Battle of the SATA 3.0 Controllers

[Rob Williams]

With newer SSDs now coming well within 10% of maxing out a SATA 3.0 port, it's important to make sure that your motherboard is properly equipped to handle such drives if planning to buy one. In our testing, while AMD's and Intel's solutions offered superb performance, Marvell's leaved a bit (or a lot) to be desired.

Read through our look at the performance of AMD's, Intel's and Marvell's SATA 3.0 controllers and then discuss it here!

[Rob Williams]

Whoops, I did say that I'd put PCMark 7 break-down scores here, didn't I?

AMD A75
HDD Suite: 5283
Windows Defender: 5.51 MB/s
Importing Pictures: 28.05 MB/s
Video Editing: 23.17 MB/s
Windows Media Center: 8.24 MB/s
Adding Music: 1.40 MB/s
Starting Applications: 54.92 MB/s
Gaming: 16.72 MB/s

Intel Z68
HDD Suite: 5390
Windows Defender: 5.63 MB/s
Importing Pictures: 30.32 MB/s
Video Editing: 23.50 MB/s
Windows Media Center: 8.28 MB/s
Adding Music: 1.41 MB/s
Starting Applications: 54.28 MB/s
Gaming: 17.17 MB/s

Marvell 9172
HDD Suite: 5125
Windows Defender: 5.60 MB/s
Importing Pictures: 25.12 MB/s
Video Editing: 22.94 MB/s
Windows Media Center: 8.12 MB/s
Adding Music: 1.41 MB/s
Starting Applications: 49.06 MB/s
Gaming: 16.92 MB/s

[Psi*]

I hope that I am not going to come across as being "thick", but do X58 m/bs have an inferior Marvell PCIe interface? If so and sort of related, this would also indicate that any PCIe adapter card on a PCIe 2.0 m/b would also be similarily throtteled.

[Kougar]

Sigh... every time I can get happy with my old rig, something like this comes along and gives me a tangible reason for why I should upgrade. Rob, it's all your fault!

Originally Posted by Psi*

I hope that I am not going to come across as being "thick", but do X58 m/bs have an inferior Marvell PCIe interface? If so and sort of related, this would also indicate that any PCIe adapter card on a PCIe 2.0 m/b would also be similarily throtteled.

Not at all, you don't learn if ya don't ask!

Unfortunately for us both, almost every X58 board that offers SATA 6Gbps does indeed use these inferior Marvell controllers. Remember that PCIe is measured in lanes, so any adapter card that was 1x would be bottlenecked, but most SATA 6Gbps cards available should be 4x wide.

[Rob Williams]

I can't believe I forgot to give Robert (Kougar) a shout-out in the article; apologies man! Robert endured a barrage of questions from me over the course of literally eight hours or so sometime last week in order to make sure we had things straight for this article, so kudos for that

Originally Posted by Kougar

Unfortunately for us both, almost every X58 board that offers SATA 6Gbps does indeed use these inferior Marvell controllers. Remember that PCIe is measured in lanes, so any adapter card that was 1x would be bottlenecked, but most SATA 6Gbps cards available should be 4x wide.

It's unfortunate, that's for sure. One motherboard vendor mentioned to me that some of their boards had begun using ASMedia chipsets, so once I get a board that has one of those, I might re-run all of the testing, while also adding SATA 2.0 results into the mix, and some real-world tests.

[marfig]

Thanks both (Rob and Kougar) for this review.

Unfortunately, Marvell's is precisely the SATA 3.0 controller on my board. What's more disheartening, they don't offer software updates. My driver 1.0.0.10.42 is listed as current on Asus downloads and yet the date is from July 2010.

The performance differences are utterly dismaying. Not to imply it wouldn't still be great to have SATA 3 devices on my computer. But those numbers are like earlier version of Intel SATA 3 controllers.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by marfig

Unfortunately, Marvell's is precisely the SATA 3.0 controller on my board. What's more disheartening, they don't offer software updates. My driver 1.0.0.10.42 is listed as current on Asus downloads and yet the date is from July 2010.

