840 Pro w/ Marvel Raid Controller on X58 Board

[eloplayspolo]

Hello

I just purchased a 256GB 840 Pro.
I ran my benchmark in the Magician software and quickly learned that my Marvel raid controller is garbage.
I have a Gigabyte X58 UD3R rev2 board and have ready a lot about the sata 2 ports giving better real world performance unless im writing very large files.

I have also been trying to find a controller card that isn't going to break the bank.

Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on this? Should i just connect to the sata 2 ports and call it a day? Should I go for an external card? I actually thought about getting a new board(even though mine is fine), and because i went for the "New technology" 1366 socket, i'm SOL.

Thank you

 

[drtweak]

Yea i would think in everyday stuff you won't notice a difference if its in a SATA II port. If you start copying a huge file you will see that 200-300mb a second loss but not sure. haven't ran a SATA III SSD On a SATA II Port though. I think when i get the chance i might just try that lol

 

[Tseg]

This past December Magician was updated to provide RAPID cache to 840 Pro (previously only available for 840 EVO). I know that my SATA III connection with 256GB 840 Pro now provides 1000mbs read/write performance with AHCI (per Magician performance test assessment). It is pretty amazing. Just wanted to provide you a benchmark to compare. Not sure how a SATA II connection is impacted.

 

[Dereck47]

Anyone have any suggestions or thoughts on this? Should i just connect to the sata 2 ports and call it a day? Should I go for an external card?

It's not worth it to buy an external card. You would have to buy a high-end card with ROC in order to get your SSD's advertised Read/Write speeds. It's best to put that money into a current generation (Z87) motherboard/cpu.

Update the Marvell drivers to version 1.2.0.1039 dated 02/10/2013.
Update the Marvell controller firmware to version 2.2.0.1125b dated 06/06/2012.
http://www.station-drivers.com/index.php/10-drivers/47-marvell

You still won't get advertised Read/Write speeds but it should improve your benchmark results a little.

 

[eloplayspolo]

Update the Marvell drivers to version 1.2.0.1039 dated 02/10/2013.
Update the Marvell controller firmware to version 2.2.0.1125b dated 06/06/2012.
http://www.station-drivers.com/index.php/10-drivers/47-marvell

You still won't get advertised Read/Write speeds but it should improve your benchmark results a little.

i was able to install the driver, but not the firmware.. wont run with 64 bit.

 

[eloplayspolo]

UMMM. After reboot with the new driver, samsung magican said it cant find the drive and that i need to reboot.
Rebooted.
Started up samsung magician and it says once again, that it cant find the drive, but I ran a crystal disk mark bench and there is no way that the drivers work this well, right?



sequential read: 864.448
Sequential write 543.867
Random read 512: 779.241
random write 512: 578.864


No way! right?

 

[Dereck47]

The only way those scores are correct is if you have RAPID mode enabled in Samsung Magician.