# Looking for a sata600 raid controller



## arnoo1 (Jul 17, 2011)

dear forum members

tuesday i started a tread because my corsair force f3 120gb ssd was not working @ his full potential on my asus rampage gene 3, so some came to a conclusion that my build in controller marvel 9128 was sittling on a pci-e 1x 

quote from maban


Maban said:


> I don't see a PCIE switch on the R3G, so the Marvell 9128 chip is running on a 1.1 lane from the ICH, meaning 250MB/s cap. I don't know a whole lot about this, but I think the over 250MB/s read could be explained by reading compressed data and reporting the uncompressed size. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.



now i want a raid controller for my ssd's to get his full potential i payed for it so i want it,
i saw a few sata600 raid controllers and i want you opinion(see link)

http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/cat/630/hardeschijf-controllers.html#filter:NYxBCsMgEEXv8tdZiGJbPECgi66yLFmIzsIiMYxSCsG7d0JwNbz3PnOgcCSeE-UIh53Tp2K65FK4ifM1iJES6OV_cFqpgWmDE6ih8NXsgFEoU2gUl53CM1a4N7Q18k5brJJFzyk3YkkHbnd1nq_P59DYh8Hae_8D

is one of those any good?


----------



## chuchnit (Jul 17, 2011)

LSI 92xx series or Areca 18xx series is where to look. The LSI 9211 is a good HBA. Its great for R0/1 or JBOD. You are just limited in available stripe sizes compred to the full ROC cards like the 9260.


----------



## Mussels (Jul 17, 2011)

why the hell are you using the marvell controller? use the intel one.


----------



## Neuromancer (Jul 17, 2011)

Mussels said:


> why the hell are you using the marvell controller? use the intel one.



The gene does not have intel sata 6g


----------



## TheOne (Jul 17, 2011)

arnoo1 said:


> dear forum members
> 
> tuesday i started a tread because my corsair force f3 120gb ssd was not working @ his full potential on my asus rampage gene 3, so some came to a conclusion that my build in controller marvel 9128 was sittling on a pci-e 1x
> 
> ...



The problem is that those cards probably only use 1 lane as well, but if Maban's observation is true, and from what I can see there is no reason to think it isn't, it will still be a step up as the current SATAIII ports you have would be nothing more than overhyped SATAII ports.

Corsair has also said that only the current Intel SATAIII controller can achieve the max performance with their drives.

Here is the spec sheet on the Marvell 91XX controllers: http://www.marvell.com/storage/system-solutions/assets/Marvell-88SE91XX-Host-Controllers.pdf



Mussels said:


> why the hell are you using the marvell controller? use the intel one.



Generally only 1155 boards have Intel SATAIII, though there is at least 1 1156 board that claims to use the P67 (B3) with Intel's SATAIII made by ASRock.


----------



## arnoo1 (Jul 17, 2011)

TheOne said:


> The problem is that those cards probably only use 1 lane as well, but if Maban's observation is true, and from what I can see there is no reason to think it isn't, it will still be a step up as the current SATAIII ports you have would be nothing more than overhyped SATAII ports.
> 
> Corsair has also said that only the current Intel SATAIII controller can achieve the max performance with their drives.
> 
> ...



oke thanks

so i can't use it at full speed until i go for sandy bridge/ivy bridge or maybe x79 or get a decent sata 600 raid card, like the LSI SAS 9211-8i (SAS9211-8I/SGL)
link
http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/LSISAS9211-8i.aspx
 it's pretty expensive 211.90 euro's


----------



## TheOne (Jul 17, 2011)

arnoo1 said:


> oke thanks
> 
> so i can't use it at full speed until i go for sandy bridge/ivy bridge or maybe x79 or get a decent sata 600 raid card, like the LSI SAS 9211-8i (SAS9211-8I/SGL)
> link
> ...



