6Gbps SATA Performance: AMD 890GX vs. Intel X58/P55
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 25, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Storage
Final Words
AMD’s ATI acquisition was about bringing graphics to the portfolio with the eventual goal of integration into the CPU itself. We’ll see the first of that early next year with Llano. But as AMD goes down this integration route, it needs to make sure that its chipsets are at least up to par with Intel’s. Many have complained about AMD’s South Bridges in the past, but with SB850 we’ve actually seen some real improvement. There still appear to be some strange behaviors and I don’t like that there’s any discrepancy between AMD’s reference board and retail 890GX boards, but these results look very promising.
AMD’s native 6Gbps implementation manages to outperform both Marvell and Intel’s controllers in the 4KB random write test by a substantial margin. AMD’s sequential read speed is lower than the Marvell controller, and random read speed is lower than Intel’s 3Gbps controller. With a bit of work, AMD looks like it could have the best performing SATA controller on the market.
Intel’s X58 still has a few tricks left up its sleeve - it manages to be a very high performing 3Gbps SATA controller. Other than in sequential read speed, it’s even faster than Marvell’s 6Gbps controller with a 6Gbps SSD - although not by much.
Marvell makes the only 6Gbps SSD controller today. By next year that will change.
The P55 and H55 platforms are far less exciting. Any 6Gbps controller connected off the PCH is severely limited by Intel’s use of PCIe 1.0 slots. Unfortunately this means that you’ll have to use the 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes branching off the CPU for any real performance. That either results in you limiting your GPU to only 8 lanes or dropping back down to PCIe 1.0 if you have two graphics cards installed. ASUS’ PLX solution is an elegant workaround for the specific case of a user having two graphics cards and a 6Gbps SATA controller on-board. Our tests show that it does work well.
We have to give AMD credit here. Its platform group has clearly done the right thing. By switching to PCIe 2.0 completely and enabling 6Gbps SATA today, its platforms won’t be a bottleneck for any early adopters of fast SSDs. For Intel these issues don't go away until 2011 with the 6-series chipsets (Cougar Point) which will at least enable 6Gbps SATA.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
57 Comments
View All Comments
Ralos - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,Using Firefox 3.6.2 with the security options activated, your site appears blocked for security reason. Untrustworthy. www.anandtech.com/storage specifically.
Thought you'd like to be informed of this misunderstanding.
StormyParis - Saturday, March 27, 2010 - link
what is the CPU usage ?psychobriggsy - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
It would have been nice to see the Marvell speeds when attached by PCIe on the AMD board. Seems like an obvious thing to include to be honest.Impressive write speeds for the AMD controller, which gives a lot of hope that they can improve the read speeds, as they indicate they can with their in-house test bed.
AMD should bulk up their test bed with retail motherboards as well, so that they don't just test in ideal circumstances.
assassin37 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Anand,Im torn,
I have the Gigabyte X58-ud3r system with I7, I also have the Gigabyte AMD 890GPA-UD3H with Phenom 965. Lastly I have a 256 crucial C300 and 2 vertex 120's,I have to return 1(mobo-cpu) setup to new egg soon, what would you do, sorry I know this is not a comment
TrackSmart - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
I'm not Anand, so I can't say what he would do. But honestly, it's a matter of your personal preference and priorities.I like to support competition, so I put together an AMD Phenom II X4 system instead of an Intel Core i5 750 system. I chose AMD because they offered me similar performance per dollar (they were slightly cheaper but had slightly lower performance), plus I felt good about supporting much-needed competition in the CPU market.
What are YOUR priorities? Maximum performance? Supporting competition in the CPU/GPU market? Best performance per dollar? Most energy efficient?
That should be what makes your decision. The hardware you listed will all be blazingly fast, whatever you decide. The Intel platform offers potentially higher performance, but probably at slightly higher cost. Your choice. Same for the SSDs.
[sorry if that wasn't a "you should do this" kind of answer.]
wiak - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
what about Highpoint Marvell 6Gbps PCIe 2.0 card on AMD 7-Series chipset?for me that has no USB3 or SATA 6Gbps on my AMD 790FX motherboard
it will make this article fully complete, its the only thing thats missing! :)
georgekn3mp - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
About the two different Marvell controllers 88SE9123 and the 88SE9128...the older 9123 does NOT support RAID and the newer 9128 DOES natively support RAID 0, 1 and 5.Unfortunately on my Asus P6X58D, the controller is the older 9123 so the only way I could RAID a SATA-III SSD (or even mechanical) drive is using "Windows" Raid, not firmware on the controller. Whether it hurts performance though is harder to say since I can't test it yet ;).
I have been planning on the 256GB RealSSD for a couple of months now and am happy they started shipping...as one of the main reasons I had picked the Asus board was the native USB3 and SATA-III support. Unfortunately it does not support the RAID function but at almost 750 a drive I was not going to RAID for a while anyway....I AM happy I went with X58 for sure!
It seems the newer Gigabyte boards UD4 or higher do have the newer controller and are better for RAID SSD expecially now that it is hardware supported...the open question no one has been able to answer is if the Marvell 88SE9128 will pass TRIM commands to a RAID SSD set. So far Gigabyte boards are the only ones with that controller it appears...
Intel just updated their ICH10R chipset firmware to pass TRIM to SSDs in RAID...hopefully Marvell does too.
Since the disk speed is the bottleneck on my new computer, $750 is worth it just to prompt me to Crossfire my 5850 because the bottleneck shifted to graphics....especially with i7-920 OC to 4Ghz ;)
deviationer - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
So the p6x58d does have the PLX chip?Mark McGann - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
The p6x58D premium apparently does not according to this linkhttp://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_c...
Don't know about the newer p6x58D-E
KaarlisK - Thursday, March 25, 2010 - link
Software RAID is definitely no slouch:http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429">http://kmwoley.com/blog/?p=429
But this comparison used a very old ICH.