Hi Raja,

Thanks for the quick response, would I be able to use MSAHCI drivers instead? Would TRIM work then?

If I wanted to test this how could I actually tell if TRIM was working, I know you can run the command "fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify" but this only tells you if Windows has it enabled not if the TRIM commands are actually being passed to the drive.

If this board can’t do TRIM on its 6Gb/s ports I am going to be extremely disappointed considering the price.

Regards

Jason

Hi Raja,

Thanks again for the quick responses. I am assuming that your an Asus employee (rightly or wrongly).

If you do work for Asus, is it possible for you to ask Marvell directly to get a definitive answer if the controller does support TRIM or not ? Maybe they could add support for TRIM via new firmware/drivers ?

Cheers

Jason

Raja is correct, currently the Marvell Controller does not support the windows TRIM command. At least not yet.

That doesn't really matter, especially if you are going to RAID0 your SSD's, then TRIM doens't work anyway.

I recommend buying Diskeeper Professional 2011 with HyperFast. Run SSD optimization once per week on your SSD or SSD array. This program will free-up about 2% of your SSD diskspace when run once per week. It also maintains the full speed of your SSD as benchmarks will show.

I've been using Diskeeper for 3 years now across a range of SSD's and Stripped SSD's. It works magic!

Cheers!

Hi TrickmasterPC,

Thanks for your response, are you running raid on the Marvell controller ? if so which disks are you using and what sort of speeds can you manage ?

Cheers Jason

Yes, I am running the Rampage III Black Edition on the Marvell 88SE9182 Controller. I am using the leaked 0501 bios for this board and the latest Marvell drivers from the station drivers website. I have two 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS SSD drives.

My SSD Speeds using ATTO Bench are:
Read: 750-780MB/s
Write: 680-700MB/s

I expect that once an official BIOS is released for the Black Edition Motherboard along with some ASUS provided Marvell drivers we should see speeds around 1000MB/s. This is the speed being achieved on the Gigabit Assassin Motherboard which features the exact same 9182 Marvell Controller.

TrickMasterPC wrote:
Yes, I am running the Rampage III Black Edition on the Marvell 88SE9182 Controller. I am using the leaked 0501 bios for this board and the latest Marvell drivers from the station drivers website. I have two 128GB OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS SSD drives.

My SSD Speeds using ATTO Bench are:
Read: 750-780MB/s
Write: 680-700MB/s

I expect that once an official BIOS is released for the Black Edition Motherboard along with some ASUS provided Marvell drivers we should see speeds around 1000MB/s. This is the speed being achieved on the Gigabit Assassin Motherboard which features the exact same 9182 Marvell Controller.

I have som Intel 510 x 2 on raid0 on Intel controller.. But it semes not to work for me when I use this tip

Okay, I now have the Marvell RAID working and have finally been able to install Windows on it (Intel RAID is also working). The CTRL + M option you see after flashing to 0501 is a bit misleading, as the Windows install fails to "see" the disk. This was seriously a headache for me, and there doesn't seem to be anything out there on this issue. Hope this helps.

Here are the steps I took:

1. Flash BIOS to 0501 (or 0001).
2. Download the latest Marvell 91xx drivers and burn it on a CD (the drivers in the supplied ASUS Support DVD will not work).
3. Enter MB BIOS and set the SATA III controller's operating mode to RAID (Note: If you also have the Intel (SATA II) controller set to RAID, set it to AHCI. Otherwise, Windows will fail to install. Don't worry, this won't destroy neither the array nor the data.).
4. After POST, press CTRL + M to access the Marvell BIOS.
5. Create the desired array.
6. Enter MB BIOS and re-order the drives so that the newly created array is the first disk in the list.
7. Initiate Windows install.
8. The install will not see the "disk" just created, so pop in the driver CD and hit "Load Driver".
9. Locate and install the driver (?:\marvell_91xx_1.2.0.1200_1.1.0.6\miniport\Flopp y64).
10. The install should now see the disk. Eject the driver CD and pop the Windows install disc back in.
11. Wait a few seconds and hit "Next" to begin the install process.

***NOTE 1: To get the SATA II RAID array up, make sure to set it to AHCI mode after creating the array in RAID mode (it will not boot/work otherwise). If you haven't already, simply download/install the IRST from the ASUS site or from the supplied DVD (props to RagingCain).

***NOTE 2: There may very well be performance issues at first (like hang-ups), but this seems to have been completely remedied by the time SP1 was installed and system rebooted.

Link

Is this how you install ? 🙂

Those steps are correct! Set your Stripe to 128KB and WriteBack Cache "ON".

1) Go to the Intel Download Center and make sure you have the latest Firmware for your 510 SSDs
2) Make sure you are using two SATA III 6Gb/s rated cables (yes, SATA II cables may work, but some drives have data transmission integrity issues if you don't use SATA III cables)
3) The SATA III Controller should be set to RAID, the Jmicron eSATA and Intel SATA II Controllers should be set to AHCI
4) Use the Marvell Raid driver found here: Marvell 88SE91xx driver 1.2.0.1003 WHQL When you browse for the driver it's in the Floppy 64 folder. Ensure that you are not diving into one of the AMD folders.
5) After the RAID0 is recognized by Windows, click on "Drive options (advanced)". Then click on "New" to create your new system partition. It should make a 100MB partition and the rest will be allocated for your system C drive. The system reserved 100MB much exist or Windows will fail install every time.
6) After Windows Install go download the Marvell Software for RAID management from Gigabits Website. The Gigabit G1.Assassin has the same 9182 controller as the Rampage III Black Edition, so the drivers/software will work.

If these steps do not work, then your SSD's could have a firmware issue, that has not been resolved by Intel's latest firmware release. The OCZ Vertex 3 drives that I have would not work at all when they had firmware version 2.08 installed. After I flashed the drives to 2.09 they immediately were recognized by Windows after loading the RAID driver. It just goes to show that SSD firmware can make or break compatibility. You can try to test whether the drives are valid by hooking them up on the Intel SATA II ports and doing a Windows Install. If that works, then it's a Marvell RAID driver issue specific to your SSD firmware and the driver.

Also, don't upgrade to IE9 until you have successfully installed SP1 for Windows 7.