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Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > NAS/RAID > Is the marvell sata controller faster or the intel controller?

Is the marvell sata controller faster or the intel controller?

Forum Storage : NAS/RAID Is the marvell sata controller faster or the intel controller?

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Hello,
Im building a new Z68 system and Im confused wether to connect my drives to the Marvel or Intel controllers...
I have a WD caviar black 2tb HDD and 3 corsair force GT ssds (60Gb). I want to use one of the SSDs for the smart responce technology and I want to use the other two as my boot drives in RAID 0. My Motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-Z68x-ud4 B3. I know in order to use the smart responce technology I have to plug the HDD and one of the SSDs to the Intel controller (Sata3), but I dont know if the marvell controller on the motherboard supports RAID 0???? I also wanted to know if the intel Sata 3 is any faser than the Marvell one????

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The Intel SATA controller is faster than the Marvell SATA Controller.

Connect your HDDs to the Intel 3Gb/s ports SATA2_2 & SATA2_3.
2 HDDs in RAID-0 cannot spin fast enough to saturate the 3Gb/s ports, so you don't have to worry about any loss in performance connecting the drives there.

Next create your RAID-0 array, install Windows and then install your motherboard drivers.
Next install Intel's latest RST drivers: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/De [...] 2&lang=eng

After you have done all of that connect your SSD to the Intel 6Gb/s port SATA3_0 or SATA3_1.

You can then boot into Windows and run SRT to cache the SSD to your HDD RAID array.


EDIT: Sorry, I misread your post. I thought you had multiple HDDs that you wanted in RAID. I now see you have multiple SSDs.
You can disregard my directions above.


See my next post for correct instructions


Message edited by Dereck47 on 02-05-2012 at 07:22:54 PM
Reply to Dereck47

The Intel SATA controller is faster than the Marvell SATA controller.

The purpose of Intel SRT (Smart Response Technology) is to give "SSD-like" performance to a HDD with an Operating System on it by caching it with a SSD. It’s not for caching a SSD with a SSD. You will already have SSDs in RAID with an O/S on it so there's no need for "SSD-like" performance and you will gain no performance benefits by using it that way.

Connect 2 of your SSDs to the Intel 6Gb/s ports SATA3_0 & SATA3_1.
Next create your RAID-0 array, install Windows, and install your motherboard drivers.
Next install Intel’s latest RST drivers: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/De [...] 2&lang=eng

After you have done all of that you can then connect your HDD to one of the Intel 3Gb/s ports (SATA2_2 thru SATA2_5) and then you can connect your remaining SSD in AHCI mode to one of the Marvell 6Gb/s ports (GSATA3_6 or GSATA3_7).


Message edited by Dereck47 on 02-05-2012 at 07:41:54 PM
Reply to Dereck47
Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > NAS/RAID > Is the marvell sata controller faster or the intel controller?
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