No kidding! I Googled for these different chipsets and have surmised that Marvell itself doesn't even list them on its website. To update a driver you have to take a chance with newer versions that float around the Web - but there's no telling if it's going to work ideally for you or not, since it wasn't built for YOUR motherboard (where vendor-specific tweaks might have made it into the driver).

[Psi*]

[QUOTE=Kougar;49587.
.
.
... but most SATA 6Gbps cards available should be 4x wide.[/QUOTE]Does such a card exist?

[Kougar]

Originally Posted by Psi*

Does such a card exist?

Look for any PCI Express 4x cards. They will usually be found on 4+ SATA port cards...

Newegg seems to have a literal MOUNTAIN of 1x slot cards, incredible. They split them into Add On cards and RAID controllers, which makes it even worse...

Most of the suitable cards on Newegg are RAID cards. You can use them as just a controller card though, but they cost more. Such as this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816115077

Or for the extreme situations, try Intel http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816117214

[Psi*]

thanks Kougar. I had plowed thru Newegg before posting that question & it made no sense what so ever.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Kougar

Or for the extreme situations, try Intel http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816117214

Is there nothing cheaper than that, like a poor-man's 2 port card or something? I searched around but couldn't find much. Newegg's search feature fails at times, and this is one of those times.

I mentioned to someone the other day that it's too bad Intel doesn't make its own controller cards, but lo and behold, it does. Still, no one will want to pay even $100 for a card that fixes a SATA 6Gb/s problem.

[Psi*]

The right adapter card looks like it will be a serious investment.

Visiting HighPoint Technologies shows they are using the Marvell 88SE9128 ... is that what should be avoided??? It also appears that some of their controllers require a server board or one that can make room for the controller board's bios ... ASUS desktop boards might not be compatible in other words.

[Kougar]

Originally Posted by Psi*

The right adapter card looks like it will be a serious investment.

Visiting HighPoint Technologies shows they are using the Marvell 88SE9128 ... is that what should be avoided??? It also appears that some of their controllers require a server board or one that can make room for the controller board's bios ... ASUS desktop boards might not be compatible in other words.

Psi... it did not even occur to me to make sure they didn't use Marvell controllers, but you are indeed correct. Nice find That Highpoint RocketRAID card uses a Marvell controller that is circa-2009, meaning it actually predates the variants of the Marvell controller utilized on X58 and P67 motherboards... So I guess my first link is a dud after all! I suggest avoiding it like the plague.

I am no longer sure there IS an affordable solution for full SATA 6Gbps performance on an add-in card. Quality cards that meet all the requirements only seem to go as low as ~$300... Anything cheaper either isn't SATA 6Gbps compliant, or is PCIe 1x. Here's Intel's list of SATA/SAS/RAID controller cards.

Okay, I shall correct myself again. LSI appears to utilize a non-Marvell controller and does offer this controller card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816118114 As long as it allows users to select AHCI mode in the card's BIOS, then it should be a solid card. Without having personally used one I'm not 100% certain if it will allow this. How it handles pass-through commmands is important, because in RAID mode features like TRIM will be lost, so it is important to use AHCI with such a card if not using RAID.

[Rob Williams]

Originally Posted by Kougar

Okay, I shall correct myself again. LSI appears to utilize a non-Marvell controller and does offer this controller card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816118114 As long as it allows users to select AHCI mode in the card's BIOS, then it should be a solid card. Without having personally used one I'm not 100% certain if it will allow this. How it handles pass-through commmands is important, because in RAID mode features like TRIM will be lost, so it is important to use AHCI with such a card if not using RAID.

$150 for a ONE port card? That is ridiculous! At that point one might as well just suck up the loss of performance on their Marvell chip and just prepare for their next full PC upgrade.

[Psi*]

One would really have to have a need for speed to make this jump. But if one did, I noticed this at Adaptec. A hybrid SSD + HDD RAID controller, 8 lane PCIe Gen2, 6Gb/s per port ... Newegg. And, coming with cables is apparently a bonus == $.

So if one were going to make the jump, this one gets my vote. My issue is that I would need 3 ... sooo I don't think so ... business is that good, so far.