Samsung 840 Pro SSD on GA-EX58A-UD7 board - SSD speed a bit low

[ed1]

I have connected a new Samsung SSD to a GSATA3 port handled by the Marvell 9128 SATA3 chip on my X58 board and am quite happy overall. I installed the Marvell SATA 3 console driver from the Gigabyte web site, but not the Marvel SATA 3/RAID driver also listed there, as I am not using RAID.

The advertised sustained read/write speeds for this SSD are in the 550 Mbs range for both read and write. I am getting test results of about 375 Mbs for sustained read and 270 Mbs for sustained write. Fast, but not near the advertised SATA 3 speeds.

One buyer of this SSD posted on Newegg that a user cannot expect the full rated SATA 3 speed when using an older chipset like the X58. But, shouldn't the Marvel 9128 chip on this port provide near rated speed for this SATA 3 capable SSD?

Do I need to install the Marvell SATA 3/RAID driver?

The SSD connector cable is new and rated for SATA 3.

[wazza300]

That's the right speed for that board,the early Marvell sata3 ports were poor,to see full advertised speeds you need a sandybridge or ivybridge motherboard with newer Intel or Marvell sata3 ports

[ed1]

OK, thanks, wazza.

1. So, I am assuming that installing the Marvell SATA3/RAID driver package (seems to be basically for RAID, which I am not using) will do no good to increase the speed of the SSD on this board. Is that correct?

2. Do you know what speeds I could expect if this SSD were installed to one of the Intel or Gigabyte SATA 2 ports?

3. Can you (or anyone) help me with a related issue that has cropped up? After installing this SSD to the Marvell SATA3 port, the BIOS loading pauses on the DMI Pool Data test for about 10-12 seconds on each boot up of the computer. During the pause, the progressive dots appear on the screen and eventually the POST continues and Windows loads. How can I eliminate this delay?

[profJim]

With sata2 ports, your sustained read and write speecs will be in the 250 - 275MB/s range.
These scores aren't really important, it's how fast your system is with smaller 4KB reads and writes.
Think about it, how often are you doing sustained sequential reads and writes with large blocks of data?
1. Installing large games and applications.
2. Gaming and sometimes with applications that do rendering, encoding, etc.
Most of the time the o/s drive is reading and writing much smaller files.

Many are happier when they use the sata2 port for their 6Gb/s ssd boot drive.
Try it, you'll probably like it.
The DMI delay during posting probably won't be an issue with the Intel sata2 port.
There are some inexpensive sata3 controller cards, but many of the customer reviews make it look iffy.
Buying a higher priced sata3 controller card is an option.
How fast are you willing to spend?

My P35 system with a Samsung 830 128GB o/s drive moves right along and there is no DMI delay.
When you upgrade to an Ivy Bridge or Haswell setup, your 840 Pro will certainly stut its stuff.

[Vinster]

What the guys are saying I found as well...

if I took an Intel 330 which has a 525mb/S Read and 450mb/s write I found that on the Marvell Sata I had a slightly slower speed than what you had there, but if I used the Intel SATAII ports I got nearly 300mb/s read and write..

do give those a try... the early marvel system is dreadful

Vin

[profJim]

I forgot to say; avoid using the GSata2 ports for your o/s ssd and primary hard drives.
The best performance, fewest problems and best stability will be when you use the Intel sata2 ports.

[ed1]

Thanks for all of this information. I will try installing both the SSD and the HDD to the Intel SATA 2 ports and report again on the boot delay and SSD speed.

I will run the Intel chipset driver update program as well. Should I use the latest I can find on the download sites, or the version on the Gigabyte site?

[Vinster]

Go to intels site

Vin

[Conners]

I would think more towards if Samsung had SSD flashes/updates for their drives as apposed to it being an Intel problem. Marvell ports forget about it! But then again I am unsure if your board supports sata 3 speeds on intel ports. So yeah 250 - 275 MB/s would be good as PJ states.

[ed1]

Thanks again, all of you guys. Here's the latest. My Gigabyte board does not support SATA3 on the Intel ports, only on the Marvell ports.

The DMI Pool test delay on POST is the same whether the SSD is on the Marvell or Intel SATA port. The delay is eliminated if I change the device boot order in the BIOS so that the "HDD" (in my case, an SSD) is first. When I have it set for the CD-ROM first, the delay occurs. So, I made the change back to HDD first and made sure the SSD is the first "HDD" in the order.

Here are the results of my speed tests using AS SSD Benchmark (latest version).

All figures are Marvell SATA3 first / Intel SATA2 second:

Sequential read: 377 / 266
Sequential write: 228 / 254
4K read: 23 / 21
4K write: 44 / 54
4K-64Th read: 219 / 201
4K-64Th write: 165 / 170
Acc. time read: .090 / .085
Acc. time write: .074 / .061
Score read: 279 / 249
Score write: 233 / 251
Final score: 656 / 635

The Marvell is better on reads. The Intel is better on writes. I am wondering whether the read number is the more important, especially the first numbers shown for Sequential reads where the Marvell shows quite a bit better number. Isn't this the one that would most impact the time for loading of Windows and large programs?

Now that the comparative tests are done, I would appreciate everyone's thoughts on the results. Which way to go? Thanks in advance.