Gigabyte MW31-SP0: Why two SATA controllers?

[snakyjake]

Why did Gigabyte use two SATA drive controllers Intel + Marvell for a total of 8x SATA ports?
Why not simply use the Intel C236 chipset 8x ports?

Does having separate SATA controllers offer advantages/disadvantages?

Ref: Gigabyte MW31-SP0

Thanks,
Jake

 

[rujoesmith]

There might be more to it, but as far as I know its to allow you to run drives in different configurations. For example, say you want your boot drive to be your ssd running in AHCI mode, but you also want to have a RAID array for bulk storage. With 2 separate controllers you can do both.

It also allows you to free up some pci lanes if you need them by disabling the marvell controller.