Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

[seross69]

I need to know before i place my order for my new build that i am going to use the Asrock Z77 OC Formula for is if it is possible to build a 4 drive raid 0 to boot with using the marvell controllers. I do not think so since it is 2 seperate controllers but need to know for sure so i know what hard drives to order. Can some one help me out with this??

[parsec]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

OMGawd I hope it's on two chips, in one sense, since the performance of a single Marvell chip on one PCIe lane, as most of them are implemented, with four ports would be terrible! Yes, it is two separate chips that cannot be combined into a four port controller.

The Marvell 91xx SATA chipsets have poor performance compared to Intel and AMD SATA chipsets, no comparison, search on Marvell 9172 and you'll find several reviews of boards that use it.

Questions on your intended RAID volume: HDDs or SSDs? What type, or models?

Two SSDs in RAID 0 on the INTEL SATA 6Gb/s ports provide the fastest performance available today in PCs, short of separate RAID cards that cost more than your mother board.

[seross69]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

Thanks for you help and that is what I thought. I plan on using 2 Vertex 256GB SSD on the Intel 6GB as a raid 0 for the operation system, 3 1tb drives in raid 0 for the storage drive. and 4 vertex 4 128gb ssd on a LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB onboard memory RAID Controller Card, Kit in Raid 0 for programs and video processing file. i am going to also set up a 20 gb ram drive for video and game play. Going to have a I7 3770k water cooled by the h100 Cosair water cooler. and EVGA geforce 680 Video card.

[parsec]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

OMGawd, you're even crazier than I am when it comes to SSDs!

Are those Vertex 4s for your OS volume? If so, they work very well, I have a RAID 0 volume of two 128GB V4s on the Intel SATA 6Gb/s ports. NO issues like the early Vertex 3 SSDs, which was really the fault of the early SandForce firmware. Also, users don't deal with SSDs correctly, although it is not difficult at all. Plus now on the Z77 chipset we have TRIM in RAID 0 (with the correct IRST drivers and OROM.) ASRock uses the version 11 IRST Option ROM on most if not all of their Z77 boards, so TRIM in RAID 0 works! Can't get that anywhere else!

If you are doing a lot of writing of video files, you can't beat the Vertex 4, or not by much in every instance. If you care more about read speed of the video files, you might consider the Samsung 830, they have better large file read performance than the V4s, and their large file write speed is excellent.

Not waiting for the Intel Haswell CPUs and the 8 series chipsets? At least four Intel SATA 6Gb/s ports on those chipsets, and I think six on some chipsets (I hope!!)

The Marvell SATA chipsets are at least useable, so not worthless. I would use the Intel SATA 3Gb/s ports for your 1TB HDDs, likely your plan. IMO, you'll need to experiment with the 9172 chipset and see how it functions. If it is like most of the other 91xx chips, it is only connected to ONE PCIe lane, shared on both ports. Marvell had their 9182 SATA chipset that used more PCIe lanes, and was used on a few high end boards not long ago, but seems to have disappeared. Figures, it was the best chipset they made so far.

Marvell has a new line of SATA chips, the 92xx series, that might be better than the 91xx series, but I'll wait to see how they perform.

[seross69]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

I really dont want to wait until the new processors come out and when they do it will just give me a excuse to build again. I am going to use the Vertex 4 256 as the OS drive in raid 0. looking at water cooling whole system now and trying to find cases. Wish the Z77 Extreme 11 was available. that is what i really want!!! going to try and have a fast machine for video converting and some game play. I plan on doing most of my video editing off a ram drive that is why i am putting in 32 gb of 2133 cosair ram. going to have a 20 gb ram drive for this.

[profJim]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

Just to confuse things a bit more, in the Gigabyte forum when they're using the Marvell sata connections, they get the better results when they don't install the Marvell drivers.

[seross69]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

Thanks for that profJim But i have decided i will just use the 2 Sata 3 that is provided by the Z77 and i know I will be able to get about 1gb of transfer speed doing this. That is unless the Z77 Extreme 11 comes out for sale in the next 3 weeks. then i am going to have to get this.

I have 4 60 GB OCZ Agility 3 that i am going to use on a LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 w/ 512MB onboard memory RAID Controller Card, Kit in Raid 0 for programs and video processing file along with a 20gb ram disc. I will be getting better SSD's in the near future but i am going to reuse these for now.

[profJim]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

The Samsung 840 Pro ssd models are scheduled for release on November 6th and I'm curious to see how their real world, steady state performance is.
Let us know which system you go with and how it works out.

[synack]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

I'm kind of late to the party (i broke my RAM, long story) but I'm running 2 vertex 3 SSD's on my OC formula on the Intel Sata 3's an OMG it rocks. I actually hate using my HDD for anything lol.. it's just sooo slow.

Syn

[parsec]

Re: Pre-sell Asrock Z77 OC Formula Marvell Sata Question

Once you go SSD, you can't go back to HDD... at least for an OS drive. I still use HDDs in a PC or two on a permanent basis, but just as a mass storage drive or the download target drive. With the drop in SSD prices this year, I'm migrating to all SSD PCs, with a HDD bay that mounts in the 5.25" bays, if I need it.

I was helping a friend with his laptops recently, and on a surprisingly good new one, i5 Ivy Bridge mobile CPU, new chipset, and even had Intel's IRST driver installed in the OEM software package. But the HDD's I/O response was awful, I am spoiled by SSDs and take them for granted.

Prof. Jim, I have been using the native Windows 7 ACHI driver, msahci, with Marvell and ASMedia SATA chipsets for a while now. You lose any RAID capability of course, but a RAID volume on one PCIe lane at 5Gb/s shared by two ports is basically a joke. Performance results with msahci and the Marvell or ASMedia drivers seems to vary from one board to another, and the newer versions of the Marvell driver in AHCI mode is improved over their older versions in terms of stability and reliability. Still, if you want no muss or fuss, use msahci with the Marvell.