6Gb/s controller...

I feel sorry for Marvell they are being dragged through the mud on this for nothing. Highpoint do a 640 Rocket raid controller card based on the 9128 and it performs great. Well above that of the motherboard.

Sapphire Black board works as promised.


Asus even to this day post

"True SATA 6Gb/s Support
Experience the future of storage!
Supporting next-generation Serial ATA (SATA) storage interface, this motherboard delivers up to 6.0Gb/s data transfer rates. Additionally, get enhanced scalability, faster data retrieval, double the bandwidth of current bus systems." - Taken this morning from Asus webpage on the R3E.

The above statement can be taken as the following.

Get enhanced Scalability... - When you raid 0 you get less performance than with one drive.

Double the Bandwidth of current bus systems.... - I’m the ICH10R scales over 500MB/s when used in raid 0. The limit on the 6Gb/s controller if max was ever possible is 500MB/s. Not 1000MB/s.

Faster data retrieval... - Only if your using mechanical drives.

this motherboard delivers up to 6.0Gb/s data transfer rates.. - THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE. Its capped at 5Gb/s due to that being the max that one PCI 2.0 lane will ever achieve.

The sale of all motherboards by Asus, Gigabyte, Intel are sold under false information.



I bought my Asus Rampage Extreme 3 as an upgrade from an extreme 2. Because it had 6Gb/s controller and I had every intention of using it when the drives became available. I bought two C300 drives and ran into the issue where they where no longer detected on the Marvell chip after a windows install. So the drives where returned to Newegg for a refund after restocking fee. So fast forward to 3 weeks ago when I bought 2 Intel 510 120GB drives I bought them with the purpose of making use of Asus ROG super speed drive app (raids 2 drives to raid 0 on the same Marvell controller). Its now on its way back to Asus because I can not get the board to run above 330MB/s in raid 0 on the Marvell controller (something i believe is due to limitations on the board not the drives). On a standalone LSI 9240 4I I get 770MB/s in raid 0. The only drawback to this is I have to impede on the performance of my SLI setup to be able to use the card.

in summary
I bought the board purely for the 6Gb/s controller because it was advertised. It failed to do just that. I should have stayed with my rampage 2 Extreme and bought the card I ended up buying anyway and saved a lot of money.

Asus support has sucked through out all of this.
My motherboards had to go back to asus. They had no stock to process a Advanced RMA so I had to buy another motherboard in the mean time.

Some Mod on Asus website insists its ok to get 250MB/s sustained transfer on the Marvell controller because the rest is lost to system overhead.

Tech support informed me that they would not upgrade or downgrade to a board that meet the advertised statements because its not Asus policy. He then said to sell my board and go and buy a new one for my needs.