Onboard Marvell Controller Opinions

Like a lot of you, my motherboard has an extra set of SATA Controllers by Marvell. When I first tried them back on my Gigabyte Socket 1366 board I thought they were lousy in comparison to the Intel SATA Controller. The benchmarks were not even close.

I was mainly concerned about my boot drive performance. In those days I was using the good old Intel X25-M which had an Intel SSD Controller. I later upgraded to a Crucial M4 drive a while back which uses a Marvell SSD Controller. Ever since then I've been wondering if I might see any advantage to using a Marvell SATA/Marvell SSD setup as opposed to my current Intel SATA/Marvell SSD. Though curious, I am not quite curious enough to switch everything around unless I think it's worth doing.

Anyone using their onboard Marvell Controller with a Marvell-based SSD? I can't find any benchmarks. :)

Prof, I have the intel and Marvell controller and a M4. I don't use the Marvell, I use the Intel. I've never benchmarked mine on the Marvell, mostly because conventional wisdom is to use port 0 for the boot drive. I have had no problem with the marvell and I've heard it depends on which version you have. The sandy Bridge version is suooosed to be better than the older one. But, to answer your question, I don't think there would be an advantage to using Marvell. I use the Intel port and the Intel AHCI driver, iaStor. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I would use a Marvell controller for optical drive myself. I've not use any for HDD or SSD.

It sounds like it's not worth experimenting with. I know with some things if you match hardware it definitely improves things, but sounds like this isn't one of them. I'd guess that the chipset-to-SATA Controller link (Intel-Intel) matters more than the Sata Controller-SSD Controller link (Intel or Marvell SATA Controller to Marvell on the SSD).

Thanks, guys. :)

Thank you Prof. I was under the impression that Crucial M4s had JMicron controllers, Found out something new.:)

I thought they were something else, too. I just knew that when I bought them late last Summer it was in the middle of the latest Sandforce debacle and I wanted to avoid getting caught up in that.

Crucial is owned by J Micron an the SSDs use Micron flash menory, so I'm reasonaly sure the controller would be a Micron.

EDIT; You shouldn't assume anything, Crucial is a Marvell Controller.

It seems like a lot of the SSD manufacturers are playing musical chairs with their controllers these days. Intel doesn't even use Intel controllers for their drives at the moment.

Makes it kind of hard to keep up.

I think Samsung is the only SSD now which is using its own controller.

Britton30 said:

I think Samsung is the only SSD now which is using its own controller.

OCZ bought out indellinix and they are using it in their new Octane SSD, so now we also have OCZ using their oun controllers.