Newbie Q: GA-X58A-UD3R and SATA 3.0?

[boffo]

It's a Crucial C300 128gb. Yes, I'm glad to see the speeds are roughly what is advertised, which isn't always the case...

[Dark Mantis]

I'm glad that your C300 is working to spec because there have been many instances on other forums where people have been complaining about their perfomance being not up to scratch. The massive price drop the other day has made them much more affordable now too.

[Wonderwrench]

Just a quick update: The install went smoothly, and everything seems to be working normally.  The SSD was installed in a SATA 3.0 port and AHCI mode was selected in BIOS. Win7 automatically installed the MSAHCI driver, as it is supposed to.  As we know by now, there is no way to tell whether TRIM is "working", only whether it is enabled, and it is.  The only odd thing is that Win7 ordinarily turns off defrag for SSDs, but didn't do so in my case until I did so manually.  Driver issue?  The speeds indicate that it is in fact making use of the SATA 3.0 speeds (for example, CrystalDiskMark for sequential reads was around 345-350 MB/s).

So, thanks again for the help.  On the whole (so far) the new system is working exactly as I wanted.  I will watch this forum to see whether runn3r and the Powers That Be can give us a definitive answer on the TRIM question.

John

This is good news as I have a friend that is looking to do the same. Crucial C300 SSD on the Marvell SATA 3 controller. I built a PC for him using a GA-X58A-UD3R rev 2 board and a standard magnetic drive on the Intel SATA 2 controller for the time being. I did play around with the Marvell controllers bios settings and found that Windows 7 64 bit does not have drivers for the controller when set to AHCI mode. AHCI was enabled in the bios for the Marvell SATA 3 controller before the OS install and after the install windows did not have a driver for the device. There was no drive attached at the time but why should it matter? How did you get Win 7 to install the darn MSAHCI driver? The bios is laid out very poorly, the controller naming scheme sucks IMO. Are you 100% sure you actually have the Marvell SATA 3 controller in AHCI mode in the bios? Not saying you don't but in my testing its a no go. See screen shot of what I think is the Marvel SATA 3 controllers AHCI setting in the bios. Is this the setting you set to AHCI mode? Also see my post about this problem. http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2277.0.html


http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t25/wonderwrench/Misc/marvell.png

[Dark Mantis]

I am afraid that when you uploaded the pictures you didn't do it in the proper format and so it is almost impossible to read your text as the scroll bar is out of site. Can you just alter the pictures so that they conform to this standard please.

Code: [Select]

[url=http://website.with_link.to/picture.jpg][img width=768]http://website.with_link.to/picture.jpg[/img][/url]
Thanks

[onemilimeter]

Yes... For example:

[imgSPACEwidth=600]http://...[/img]

Replace the word "SPACE" with a "space".

[Dark Mantis]

This is good news as I have a friend that is looking to do the same. Crucial C300 SSD on the Marvell SATA 3 controller. I built a PC for him using a GA-X58A-UD3R rev 2 board and a standard magnetic drive on the Intel SATA 2 controller for the time being. I did play around with the Marvell controllers bios settings and found that Windows 7 64 bit does not have drivers for the controller when set to AHCI mode. AHCI was enabled in the bios for the Marvell SATA 3 controller before the OS install and after the install windows did not have a driver for the device. There was no drive attached at the time but why should it matter? How did you get Win 7 to install the darn MSAHCI driver? The bios is laid out very poorly, the controller naming scheme sucks IMO. Are you 100% sure you actually have the Marvell SATA 3 controller in AHCI mode in the bios? Not saying you don't but in my testing its a no go. See screen shot of what I think is the Marvel SATA 3 controllers AHCI setting in the bios. Is this the setting you set to AHCI mode? Also see my post about this problem. http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2277.0.html

Well the Marvell drivers have been a bone of contention for ages. In most peoples view they are absolutely cr*p! The BIOS has the AHCI mode there but whether the drivers work is another matter. The speeds available from the Marvell chip are no better than the SATA2 ICH10. Apart from that I wouldn't like to say.

[onemilimeter]

I'm a bit confused here... boffo reported that:

The speeds indicate that it is in fact making use of the SATA 3.0 speeds (for example, CrystalDiskMark for sequential reads was around 345-350 MB/s)

Hi...

Does that mean the speed of his SSD is not limited by the problem of Marvell 3.0 that we've been discussing lately?

Thanks.

[Dark Mantis]

No the speed must be limited by the controller. It might be that the measuring software was out and reporting better speeds than were actually occuring. I must admit to being a little confused by it.