You could still use a controller card to get higher performance than you are seeing now, as the Marvell controller on your board is supposed to use 1 lane from PCIe 2.0 which would be about 450 to 500MB/s, though write may only be 300MB/s+, at least from what I've seen on the Corsair forums from other Force 3 users using a Marvell controller.  Personally if I could I would return that board and get one that properly uses the Marvell controller.

Of course if the rumors X-Bit started about some x79 boards being backwards compatible with 1366 CPU's do turn out to be true then there would be a potential upgrade, though I remain skeptical.


----------



## arnoo1 (Jul 17, 2011)

TheOne said:


> You could still use a controller card to get higher performance than you are seeing now, as the Marvell controller on your board is supposed to use 1 lane from PCIe 2.0 which would be about 450 to 500MB/s, though write may only be 300MB/s+, at least from what I've seen on the Corsair forums from other Force 3 users using a Marvell controller.  Personally if I could I would return that board and get one that properly uses the Marvell controller.
> 
> Of course if the rumors X-Bit started about some x79 boards being backwards compatible with 1366 CPU's do turn out to be true then there would be a potential upgrade, though I remain skeptical.



but are there x58 mobo's with a good sata600 controller? the mobo is just a 5 days old


----------



## TheOne (Jul 17, 2011)

arnoo1 said:


> but are there x58 mobo's with a good sata600 controller? the mobo is just a 5 days old



I'm afraid no matter what board you switch to you would probably be limited as the Marvell is the most common SATAIII controller used on non-1155 Intel motherboards, and is even used on some of them to give the board 4 SATAII, 4 SATAIII, and eSATAIII.  And I still think you should exchange that board for one that actually puts the Marvell controller on a PCIe 2.0 lane, though this may cripple other features on the board depending on how it is setup.


----------



## Maban (Jul 17, 2011)

You could buy one of those HBAs (or a board which utilizes a 1.1 to x2 2.0 switch which TheOne is mentioning) and put it in the second x16 slot. It would give you better performance, but it would still be somewhat limited. Latency would be higher than using native and bandwidth would still be limited to 500MB/s.


----------



## arnoo1 (Jul 17, 2011)

Is sandy bridge an idea? A good gigabyte or asus mobo with a 2600k and 1600-2000mhz mem? I don't like the way to oc those sandy bridge cpu's it's to simple, i do like that don't get that hot, only thing i care about is oc'ing, blazing fast performens and that my ssd's is running full speed


----------



## TheOne (Jul 17, 2011)

arnoo1 said:


> Is sandy bridge an idea? A good gigabyte or asus mobo with a 2600k and 1600-2000mhz mem? I don't like the way to oc those sandy bridge cpu's it's to simple, i do like that don't get that hot, only thing i care about is oc'ing, blazing fast performens and that my ssd's is running full speed



Sandy Bridge's P67 (B3), H67 (B3), and Q67 (B3) boards use Intel SATAIII and can deliver the max performance of the drive.


----------



## Maban (Jul 17, 2011)

Or you could jump ship to an AMD 8 or 9 series board.


----------



## arnoo1 (Jul 17, 2011)

Maban said:


> Or you could jump ship to an AMD 8 or 9 series board.



No, i don't like amd, bad experience with amd, also in some games a i3 p55 cpu is faster than a quad phenom2 cpu, intel had mutch better memory bandwitdh and in sequential benches it's al lot faster i stay on the intel side if you don't mind.

Cool maban you are again clooking to my thread, if you mind i used a quote from you


----------



## Maban (Jul 17, 2011)

There are options like the HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL. It's still not going to get you the performance of the native 6G on P67/Z68, but it's the best option otherwise. I don't know how much it costs over there in Dutchland, but here it's $135 plus the cost of cables.


----------



## TheOne (Jul 18, 2011)

Intel's SATAIII is also reported to be slightly faster than AMD's, Corsair recommends for max performance using one of the aforementioned Sandy Bridge chipsets, and the Z68.


----------

