PCIe x1 SATA card

[udidwht]

Just installed a PCIe SATA card (x1) and Windows 10 installed the needed drivers. Would it be better to install the ASmedia drivers (latest ones)?

The card....https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MBMVFW5/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[eidairaman1]

Yes

 

[timta2]

I didn't see much of a difference from the built-in Windows drivers on my Syba SATA cards. The speeds were unnoticeably faster and benchmarks were just slightly higher. There's no harm in trying them, though.

 

[newtekie1]

I didn't see much of a difference from the built-in Windows drivers on my Syba SATA cards. The speeds were unnoticeably faster and benchmarks were just slightly higher. There's no harm in trying them, though.

Lets face it, this isn't going to be a card for performance. It's 4 SATA ports running of a single PCI-E 2.0 lane. That gives 500MB/s of bandwidth for the whole card.

 

[udidwht]

Lets face it, this isn't going to be a card for performance. It's 4 SATA ports running of a single PCI-E 2.0 lane. That gives 500MB/s of bandwidth for the whole card.

True but better than the Marvell chip ports.

 

[eidairaman1]

Lets face it, this isn't going to be a card for performance. It's 4 SATA ports running of a single PCI-E 2.0 lane. That gives 500MB/s of bandwidth for the whole card.

Considering it has to bus multiplex yes

True but better than the Marvell chip ports.

Whats wrong with marvell?

 

[udidwht]

Considering it has to bus multiplex yes


Whats wrong with marvell?

Performance vs Intel port or in this case the PCIe card.

This motherboard has (2) Marvell ports, 2 Intel SATA-III ports and (4) SATA-II ports. Currently have (4) 1TB SSD drives using the Intel & Marvell ports. My LG Blue ray is on one of the SATA-II ports.

 

[eidairaman1]

Have you done testing?

 

[udidwht]

Yes, slower than the Intel ports. Nearly halved.

 

[eidairaman1]

Yeah your motherboard is definitely long in the tooth. Id check bios settings for the ports.

 

[udidwht]

Yeah your motherboard is definitely long in the tooth. Id check bios settings for the ports.

Only (2) settings in the BIOS with regards to the Marvell chipset. One is to enable/disable and the other is the mode it runs in (currently AHCI). I'm not using the Marvell drivers just whatever Win 10 installs. This has been a great motherboard and runs everything I can throw at it. It will run MSFS on (High setting) at 50-55fps

 

[Shou Miko]

Many of these cards works out of the box no issue but check for a newer driver than what Windows 10 have because I noted this on a low profile PCI-E x1 card I purchased from china earlier this year.

 

[eidairaman1]

Only (2) settings in the BIOS with regards to the Marvell chipset. One is to enable/disable and the other is the mode it runs in (currently AHCI). I'm not using the Marvell drivers just whatever Win 10 installs. This has been a great motherboard and runs everything I can throw at it. It will run MSFS on (High setting) at 50-55fps

Id use the marvell drivers over ms generic drivers

 

[udidwht]

Curious...

Wouldn't the Microsoft drivers be drivers that were submitted by Marvell (given the age of the board & OS Win 10)?

The motherboard also uses a Marvell chipset for the GSATA ports (2)...(Windows 10 also supplied the 88SE9172 drivers)

Storage interface:

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3_0~SATA3_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. 4 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_2~SATA2_5) supporting up to 4 SATA 3Gb/s devices
   * The SATA2_5 connector will become unavailable when the mSATA connector is installed with a solid state drive.
3. Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10
   * When a RAID set is built across the SATA 6Gb/s and SATA 3Gb/s channels, the system performance of the RAID set may vary depending on the devices being connected.

1 x Marvell 88SE9172 chip:

1. 2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1

Expansion Slots:

1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
   * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
   * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
3. 3 x PCI Express x1 slots
   (All PCI Express slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
4. 2 x PCI slots

 

[eidairaman1]

No, they just make device work but are not optimized

They just provide General functionality, but there is no performance to gain with those

 

[Mussels]

Back when i used E-SATA, the windows drivers didn't support hotswap while the Asmedia ones did

So at least *some* features work better with the asmedia drivers

 

[udidwht]

I just did more tests with the drivers for the motherboard Marvell controller ports (not the add-on card). If you look on page 15 (4th post) that was my previous bench using the Microsoft drivers.

What is your AS SSD Benchmark score?

www.techpowerup.com

Now that I went with the Marvell drivers (nnot the add-on card) for the motherboard ports I've noticed that C: has no option to optimize within the 'Optimize drives'

First thing I checked was Trim via command prompt and it is enabled.

Update:

Removed the Marvell drivers and issue was resolved.

Looks as if I'm sticking with the Microsoft SATA drivers.

 

[Shou Miko]

I just did more tests with the drivers for the motherboard Marvell controller ports (not the add-on card). If you look on page 15 (4th post) that was my previous bench using the Microsoft drivers.

What is your AS SSD Benchmark score?

www.techpowerup.com

Now that I went with the Marvell drivers for the motherboard ports I've noticed that C: has no option to optimize within the 'Optimize drives'

First thing I checked was Trim via command prompt and it is enabled.

Update:

Removed the Marvell drivers and issue was resolved.

Looks as if I'm sticking with the Microsoft SATA drivers.

If it's not a PCI-E addon card look up the motherboard vendor they properly have a better driver that also works on Windows 10.

 

[udidwht]

If it's not a PCI-E addon card look up the motherboard vendor they properly have a better driver that also works on Windows 10.

It is a PCI-e card.

Already looked at the Gigabyte site. Gigabyte does not offer a driver for the PCI-e add on card.

Windows 7 (64)

[4.1.0.2013]

Widows 8 (64):

[4.1.0.2013]

Windows 8.1 (64):

[1.0.0.1062]

Windows 10:

Lists nothing SATA related

 

[newtekie1]

No, they just make device work but are not optimized

They just provide General functionality, but there is no performance to gain with those

This isn't true for most hardware. The drivers Windows automatically installs is almost always provided by the manufacturer of the hardware. There are exceptions, like the Microsoft Basic Display Driver that is used when it can't find GPU drivers.

 

[Shou Miko]

This isn't true for most hardware. The drivers Windows automatically installs is almost always provided by the manufacturer of the hardware. There are exceptions, like the Microsoft Basic Display Driver that is used when it can't find GPU drivers.

The basic MS driver works but sometimes the driver from the manufacture can give a better speed, I experinced that with my PCI-E card from Shenzhen Suyou Technology (SSU Tech).

Link: http://ssu-tech.com/index.php?ac=article&at=read&did=160

 

[Mussels]

The big deal with non-MS drivers, is they can include software control panels for hardware

windows is working on fixing that with DCH drivers and their app store, but we arent there yet for most hardware

 

[eidairaman1]

The basic MS driver works but sometimes the driver from the manufacture can give a better speed, I experinced that with my PCI-E card from Shenzhen Suyou Technology (SSU Tech).

Link: http://ssu-tech.com/index.php?ac=article&at=read&did=160

Ms built in drivers only make it work, nothing more, nothing less, no performance.