I installed a new 120GB Intel 520 SSD tonight. The Good News is that the Intel (Acronis) Data Migration Software was a dream: I cloned my old 64GB Kingston SSD over to the bare Intel and it booted right up!
Now, the Other News:
I ran ATTO, CrystalDiskMark, Anvil and AS-SSD benchmarks, and they were all consistently dismal. Here's the CDM:
What a disappointment! Those figures are below what's reported by other reviewers and users. The Anvil benchmark showed almost identical low figures for 0% compressible data and 100% compressible data.
I had mistakenly thought my P55 motherboard chipset had two SATA-3 ports, but alas, all six chipset ports are SATA-2. The only SATA-3 ports are the dreaded Marvell SE9128.
I then benchmarked the drive on an Intel chipset SATA-2 port:
The write scores on SATA-2 are much better than on Marvell SATA-3!
Had the SATA-2 not been hitting its max, I'm sure the reads would outdo the Marvell SATA-3, as well.
So. Is there a chance something ELSE is repressing the SATA-3 speeds, other than the Marvell single-PCIe-1x issue?
The partitions are aligned. AHCI is selected in BIOS. I tried both SATA-3 ports, and different power/SATA cables.
If the problem IS (or is MAINLY) the onboard Marvell ports, are the $25-$30 PCIe SYBA or Asmedia brand SATA-3 cards any good? They both use the Marvel SE9128 controller, as well, but I wonder if placing the card in a PCIe-2x slot would encounter the same limitation as the implementation used onboard the motherboard. (I hope that made sense...) There are very confusing user comments -- including quotes from tech support -- saying that you cannot boot the computer if anything is connected to the card. (??) At least one user is "Getting over 450MB/s on a Samsung 830 SSD."
I don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a good controller card, especially if a $25 card does the trick.
Now, the Other News:
I ran ATTO, CrystalDiskMark, Anvil and AS-SSD benchmarks, and they were all consistently dismal. Here's the CDM:
What a disappointment! Those figures are below what's reported by other reviewers and users. The Anvil benchmark showed almost identical low figures for 0% compressible data and 100% compressible data.
I had mistakenly thought my P55 motherboard chipset had two SATA-3 ports, but alas, all six chipset ports are SATA-2. The only SATA-3 ports are the dreaded Marvell SE9128.
I then benchmarked the drive on an Intel chipset SATA-2 port:
The write scores on SATA-2 are much better than on Marvell SATA-3!
Had the SATA-2 not been hitting its max, I'm sure the reads would outdo the Marvell SATA-3, as well.
So. Is there a chance something ELSE is repressing the SATA-3 speeds, other than the Marvell single-PCIe-1x issue?
The partitions are aligned. AHCI is selected in BIOS. I tried both SATA-3 ports, and different power/SATA cables.
If the problem IS (or is MAINLY) the onboard Marvell ports, are the $25-$30 PCIe SYBA or Asmedia brand SATA-3 cards any good? They both use the Marvel SE9128 controller, as well, but I wonder if placing the card in a PCIe-2x slot would encounter the same limitation as the implementation used onboard the motherboard. (I hope that made sense...) There are very confusing user comments -- including quotes from tech support -- saying that you cannot boot the computer if anything is connected to the card. (??) At least one user is "Getting over 450MB/s on a Samsung 830 SSD."
I don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for a good controller card, especially if a $25 card does the trick.