GA-770TA-UD3 SATA3 Ports

[godftw]

just picked up an SSD a few days ago and when i plug it into the SATA3 port my computer freezes @ splash screen, after seeing this i plugged my normal HDD into the Sata3 port and it also froze at splash.

Both the SSD and the HDD work when plugged into the normal Sata ports, im not even sure what the problem could be

System specs:
GA-770TA-UD3
Athlon II x3
G.skill 4gB 1333
Radeon 4850
Vertex 3 SSD
Samsung Spinpoint

Note the MOBO bios is relatively up to date and it is Rev 1.0

[absic]

Hi there,

sadly the SATA3 ports on this motherboard are controlled by the Marvell 9128 chip and has been the source of many such issues. I suffered with a similar problem on the GA-790XTA-UD4 and ending up only using these ports in IDE Mode for my DVD/CD burner.

The first thing I would suggest is that you make sure that the firmware on your Vertex 3 is up to date. You can download the latest version from here: http://www.ocztechnology.com/ssd_tools/OCZ_Vertex_3,_Vertex_3_Max_IOPS,_Agility_3,_Solid_3,_RevoDrive_3_and_RevoDrive_3_X2/

If you are planning on installing the OS onto the SSD then you would be better off attaching it to the SATA2_0 port and setting the Controller to AHCI before installing the OS.

[godftw]

i appreciate the feedback and i understand the marvell ports are not ideal for SSDs

at the moment the SSD is using that latest firmware : 2.15

that being said i have already successfully installed windows 7 on the SSD via the normal SATA ports and i have benchmarked it and compared to the same SSD (120gb version) using the marvell sata3 ports (that i found online) it seems to be lacking by a large margin ... i also experience some delay/spiking with actions as simple as typing something into the Address bar of this internet explorer

most of the spiking has been fixed by using the AMD Sata drivers rather than the default MS ones... but i still experience some problems while inside games

note : all settings have been changed from IDE to AHCI in the bios

[godftw]

it appears that its a controller issue?? is my mobo broken or am i overlooking a setting/driver?

if i load up windows 7 disk and let it get to the disk selection then plug in the SSD/HDD to the SATA3 port... it shows up on the screen but it gives me an error when i try to select it

"Windows cannot be installed to this disk this computers hardware may not support booting to this disk, ensure that the disks controller is enabled in the computers bios menu"


the SATA3 options are enabled in the bios, and i downloaded all the relevant drivers for the MOBO

[Dark Mantis]

The Marvell controller was a big problem and it never actually made the grade as SATA3 controller. It just couldn't cope with the data throughput of SSDs or anything fast like RAID arrays.

Use the SATA2 controlled ports for your SSD boot drive. Only use the Marvell ports for optical drives and backup disks.