Bad Speeds Marvel 91xx Controller New SSD

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Owlieowl

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Jan 15, 2013
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I just bought a brand new SSD, the Crucial MX100 512gb. Unfortunately for me I realized a little late I have a crappy Sata 5Gbps port with a crappy marvell controller, NOT a good 6Gbps port with an Intel controller.. The motherboard is a P6X58D Premium.

Based on some reading this really impacts speeds for a lot of people, same for me. I'm only getting read/write speeds of 369/305 respectively on average. Most people get above 400, many with read speeds above 500. Is there ANYTHING I can do to get this Marvell controller to not be such crap? Pretty frustrated considering I spent over $200 on this amazing SSD but I can't get proper speeds out of it. But now I see how much nicer it actually is to have an SSD there's no way I could go back to having an HDD as my boot drive..

ANY advice to get proper speeds out of my drive? Know it's a long shot but figured I'd ask.
 
Solution
Dereck47
The Marvel 6Gb/s controller on all x58 chipset based motherboards are PCIe x1. That's why the bandwidth is a maximum of 5Gb/s (500MB/s).

The controller was developed when 1st generation SSDs were released back in 2008. 1st generation SSDs were SATA 2 (3Gb/s) with no TRIM. The controller can't handle the speeds of current generation SSDs.

You're going to have to live with the performance you have now until you upgrade your motherboard to one that has Intel 6Gb/s ports.

You can try to update the firmware of the Marvell controller to version 2.3.1055 if you wish, but I doubt you'll get Read/Write speeds greater than 400MB/s.
http://www.station-drivers.com/index.php/downloads/Drivers/Marvell/Sata/MV9xxx-(88SE91xx-92xx)/


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festerovic

festerovic

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Jul 16, 2008
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have you made sure you are in AHCI mode and not IDE mode? That made a difference for me. You might want to try out and benchmark various versions of the drivers as well. What program(s) are you using to benchmark?

However, in the big scheme of things : you will never see the difference unless you are constantly moving big files around. The sequential thruput is not really an indicator of overall speed, its just a benchmark and a fairly useless one unless you are doing big file moves. You would only get big speeds like 500MB/s when transferring to another SSD anyways.

$.02
 
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Dereck47

Dereck47

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Jan 20, 2011
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The Marvel 6Gb/s controller on all x58 chipset based motherboards are PCIe x1. That's why the bandwidth is a maximum of 5Gb/s (500MB/s).

The controller was developed when 1st generation SSDs were released back in 2008. 1st generation SSDs were SATA 2 (3Gb/s) with no TRIM. The controller can't handle the speeds of current generation SSDs.

You're going to have to live with the performance you have now until you upgrade your motherboard to one that has Intel 6Gb/s ports.

You can try to update the firmware of the Marvell controller to version 2.3.1055 if you wish, but I doubt you'll get Read/Write speeds greater than 400MB/s.
http://www.station-drivers.com/index.php/downloads/Drivers/Marvell/Sata/MV9xxx-(88SE91xx-92xx)/


 
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Owlieowl

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Jan 15, 2013
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Yeah, at first I accidentally had it set to IDE, was getting ~250Mbs speed with that. But I switched it before I made this post, the speeds I quoted were measured using AS SSD with the SSD in AHCI. I'm using AS SSD Benchmark and the User Benchmark benchmark tool.

You're right, and I took that into consideration, because I'm only going to have one SSD on my PC for the time being anyway. The 4k random IO is AMAZING and doesn't seem to be hurt by the old controller. Everything is lightning fast. It's absolutely unbelievable. I wish I had upgraded years ago. My computer feels brand new.. It's absolutely something else. I'm blown away. My CPU is no longer bottlenecked by my IO. It's CRAZY. CRAZY!!! It's more a concern of can I get what I paid for, or do I need a motherboard upgrade to do it? Which sounds like the case, and obviously isn't worth it




Yeah, I kind of figured it was due to the age of the motherboard, I know SSDs were just coming out around then. I'm just happy my motherboard actually supports it. It's pretty much out of warranty (or far past), and has served me well through many upgrades. Thanks for the link to the drivers, wasn't sure if I found the right ones. I'll try those out.

My only complaint would be that I wish the theoretical limit of 500MB/s was actually achievable. Ah well.

Edit: Is there a 64 bit installer for that BIOS? I can't find one.
 
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Owlieowl

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If anyone can find an installer for 64bit windows for that BIOS, that would be amazing. Mine is very old. Don't fancy installing windows onto another hdd just to update the BIOS. Can't find it anywhere.
 
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