Legit Reviews got some exclusive pictures of the ASUS P7P55D EVO motherboard from Taiwan this morning that are from a new revision of the board that has never been seen before. Read to see the most recent design changes and to see why the Marvell controller has been removed, which means SATA 6GB/s is no longer a board feature.
The P7P55D 'EVO' motherboard pictured above is based off the most recent revision and was sent to Legit Reviews just hours ago. The color scheme has been updated and i/o ports have been updated as well to include External SATA (eSATA). It should also be noted that SATA6G not being present anymore due to Marvell limitations (yield and other issues of the Marvell controller are to blame according to our sources in Taiwan). As a result the SATA color scheme has been adjusted. Due to the Marvell yield issue SATA6G was removed from the EVO and also all of ASUS' P55 mass production boards. The only board that will ship with SATA6G support now is the ASUS P55 Premium motherboard. Once Marvell get all issues resolves in terms of yield and a few other areas ASUS will reintroduce this feature into their P55 boards. As a side note Marvell as well as ASUS wanted to make it clear that SATA 6G is not not SATA III as it confuses end users who may think it is SATA II/2 which has 300MB throughput...
Just got a response from Marvell on the controller issue:
Recent news of delays of SATA 6Gb/s product launches is due to a hardware issue related to PATA (legacy Parallel ATA, or IDE) compatibility on the Marvell 88SE9123. This Marvell controller chip supports both 6Gb/s SATA as well as PATA on the same chip. It is the legacy PATA functionality, not the SATA, which is the root cause of the product delays. Marvell has already identified a solution to the PATA issue and a new chip revision to resolve the issue will be introduced quickly. To date, as far as Marvell is aware, no SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s, or 1.5Gb/s) issues with the 88SE9123 have been reported by Marvell customers or partners, or discovered via extensive Marvell internal qualification testing. Marvell continues to work with its customers and partners on development, as well as on compatibility and performance testing in preparation for the 6Gb/s SATA industry introduction, which remains on track for a 2009 launch.
Apoptosis wrote:Just got a response from Marvell on the controller issue:
Recent news of delays of SATA 6Gb/s product launches is due to a hardware issue related to PATA (legacy Parallel ATA, or IDE) compatibility on the Marvell 88SE9123. This Marvell controller chip supports both 6Gb/s SATA as well as PATA on the same chip. It is the legacy PATA functionality, not the SATA, which is the root cause of the product delays. Marvell has already identified a solution to the PATA issue and a new chip revision to resolve the issue will be introduced quickly. To date, as far as Marvell is aware, no SATA (6Gb/s, 3Gb/s, or 1.5Gb/s) issues with the 88SE9123 have been reported by Marvell customers or partners, or discovered via extensive Marvell internal qualification testing. Marvell continues to work with its customers and partners on development, as well as on compatibility and performance testing in preparation for the 6Gb/s SATA industry introduction, which remains on track for a 2009 launch.
They should have just scrapped PATA/IDE support all together (as all but the lowest budget boards should). They could have been the first to market; we'll see what happens.
