Upgrading to GA-970A-D3P (rev. 1.0) from GA-880GM-USB3

[trublubiker]

Hi

I'm about to swap out my motherboard, replacing the GA-880GM-USB3 with a new GA-970A-D3P (rev. 1.0), the main reason being to make use of the higher data transfer rates of the Samsung SSD I've just installed.

My set-up is as follows:

W7 Pro SP1 64bit O/S
AMD Phenom II X4 955 (BE) with Noctua twin fan HS
4 x 4GB G.Skill F3-12800CL9D (Running @ 1333Mhz Unganged)
Samsung 128GB SSD 840 Pro
3 x WD HDD (1 x 2Tb and 2 x 500Gb)
Sapphire Radeon HD5750 with 1GB DDR5
Cooler Master 550W PSU

Other than major screen freezes when I first set it up with only 4GB RAM, it all runs cool, quiet and stable.

You may wonder why the 970 chip instead of the 990 chip. Well I'm not into gaming, general computing and photo editing with Photoshop is my go, so SLI support was not required.

I'm hoping that other than updating the chipset drivers, this should be a clean swap 'n' go exercise, swap the boards, hook up the SSD, have a fiddle in BIOS, and away we go, fingers crossed.
I've only recently re-installed the O/S when I added the SSD so I'd like to avoid that exercise again, if possible.

OK, am I missing anything here?

Cheers
Kevin

[Vezina]

There is no upgrade from the 880 board if it had SB8xx southbridge regarding SATA speed.
The 9xx chipsets SB or NB are practically the same chips and the only reason to upgrade would be FX support or newer BIOS features like 3TB support.

Freezing could be genereted by SSD.

[trublubiker]

"There is no upgrade from the 880 board if it had SB8xx southbridge regarding SATA speed."

Well it doesn't, It has an AMD SB710 chip on it.

"The 9xx chipsets SB or NB are practically the same chips and the only reason to upgrade would be FX support or newer BIOS features like 3TB support. "

Wrong again. My compelling reason to upgrade is the SATA3 support ( 6Gb/s ) which the old board doesn't offer.

"Freezing could be genereted by SSD."

Geez, none out of three. The SSD wasn't in the computer when the freezing was happening. I believe the freezing was being caused by Windows 7 64bit's appetite for RAM.

Vezina, I'm sure you have a desire to be helpful but please get your facts right first.

[klh591]

I'm sorry but YOU are wrong!!!    I've updated 5 880GM or GMA boards to 970's in the last two years.
The chipset driver packages are the SAME for both series of boards and the 880 drivers already installed worked every time.
Usually the network drivers were also the same.

Sometimes the audio or USB3 drivers were different but that was all.

[trublubiker]

I'm sorry but YOU are wrong!!!    I've updated 5 880GM or GMA boards to 970's in the last two years.
The chipset driver packages are the SAME for both series of boards and the 880 drivers already installed worked every time.
Usually the network drivers were also the same.

Sometimes the audio or USB3 drivers were different but that was all

YOU are right about the drivers and it will make my installation a lot easier.

However it doesn't alter the fact that the SB710 chipset doesn't offer SATA 6Gb/s support.

From the Gigabyte website:

STORAGE INTERFACE

South Bridge: SB710 on 880GM-USB3

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 5 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 5 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s port on the back panel supporting up to 1 SATA 3Gb/s device
4. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and JBOD
iTE IT8720 chip:
1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive

South Bridge: SB950 on 970A-D3P

1. 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors supporting up to 6 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and JBOD

The 6Gb/s SATA support and the addition of a USB 3.0 header were my reasons for the upgrade.

Thanks for the info about the chipset drivers. Much appreciated.

[trublubiker]

Painless installation.

All up and running.

Thanks

[Vezina]

I'm sorry but YOU are wrong!!!    I've updated 5 880GM or GMA boards to 970's in the last two years.
The chipset driver packages are the SAME for both series of boards and the 880 drivers already installed worked every time.
Usually the network drivers were also the same.

Sometimes the audio or USB3 drivers were different but that was all

YOU are right about the drivers and it will make my installation a lot easier.

However it doesn't alter the fact that the SB710 chipset doesn't offer SATA 6Gb/s support.

From the Gigabyte website:

STORAGE INTERFACE

South Bridge: SB710 on 880GM-USB3

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 5 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors supporting up to 5 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s port on the back panel supporting up to 1 SATA 3Gb/s device
4. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10 and JBOD
iTE IT8720 chip:
1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive

South Bridge: SB950 on 970A-D3P

1. 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors supporting up to 6 SATA 6Gb/s devices
2. Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, and JBOD

The 6Gb/s SATA support and the addition of a USB 3.0 header were my reasons for the upgrade.

Thanks for the info about the chipset drivers. Much appreciated.

Keep in mind that if the board is AMD 8xx chipset based it should of featured a SB8xx as well.It s a Gigabyte hybrid a cheaper solution.

The SB9xx and SB8xx are identical.

If you dont believe me get a hex editor and compare the mobo BIOS-es when the southbridge used is the right one.

The fact that Gigabyte paired the SB7xx with a NB 8xx is a way of getting the product cheaper.

I would have not included this board in the AMD 8xx chipset series though.