X58A-UD3R can't install windows xp on Marvell controller

[Dark Mantis]

It would be nice to discover that using the combination of the Turbo SATA option in the BIOS and the latest Marvell controller driver provides reliable SATA 6G performance (since we did pay for this when we bought our motherboards).  I am also very interested in knowing the burst I/O performance to a pair of 6 Gb/s SATA drives in RAID 0.  If the Marvell controller actually works properly we should see numbers in the 1000-1500 MB/s range in theory.

Nice idea! It would be good to find out that this part of the motherboard wasn't just wasted after all, but i won't hold my breath just yet.

Have any of you tried the updated firmware, driver and MRU?

If I remember correctly Pierre checked this out a little while ago but it was before the newest firmware/drivers that you refer to.

[Slider]

Although I haven't tried it (other than installing the latest 9128 driver just to see if it fixes my "black screen" crashes issue - it didn't; my next step is to outright disable it, along with everything else I don't use at the moment), I have some potentially bad news:

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/42075-my-p55a-ud4p-hdisk-transfer-rate-become-slow-after-firmware-update.html

Apparently he installed the firmware and updated drivers and his 9128 performance decreased to even worse levels.  He isn't running SSDs, but regular hard drives (the firmware update and latest drivers are supposed to improve SSD performance I believe).

So - even if the new code improves SSD performance (unproven at this point), it definitely does not look like it turns the 9128 into a top performing SATA 6G controller...

Here is another web page I stumbled upon where a guy who "sounds like" he might be fairly familiar with Gigabyte's implementation of the 9128 controller discusses it and the issues with it a bit:

http://www.overclock.net/11468940-post5.html

Ultimately he says the one and only situation it "might" be worth considering using the 9128 controller (other than where you are totally out of SATA ports and are forced to use it) is where you have a single C300 SSD, you only have one of them (no RAID 0) and you are willing to give up small file read/write performance for a small improvement in large file throughput.  I've always thought if I was to go the SSD route I would pick up a pair of smaller SSDs and set them up in a high speed RAID 0 so the 9128 would be once again totally useless to me (unless Gigabyte manages to magically fix the horrific performance of the 9128 in RAID 0).

[styr]

I just finally found the solution, but I'm still confuse why the marvell driver is not loading  properly in the begining.
I found this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859/
and I'm using windows xp32 to log in to the pre-install portion of windows and copy from my floppy 3 files belongs to marvel driver:
mv91xx.sys
mv91xxm.dll
mvxxmm.sys
to windows\system32\drivers dir even if I'm loading windows 64 bit.
and the system loading compliantly to the end.
Why I'm experiencing that issue, what can be wrong to not load the driver propertlley in the beginning?
any comment appreciate.
Thanks
Adam

I did successfully load xp64 after almost give up.
I've notice now windows xp won't load(constant reboot) if I change from IDE mode to AHCI and I will need AHCI mode for second partition for windows 7.
What is the difference if the Bios is set to IDE mode not to AHCI in xp and 7?
I'm still looking for Turbo SATA3 enabled option in the BIOS.I did check manual and all my X58-UD3R Bios FE rev and is not there.
If someone confirm please.
Thanks

[Dark Mantis]

What is the difference if the Bios is set to IDE mode not to AHCI in xp and 7?

The main difference is that it doesn't support Hot Swapping which is fairly essential for ESATA drives. The IDE mode is slightly slower also but not by a massive margin.

[styr]

Can you copy and paste the conversation here for us to see please?

Well if they have fixed the SATA3 issue with the Marvell chip I would have thought they would be making plenty of noise about it and I haven't even heard a whisper. As far as I am aware there is no BIOS update that cures this problem and personally I don't think it is even possible.

Although not Gigabyte themselves, in my scouring of web pages I found one review site where Gigabyte had sent them a beta BIOS (with new Marvell controller firmware), a new Marvell driver and a new Marvell RAID Utility and according to the review the speed improvement compared to using the Microsoft AHCI driver or the old Marvell driver was huge.  They claimed the performance was what they were expecting from the 3rd generation SATA (although their testing was using dual high speed SATA 6 Gbps hard drives with around 150 MB/s performance each in a RAID 0 and NOT using an SSD with extremely high throughput; I believe the burst performance (using the hard drive caches) was very high though).  What I found odd though is the new driver and RAID utility never was released on Gigabyte's web site as far as I can tell.  Even today Gigabyte does not install the Marvell driver at all by default with Windows 7.  Somewhere else I read that the reason Gigabyte recommends the MS AHCI driver is due to issues with the actual Marvell driver and SSD drives.  Although the MS AHCI driver is apparently slower than the latest Marvell driver, apparently it does not corrupt SSD drives when used on the boot drive (although I can't see any reason to connect an SSD to the Marvell controller if the speed is totally crippled).  Gigabyte may have incorporated the new firmware into their latest BIOS, but I don't know.

There is an old Marvell driver you can install if you want that is found on the current Gigabyte installation CD, but the only way to install it is to manually install it.  If you click "install Marvell driver" using the graphical setup interface (that runs when the CD is inserted), instead it installs a virtual console utility that allows the Marvell Raid Utility to talk to the controller.  It never installs the driver itself.

Unfortunately I discovered that if you do install the Marvell driver manually that the Marvell Raid Utility now fails to be able to communicate with the controller and you can no longer setup a RAID on it.  I did download a newer driver from a french website, but I haven't tried it yet (installing it now).

One additional fact I found is unless the BIOS is configured to SATA3 Turbo mode, the Marvell controller is crippled due to using a single PCIe 1.0 x1 path to the controller.  This bottleneck limits the maximum speed to 250 MB/s for the two SATA ports combined (this is 250 MB/s in each direction for a total of 500 MB/s if you add both directions together).  Since each SATA 3.0 port is theoretically capable of 6 Gbps or 750 MB/s, limiting the pair of ports to a total of 250 MB/s combined is a major slow down and this apparently can cause drives to drop out of a RAID.  By the time you add overhead and handshaking, the real limit ends up being somewhere around 150 MB/s.

When Turbo SATA3 is enabled in the BIOS, the Gigabyte motherboard reconfigures the PCIe 2.0 x16 path to the video card and uses 1/2 of it for the Marvell controller.  Now the video card connects using PCIe 2.0 x8 and the other PCIe 2.0 x8 is used for the Marvell controller.  None of today's single GPU video cards can use more than PCIe 2.0 x8 bandwidth so we should not notice any reduced video performance (unless running dual video cards or dual GPU cards).  This solution provides a 4000 MB/s path to the Marvell controller, more than double what is required (PCIe 2.0 provides 500 MB/s in each direction per x1 path).

One unknown to me is the USB 3.0 controller.  It looks like there is enough bandwidth available with the PCIe 2.0 x8 for both USB 3.0 and 2 SATA 6 G ports.  I don't know if both work at the same time or if it is "Turbo SATA3" or "Turbo USB 3.0".  The BIOS suggests it is one or the other...

Hi,
My X58A-UD3R working now without any issues (so far so good )I successfully load windows 7 and Xp64.
I tested the Raid0 Raptors 2x300gig in windows 7 and I'm getting min 160mb/s and max 225mb/s.Average is around 190.
I would like to try this option to enable Turbo in Marvell controller but can't find in My new Bios FE.
If someone conform what bios revision has that option.
Thanks
Adam

[Dark Mantis]

It doesn't seem to be part of the standard BIOS theat the board shipped with but it is possible that it has been incorporated into a newer version.