and a HDD to the same controller....Result!......80% of SSD performance with all the storage of the Platter drive....reducing costs by a factor of 300%..... Things just get more exciting every day!
Aussie Allan
If you are using a board with SATA II or Marvell SATA III controllers of any kind as of today the latest SATA III SSD's will not perform as they should because they will be bottle necked by the controller. I'm using the Intel SATA II controller on rig in my sig as it feels faster than the Marvell 9128. SATA II caps out at about 267 megs a second. The Marvell in the low 400's. Several new SATA III SSD's have sequential reads/writes of over 500 megs per second. To see the full potential of any decent SATA III SSD will require a new motherboard or a $360 USD addon card.
I take it you mean PCI-E not PCI-X? PCI-X is use only on server class boards as far as I know.
Hybrid drives are only a stop gap measure until SSD prices come down. They are only useful for people that use their PC's in a repetitious manner and do not manipulate large data sets.
Bill
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Hay ya Bill
The "X" was supposed to be subjective, as in put whatever ya want in!
I for the life of me can't understand the low "267 Mb/s" you state through the Intel controller of your motherboard you stated as MAX , you might have a problem with your set-up as I had 440Mb/s on the ICH10R with 6 really old spin points raided on the same controller you stated.
And a new motherboard to get around the present bottleneck........Unless I've missed something , I don't know of any board on the market that can perform unmodified to a high end SSDs full potential......PCI-(*) has the bandwidth right now.........
You also might want to change supplier for your addon cards......I just not 6 weeks ago purchased a RocketRaid 640 6gb/s supported card for way less then half of what your stating...........infact if you only need 2 sata ports you can cut that in half again with the 622 card, again 6gb/s compliant.
Try and keep an open mind on Hybrid drives as it's not the black and white subject going off your rigid statement. I ordered and paid for 1 unit some months back and the silly buggers sent me 3! I can assure you from experience that they work no slower then any 7200rpm drive on the market and any program I have opened before, load quite a bit quicker,widows boots faster and a virus scan literally flies ! At about 16 pence a gig..........I think them very good value for money, but each to there own!
Aussie Allan
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The X, Ok I get it.
The 267 megs per second figure is per drive aka single drive. The ICH10R can handle much more in RAID mode as each channel can handle approx 267 megs per second.
I understand the RocketRaid cards are much cheaper than the LSI card I linked to. Duh forgot the link in my last post. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118107 The RocketRaid card should be better than the single 9128 controller on older X58 boards like mine but its not the ultimate solution as it would still limit bandwidth. The new Marvell 88SE9182 controller on new X58 boards looks to be much improved and may be better than the RocketRaid 640 cards. I could find no reviews testing the new Marvell 88SE9182 controller with a second gen SATA III SSD. An updated RocketRaid card using the Marvell 88SE9182 controller may fill the need completely for X58 users that want to see the full potential of a fast SATA III SSD if it does not cap bandwidth. We will not know for sure until someone does the testing.
On the hybrid drive subject I have a 320 gig Momentus XT in a box less than 5 feet from me. It was in the wife's laptop until recently. It did what it was meant to do which was replace a 320 gig 5400 rpm drive with the fastest drive available for the money spent. The laptop now has my old Intel X-25M G2 80 gig drive in it and it is so much faster than the XT its not even funny. Sure there was a huge loss in capacity but she has no need for anything larger at this point in time. The draw back with the XT's are the limited size of the flash memory and the flash being used for reads only. Even Intel's Fast Response tech available on the new Z68 boards can't really compete with a fast SSD. It comes much closer than an XT does but in the end you still sacrifice performance for capacity. See review here. http://www.anandtech.com/show/4329/intel-z68-chipset-smart-response-technology-ssd-caching-review
Bill
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Then Gigabyte cheated us selling motherboards and telling that they have a 6Gb/s Sata port.
And you cannot say that you didn't now it before, all manufacturers make tests, but you concealed the results.
I'm very upset about that.
I'm another disappointed Gibabyte customer. First I had many problems with the memory, and now, I would like to use my Samsung 840 Pro, and I can only use it at half speed.
What else?