ga-p55a-ud3 & ssd's setup ?

[tommyov1 kanobi]

it seem at the wink of an eye my pcie will drop to 8x if i use the usb 3 controller or the marvell 9128 sata 6gb/s..
so i dont know where to put stuff or what to disable in bios...this is what i have two intel x25m 80gb ssd's and a corsair force 3 120 gb..
i want one intel for the o/s and the corsair 120gb for my game and the other intel for ? i also have a gtx 480 that i need to run with all x16 lane how can i set this up...?? please any help

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

I would suggest disabling the USB3.0 option in the BIOS unless you require it's use. I know it is not to the spec but even x8 for the PCIE is quite enough for your graphics cards to run at full speed so it won't actually effect your use at all.

I would recommend putting your boot drive on SATA2_0 if you have the Intel ICH10R southbridge controller and only use the Marvell ports for an optical drive.

[tommyov1 kanobi]

thx for the reply.. i dont use the usb 3 port so i went in to bios and disabled it thank you.. im confused with what you said about the ports (ICH10R southbridge controller)?...
i'll put one intel 80gb on SATA2_0 for the o/s
the 120gb on SATA2_1    flight simulator ?
the other intel on SATA2_2   for storage ?
 and when i re-install windows i should go in to bios and change ide/ to AHCI ?
if i do it like that, and not touch the two marvell 9128 sata 6gb/s ports my pcie should stay at x16 right?.. but then my new sata3 ssd will have to run at sata2 speeds?
if so should i bring back that ssd for a bigger sata2 ssd 240gb? ( if its not going to perform top speed go for size right) still better then hhd
sorry for all the question and thanks for your help

[Dark Mantis]

There is no way you are going to attain the SATA3 speeds on your motherboard without an addon card. THe SATA3 controller just diodn't work properly and there is nothing that can be done about it.

By all means use a larger SATA2 SSD if you want to. The performance increase over magnetic drives is huge anyway and the Intel posts are the fastest on your motherboard that is why I suggested using these.

If you haven't installed Windows yet then even better. You can just select AHCI mode in the BIOS before doing the install and then there is nothing else to do. It should run perfectly that way. You can also enable NCQ in the BIOS while you are there.

Let us know how you get on.