SSD SATA II or SATA III Selection for ICH10R or 9128?

[shedhi]

Help!

Currently looking to upgrade my setup. Am currently running Win 8 of a Crucial SATA II 128 SSD. The Crucial SSD is connected to a SATA 3.0/II Port.

Primary use of the system is for Music Studio work with a new Avid Pro Tools Software application....which is resource intensive...so looking to add some beef to the system without replacing CPU/Memory/MB.

Am considering putting some funds into a new SATA III SSD and have the following questions:

1. Are the new SATA III spec (6.0) GB SSD's required to connect to the 6.0 (9128) interface to take advantage of the Bandwith / Transfer rates? ---I've heard that ICH10R (SATA II) connectors are not really being saturated still by these new 3.0 drives.

2. I do not want to configure a RAID array as I believe sustained data transfer speeds are more important in the music applications than bursting speed. Thoughts? I was considering just connecting the new SATA III SSD to the 9128 6.0 Ports on the MB and not configure RAID.

System:

CPU: i7-990X Extreme at 3.40 GHZ
RAM: 24GB DDR 3 at 1600
MB: Asus P6X58-E WS
OS: Win 8 Pro
Drives:
1-Crucial SATA II SSD - 128 GB (Boot)
2-WD Velociraptor 600GB
3-Hitachi 2 and 3 TB Data Drives

Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Dereck47]

1. Are the new SATA III spec (6.0) GB SSD's required to connect to the 6.0 (9128) interface to take advantage of the Bandwith / Transfer rates? ---I've heard that ICH10R (SATA II) connectors are not really being saturated still by these new 3.0 drives.

You need a native SATA III (6Gb/s) port to get the advertised speeds of any SATA III SSD.
If you use an Intel CPU the native ports are the Intel 6Gb/s ports. If you use an AMD CPU then the native ports are the AMD 6Gb/s ports.
Your motherboard does not have native 6Gb/s ports, only 3rd party Marvell.

The Marvell 9128 controller uses only 1 PCI lane at 5Gb/s (500MB/s), so you won't get the maximum advertised Read/Write speeds from any SATA III SSD you connect to the port; but the performance will still be better than connecting it to a SATA II port.

2. I do not want to configure a RAID array as I believe sustained data transfer speeds are more important in the music applications than bursting speed. Thoughts? I was considering just connecting the new SATA III SSD to the 9128 6.0 Ports on the MB and not configure RAID.

Correct, you don't need to create a RAID array. Just connect the SSD to one of the Marvell 6Gb/s ports and set the port to AHCI mode.

 

[shedhi]

Thanks this helps me very much! I guess the best option will be to connect to a 9128 port in single drive (normal) mode. The MB manual states "connect two identical drives..." But I don't want a RAID configuration; and not certain what two SSD on the 9128 will do to my x16 Graphics card bandwidth.

 

[Dereck47]

Yes, it's best (but not required) to use identical drives if you are creating a RAID array.

The bandwidth from your SATA controllers are separate from your PCIe slots, so you wouldn't suffer any performance problems with your graphics card.

 

[dish_moose]

The Marvell 9128 is crap - many will tell you on X58 mobos to use the Intel controller even though its sataII - I'm in the same boat as you. I just have not grown tired of my computer yet - if you want 6G/s go for an Ivy/z77 mobo.
-Bruce
EDIT: No disrespect to the answers above but Marvel controllers were "fast-tracked into x58 mobos to advertise sataIII without thoroughly being tested/verified.

 

[shedhi]

Thanks Dereck--its been so long (5 years) since I configured a RAID array off the Southbridge I couldn't remember what the implications were to the PCI bandwidth. You've been very helpful....!

@dish-moose: I appreciate your input...I may just try to bench the new SSD when it arrives on both controllers to see what works best...

 

[dish_moose]

Do a search for x58 and sata3 - I have . Even went as far as to get a pcie sata controller that I abandoned because it was pciex1 not pciex4 that you need for proper sata3 bandwidth. x58 systems still work very well with the new hardware - maybe Haswell will be my next platform unless AMD can pull something out of their A$$ - won't hold my breath. BTW have you bought a cooler for that cpu and OCed it?
-Bruce