Which SATA port to use for SSD on P6X58D Premium motherboard

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munchkette

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Jul 26, 2013
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I have the Asus P6X58D Premium motherboard. I recently upgraded from a HDD to SSD so thought I would make use of the Marvell 6Gb SATA port but I noticed when I ran the benchmark in Samsung magician I'm getting much slower read/write speeds than advertised (Read 374 mb/s write is 250 mb/s).

When I first plugged the drive in I used one of the spare SATA 3Gb ports and the benchmark told me as it was plugged into a SATA 3 port I was not getting optimum performance. So I plugged it into the dedicated 6Gb port and it hasn't given the results I was expecting.

The motherboard has 6 x SATA 3Gb ports and 2 x Marvell 6Gb ports.
 
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My first thought was to check the mobo manual and make sure you can boot from the SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. Sorry, I could not find that info specifically. However, I did note that the only two ports of this type are provided by a Marvell SATA controller chip on the mobo, and not part of the main group of SATA ports. Then I note that, by default, these ports are set to operate in IDE Emulation mode. You should change that to AHCI Mode to take full advantage of the capabilities of the SSD unit.

Now, I do not think that is what is causing your issue. I think, instead, that the trouble is your expectations. The SATA 6.0 Gb/s specs were devised for the COMMUNICATION subsystem in SATA ports and controllers deliberately so that the communications...
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Paperdoc

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My first thought was to check the mobo manual and make sure you can boot from the SATA 6.0 Gb/s ports. Sorry, I could not find that info specifically. However, I did note that the only two ports of this type are provided by a Marvell SATA controller chip on the mobo, and not part of the main group of SATA ports. Then I note that, by default, these ports are set to operate in IDE Emulation mode. You should change that to AHCI Mode to take full advantage of the capabilities of the SSD unit.

Now, I do not think that is what is causing your issue. I think, instead, that the trouble is your expectations. The SATA 6.0 Gb/s specs were devised for the COMMUNICATION subsystem in SATA ports and controllers deliberately so that the communications portion of the system would be faster than any actual device anticipated for the near future. That way whatever device - fast HDD or SSD or whatever - they equip with a SATA 6.0 Gb/s communications interface, the interface will not be the limiting factor in overall device performance. There are NO mechanical drives - that is, ones with spinning disks and moving heads - that can perform as fast as the older SATA 3.0 Gb/s systems, so the newer system makes no difference to them. BUT modern SSD's (like yours) CAN move data faster than 3.0 Gb/s on average, just not up to 6.0 Gb/s. So it is very advisable to connect a SSD to such a port. Just do not expect to get that full 6.0 Gb/s overall performance - by design that is the max that MIGHT be achieved in the near to medium future. What you are seeing - 2.50 to 3.75 Gb/s transfers - is quite reasonable for today's SSD's.
 
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