Marvell SATA 6G SSD Performance vs Intel ICH10

When the Seagate Barracuda XT was revealed as the World's first-ever third generation SATA 6GBps hard drive, expectations for performance were raised to match the new bandwidth limit. While this drive offered tremendous storage capacity paired to good performance, the transfer speeds were nowhere near the second generation SATA-3 Gb/s limit. This is where Benchmark Reviews turns to our vast collection of Solid State Drive storage products, some of which eclipse the SATA-II range. However, our history of SSD performance tests on the Intel ICH10 Southbridge would prove to be very different than our results on the new Marvell 88SE9123 or 88SE9128 SATA-III chips. In this article, Benchmark Reviews compares Marvell SATA-6G SSD performance against tests on the Intel ICH10 chipset.

This project was created from by the perfect storm: Benchmark Reviews was already testing the Seagate Barracuda XT ST32000641AS on the ASUS P7P55D Premium (Intel P55/ICH10 + Marvell 88SE9123) and Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD6 (Intel P55/ICH10 + Marvell 88SE9128) motherboards. After receiving less than impressive differences between SATA-II and SATA-III benchmark performance with the new Seagate SATA 6G hard drive, a handful of SSDs were connected to help find potential differences. There were differences, to be sure, but not the kind that improve performance. Our results didn't fit-in well with the respective review projects, as they were off-topic, so this Marvell SATA 6G SSD Performance vs Intel ICH10 article was created,

The basis of this article revolves around two notions: SATA 6G connections offer more bandwidth than SATA 3G controller did, and that SATA-II products that came close to the 3 Gb/s limit may see some improvement with the new SATA-III controller. Although it is still very early on in the SATA 6G lifecycle (Marvell announced the 88SE9128 SATA-III 6Gb/s controller on 22 September 2009), and only one major manufacturer offers a viable storage controller (the aforementioned Marvell Technology Group), the media hype has create a very high bar for expectations. So what's to be expected?

About Intel Corporation

Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), the world leader in silicon innovation, develops technologies, products and initiatives to continually advance how people work and live. Additional information about Intel is available at www.intel.com/

About Marvell Technology Group Ltd.

Marvell (NASDAQ: MRVL) is a leader in the development of storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions. The company's diverse product portfolio includes switching, transceiver, communications controller, wireless, and storage solutions that power the entire communications infrastructure including enterprise, metro, home, and storage networking. As used in this release, the terms "company" and "Marvell" refer to Marvell Technology Group Ltd. and its subsidiaries. For more information, visit http://www.marvell.com.

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