What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

[Ozark_750]

I've seen many troubles with the Marvell 9128 driver with sata 3... but I messed something up and made mediocre even worse!

I'm running the p55a-ud4p and a corsair gt 120gb ssd plugged into the marvell sata port, ahci enabled in bios (also on the gsata and esata - not sure if those should be left at ide or change them like the ahci/ide setting at the top of that integrated peripheral screen), using the marvel console driver off of the GB website. I am only getting up to around 200mb/s, tops, and before I started messing around with everything, I was getting about 411mb/s (max read speed). I've tried using the marvel drivers off of the station-drivers website, flashing the marvel bios, etc, but not able to get those speeds back up. Any ideas? I see the question a lot, but not a lot of answers / tests out there - and I don't think I saw another than hit 411mb/s. Currently, I have a clean install and tried the intel INF update for the board and tried the GB inf update for the board, but same speed.

I might have run ATTO off of another HD when the ssd wasn't the main drive, but not sure if that would make a difference or not.

[wazza300]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

What make/model ssd? And try not to run too many benchmarks as it can degrade ssd performance

[Ozark_750]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

Maybe I should have capitalized it... :-) Corsair GT 120gb ssd

[wazza300]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

Sorry I missed it,I'm using my phone, you could try loading optimized defaults if you havnt already? Is the drive fairly empty? And have you run trim/garbage collection ect?

[Conners]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

You might have a look at this post at the Corsair forums... There is also a wealth of information there on their SSDs

[Tutorial] Restoring SSD performance and imaging Disk - The Corsair Support Forums

[profJim]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

The Corsair Force GT series uses synchronous NAND, so it won't hurt performance even if it is reasonably full.
The Corsair Force 3 series uses asynchronous NAND, so it's performance starts to suffer even if it is only about 30% full. This also applies to other ssd brands.

BTW, I too missed the un-capitalized "GT" model in the first post.
This is why it helps us when you have a detailed hardware list in your forum signature.
It's also a good idea to include the motherboard version, bios version, and brand/model names or numbers for all hardware.

When you are using the Marvell Gsata ports, you will need to make bios changes that deal with Marvell/Gsata options.

Unless someone with a similar setup has an answer, your best bet is to check out the Corsair ssd forums where you might need to ask them.

[wazza300]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

I forgot to say that if you have Usb 3 enabled aswell on that mb then sata3 speeds will reduce,same goes for running sli/xfire

[Ozark_750]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

Balls! Well, I have usb3 enabled and just added SLI. Wierd... did I miss something along the way as to why those decrease SATA3 speeds? I suppose I can try to disable SLI and repeat the test to see what's going on. Thanks for the suggestions!

I forgot to say that if you have Usb 3 enabled aswell on that mb then sata3 speeds will reduce,same goes for running sli/xfire

[Acebmxer]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

Balls! Well, I have usb3 enabled and just added SLI. Wierd... did I miss something along the way as to why those decrease SATA3 speeds? I suppose I can try to disable SLI and repeat the test to see what's going on. Thanks for the suggestions!

All three share the same pci-e bus this is why. I believe is one or the other you cant have all enabled.

[wazza300]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

its the design of the p55 chipset,it robs bandwidth from pci-e,if you download gpu-z it will show your cards running 16x and one will be running 8x,and i think it affects sata speeds aswell if both sata3 and usb3 are enabled

[profJim]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

Disabling SLI might not be a good enough test, you might have to physically remove the second video card for testing.
My best guess is that removing the second video probably won't help because only the Gsata3 ports support sata3 6GB/s speeds. The remaining sata ports are all sata2 and these are handled by the Intel chipset.

Let me know if I'm wrong ;)
Your board has six sata2 ports and two Gsata3 ports.

[wazza300]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

i wonder if you added in a pci sata3 card that you would get full sata3 speeds? cant see how it would slow things if it wasnt handled by the intel chipset?

[profJim]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

The cpu handles the PCI-e lanes for the video card, with 16 lanes maximum for video.
The P55 chipset handles all PCI-e and PCI slots.

From P55A-UD4P motherboard user manual:

[Ozark_750]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

I don't understand the implications of the diagram very well - but would that lead me to think it would be best to disable usb 3.0 and the extra LAN port if not in use to relieve pressure on that pci-e lane? I tried disabling SLI and like you said, there was no effect. Frustrating since I did have double the speed at some point. It literally went from 246/411 to 131/208. Maybe I'll yank that card out and see if that does the trick.

--

Well... bugger... that didn't do anything (pulling the SLI'd card). Back to the drawing board. Wish I kept track of what driver combination that was. The other thing I did was to install different ram chips -that should affect the results, should it?

[profJim]

Re: What did I mess up with my Marvell 9128 driver??

It's good practice to disable (in the bios) unused hardware options to free up system resources that aren't needed or being used. Doing this will free up memory and wont load drivers and their programs while your system is running.

I don't understand the implications of the diagram very well - but would that lead me to think it would be best to disable usb 3.0 and the extra LAN port if not in use to relieve pressure on that pci-e lane?

"Freeing up" lanes doesn't really make more lanes available for other hardware. In some cases, I've read in the motherboard user manual than enabling or using USB 3.0 will "steal" some lanes from some other hardware resources.

Definitely remove the second graphics card and repeat your benchmark.
It might help if you also benchmark your drives using the Intel sata2 ports.
It helps to keep detailed notes when you're troubleshooting problems.

Whenever I'm installing or removing hardware inside the computer case, I always:

1. Turn off the system
2. Turn off the power supply using the on/off psu switch at the back of the case
3. Press and hold the main on/off switch for 10 - 15 seconds to discharge capacitors that can still hold a charge
4. Then I remove or install the hardware

I even do these steps when installing or removing case cooling fans.
Why? One time I disconnected a fan wire and the loose end of the fan cable caused a momentary short circuit.
If you don't follow this procedure there is a good chance that you will damage hardware.

Please add a detailed hardware list to your forum signature.
This will cut down on possible errors when we are also working in other threads where they often have similar setups.
It's a royal PITA to have to scroll through a thread to find out exactly what hardware you have in your system.
Note the detail in my signature. I have links to my hardware's specifications in the entries that are underlined. Flashy or gaudy colors are optional. If I were into gaming, I would add information about my mouse and keyboard.

On some occasions when we are diagnosing a system, it's necessary to remove nearly all the hardware to get to a minimal hardware setup and then start adding one piece of hardware at a time, then boot and see if adding one piece of hardware causes any problems.

edit:
Changing your system memory MIGHT be part of the problem, can you say ARRRGGGG!!!!