Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: boffo on July 24, 2010, 01:45:11 pm
-
I'm a relative newbie doing my first home build. I bought a GA-X58A-UD3R (rev 2.0) and await delivery of a Crucial C300 128GB SSD. (If it matters, I will also be installing a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB as a data drive and a BR-DVD on SATA2 ports). Obviously I chose this combination in part to take advantage of SATA 3.0 speeds. Now, as I await my SSD, I read on these forums and on Crucial's about the problems involving the Marvell SATA 3.0 chipset and/or the Marvell drivers. I'd like to be able to make the right choice at the start, and so would like help in clarifying the situation.
Here is what I have been able to gather from reading the posts:
- AHCI mode is recommended generally
- Using Marvell drivers does not allow TRIM to work its magic
- Using Marvell drivers does not produce anything like the advertised SATA 3.0 speeds, and may not exceed SATA2
- Other drivers may be a better solution, at least until Marvell gets its act together.
This leads me to a few questions:
1. Is this characterization correct?
2. Given that I don't intend to use RAID, what AHCI drivers are recommended? Should I stay away from the Marvell drivers?
3. If I use MSAHCI drivers (as I have seen recommended) and plug the drive into a SATA 3.0 port, will this allow TRIM to work?
4. If I use MSAHCI drivers instead of the ones from Marvell, will this allow me to get speeds approximating SATA 3.0, or will I be stuck with SATA2 until Marvell fixes its drivers?
5. OK, a real Newbie question: Assuming it is better to set the drive as AHCI before installing the OS (Win7 x64), etc, where do I obtain the the MS drivers needed?
6. Will using AHCI for my SSD mess with my BR-DVD, as someone has suggested? Is this an issue at all for optical drives?
Thank you very much for your help. Sorry for rehashing this topic, but I'd like to make the right decisions at the start of the build and find some of this discussion in past threads a bit confusing, in part because they focus on the RAID question which does not pertain to my build.
-
Right well you seem to have done the sensible thing to start with and that is research. ;)
I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.
Nobody is absolutely sure whether TRIM will work with the Marvell chip. It can be enabled but whether Windows actually uses it is another matter.
You wont get anything like SATA3 speed using the Marvell ports however they are the best place to put your SSD. Even though the SSD will not push the SATA3 limits in theory at least it can pass SATA2.
Whether it would be possible to use other drivers for the Marvell chip I am not sure but I don't think so. Otherwise we would all be using the Intel drivers.
You can set the ports to AHCI or IDE mode in the BIOS.
If AHCI messes with your optical drive(and I haven't any reason to think it will) just put it on another port and set it to IDE in the BIOS.
I hope that answer most of your queries and if you have any more don't be afraid to post here.
-
I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.
Hi...
Let say I set it to IDE mode, what will happen if an eSATA device is unplugged from the computer when the OS is still running?
When I install the OS I set it to IDE mode. When will happen if I set it to AHCI now? Will it corrupt the system?
Thanks.
-
onemilimeter, if the eSATA port is set to IDE the system would probably crash or at best you couild lose data. If you install the OS in IDE mode and then change it to AHCI it probably wont read/find the drive and it definitely won't work without hacking the registry. There is a registry hack that is known to work but as always it is a dangerous thing to do.
-
onemilimeter, if the eSATA port is set to IDE the system would probably crash or at best you couild lose data. If you install the OS in IDE mode and then change it to AHCI it probably wont read/find the drive and it definitely won't work without hacking the registry. There is a registry hack that is known to work but as always it is a dangerous thing to do.
Oh... It means I got to re-install my system again, which is quite painful to do... :)
-
Why ???
-
Why ???
From my understanding, in order to use the AHCI, I got to reinstall the OS, which means I've to reinstall all the software (will take me at least 10 hours to do it)... :(
-
I take it you mean because of using the eSATA hot swapping mode? If that's the case just dont unplug the drive whilst using the computer for now or do a image for reistallation.
-
I take it you mean because of using the eSATA hot swapping mode? If that's the case just dont unplug the drive whilst using the computer for now or do a image for reistallation.
"image re-installation" - interesting... something like using kind of "ghost" software, izzit?
-
Yes , it's just an exact image of your entire hard drive(mirror). You make an image and then when you want to you just copy it back to the hard drive and your installation is like new again. There are many programs out there that will do this.
-
*
you can test this :
1 - move your disk to another port but in normal IDE mode ( ex : Intel ICHxx port in IDE mode )
2 - program in BIOS the Marvell port in AHCI mode
3 - start computer
4 - OS search at this time the Marvell AHCI driver because port is changed to AHCI
at this time you can move your disk to the Marvell port in AHCI mode
I think OS start normal because AHCI driver is installed in OS
*
Pierre
*
for RAID disks ( exemple ICHxx RAID to ADAPTEC RAID you can :
1 - copy the RAID disk content with a program similar to MaxBlast to a normal IDE disk ( option add disk as a new boot disk )
2 - plug your new RAID card
3 - boot the new IDE disk ( OS install new drivers )
4 - reuse MaxBlast for copy IDE disk with OS to new RAID virtual disk
5 - remove IDE disk and boot the new RAID
*
i use if possible old MaxBlast 4 ( requiert a Maxtor disk connected )
-
Right well you seem to have done the sensible thing to start with and that is research. ;)
I will try and answer your questions as best I can. Firstly AHCI mode is not going to make much of a difference to you performance wise so unless you require hot swapping ability there is not much to gain. If you decide to enable it anyway you do really need to do it before installtion of the OS.
Nobody is absolutely sure whether TRIM will work with the Marvell chip. It can be enabled but whether Windows actually uses it is another matter.
You wont get anything like SATA3 speed using the Marvell ports however they are the best place to put your SSD. Even though the SSD will not push the SATA3 limits in theory at least it can pass SATA2.
Whether it would be possible to use other drivers for the Marvell chip I am not sure but I don't think so. Otherwise we would all be using the Intel drivers.
You can set the ports to AHCI or IDE mode in the BIOS.
If AHCI messes with your optical drive(and I haven't any reason to think it will) just put it on another port and set it to IDE in the BIOS.
I hope that answer most of your queries and if you have any more don't be afraid to post here.
Thanks for the reply! One thing I left out is that the case I'm using provides the option to easily hot swap a SATA drive, and so it sounds like AHCI is the way to go. The lack of definitive information we have about TRIM support on the Marvell chip is annoying, to me more so than the speeds I might get with SATA 3.0. I hope we can get an answer to this soon, from Gigabyte or from Marvell.
-
Well that is a question we have been pressing Gigabyte on for some time now but there doesn't seem to be any headway being made so far. Finally runn3R the manufacturer's moderator has started to respond and so things are looking like we might start getting somewhere.
-
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
-
Ah! So not too painfull John. That's always a good start. Thanks for the feedback as it's always nic eto know how people got on. Your SSD speeds are very good, what drive are you using?
-
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...
-
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. ;D
-
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
-
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.
[url=http://website.with_link.to/picture.jpg][img width=768]http://website.with_link.to/picture.jpg[/img][/url]
Thanks
-
Yes... For example:
[imgSPACEwidth=600]http://...[/img]
Replace the word "SPACE" with a "space".
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.