phil128

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Hi all.

I've got an Asus Maximus Extreme 3 motherboard with a Sata 3 controller on it. The controller is a marvel 9123.
For some reason I'm getting 370Meg read speeds and 90 meg write speeds. I've install the marvel driver from within Windows, but I'm having no luck getting the reporting 500+ meg read and write speeds. I've enabled AHCI within the bios too.

Any tips please?

Thanks.
 

danraies

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If you were seeing 25mb/s speeds then I'd be worried that something was wrong. However since you're pretty close to what one would expect then I'm pretty sure you're getting lower numbers than you want because Marvel controllers tend to be slower than Intel controllers.

Also, where are you getting your benchmarks? AS SSD numbers are going to be lower than ATTO numbers.
 

phil128

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These are my results.

Using the Marvel controller.

Sata3Marvel.jpg


Using the Intel controller

Sata2Intel.jpg


My SSD drive supports Sata 3, so I really don't want to use the Intel sata 2 port.

Thanks.
 

phil128

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Sorry about the quality:

The picture reads:


Sata 3 (Marvell)

Minimum: 260 MB/sec
Maximum: 294 MB/sec

Average: 290 MB/sec

Burst 1502 MB/sec

Intel Sata 2 (ICH-10)

Minimum: 209 MB/sec
Maximum: 233 MB/sec

Average: 231 MB/sec

Burst 191 MB/sec
 

danraies

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I agree that you want to use a 6gbps SATA port over a 3gbps port. I was simply stating that Marvel SATA controllers are slower than equivalently rated Intel SATA controllers - hence if you had an Intel 6gbps port then you would see those 500mb read speeds that you want. On a Marvel controller I think the speeds you're seeing are about as good as you're going to get - especially after seeing the ATTO numbers.

There are some tweaks you can do that will help you squeeze some extra speed out of your drive if you haven't already. Tom's has a good sticky on the topic:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/270102-32-useful-articles-part
Check out the tweaks/optimization section.
 

phil128

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Thanks for the link!!! Is it possible to have an Intel SATA 3 controller PCI-E expansion card? I really want to try and get the best out of my sata drives. My motherboard is an Asus Maximus Extreme 3
 

danraies

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There are SATA 6gbps expansion cards, yes, but I don't know that much about them. The speeds you're getting are pretty quick, though, and I'm not sure if you'd notice 100Mb/s higher seq read speeds in practice.

My point, basically, is that my seq speeds are around 500Mb/s in read and 200Mb/s in write (and the rest are a little higher, too) and if we were showing off of something I could stand up and yell "IN YOUR FACE PHIL128" but if I had your speeds and you had mine, I really doubt that either of us would notice the difference.

So maybe you can find a way to squeeze the extra speed out of your drive, but it might not be worth it.