asus sabertooth BIOS

[Eidelmaim]

ok so i was talking to a friend about his motherboard and the sata II
vs. SATA III for SSD's and he had informed me that he had to get a BIOS
flash for his mobo that made his SATA II operate as SATA III with SATA
III speeds. my question is.. and after searching endlessly... is there a
BIOS flash out there that will enable the SATA II ports on my MB to
operate as a SATA III port for my SSD's... the intent is to improve the
read/write speeds of my SSD's... now before you ask.. yes, my MB does
have native SATA III 6.0 ports on it.. BUT... it is on the marvel
controller and my SSD does not at all like that set up... i in fact have
better operating speeds on the intel SATA II ports than i do on the
marvel SATA III ports...

my motherboard is a ASUS sabertooth x58

[Paul]

Sabertooth X58 storage devices include:

ICH10R (SATA II only)
Marvell 88SE9128 (Limited to around 300MB/sec)
JMB362 (SATA II only)

A BIOS flash does not magically change a SATA II port into SATA III.
The speed is a physical layer thing, meaning the silicon has to be
designed to operate at SATA III speeds in the first place. You can't
fake it.

If you want better performance, I recommend looking for a PCI Express x4
card with SATA III on it. (Your bottom slot is wired x4.) Only buy the
card, if you can find an actual review of the card sustaining
>500MB/sec. That's not as easy as it sounds. Many people will flap
their gums about what a great card they've got, only do so when they
don't actually own a SATA III SSD with >500MB/sec performance. If they
don't have the best SSD to test with, it's going to be pretty hard
to prove it is a worthy card. Many storage cards have their problems,
so it's not an easy pick.

The easiest pick is a different Intel Southbridge, one with SATA II and
SATA III ports. Then connect the SSD to one of those SATA III ports. Those
seem to work OK.

As an example, this card "looks pretty", but there are no reviews.
It uses a Marvell 9235. You can try looking for Marvell 9235 reviews,
and see if anyone got it to work well. The x4 PCI Express slot on the
edge, will help it break the 500MB/sec barrier on any motherboard.
At least, as long as the chip shares nothing with say, the 9128
(which only does 300MB/sec on a good day). There's also a good chance,
you'll need to disable the 9128 on your motherboard, while using it.
Some of these card types, seem to get confused with other motherboard
ports. I don't know what the deal is with that.

http://www.amazon.com/IO-Crest-Controller-Profile-SI-PEX40062/dp/B00AZ9T41M

Paul