SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

[bigsuirlife]

Hi all,
i receive an 850 evo 500Gb and i want to install it on my GA-P55A-UD3 to change my HDD.
I'm not comfortable with technical terms so ill try to explain in easy mode some question :)

- In which SATA port i need to connect to obtain better performance?
(I read that the Mb has sata 3gb and sara 6gb port)

- I need only to allow AHCI mode to recognize it?

- Which other steps i need to follow?

My GA-P55A-UD3 it's still intact ...no bios upgrade or other (BIOS F11)
My SO it's windows 7 64bit

thanks

[bigsuirlife]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

no one can help me?

[profJim]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

Welcome to the forum.

Your best ssd performance will probably be with the native Intel 3GB/s sata2 ports and you should connect your ssd to the sata2_0 port.

The GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7 (Marvell) 6GB/s ports might not be as reliable as the Intel ports.
Page 7 in your motherboard user manual has a diagram that shows the location of the sata ports.

You should be able to copy/clone your current operating system to the ssd using Macrium Reflect freeware.

The specifications for your motherboard:

[B]Chipset:[/B]

    6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
    Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 

[B]Marvell 9128 chip:[/B]

    2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
    Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1 

* SATA3 RAID 0 4x and SATA3 2x performance are maximum theoretical values. Actual performance may vary by system configuration.
* SATA3 SSDs are not recommended for use in RAID 0 mode on Marvell SE9128 ports.

I have ssd's in my P35 and P45 systems using the Intel sata2 ports with excellent performance, and the real world performance is much better than using a hard drive for the operating system. I have two new 250GB ssd's that will installed in a raid0 configuration in my EP45-UD3P system in several days. Even though the the raid0 performance will be about twice as high, I don't expect the raid0 performance to be noticeably better except when I'm doing intensive photo manipulation.

Raid0 benchmark using 2 x 250GB Crucial BX100 ssd's:




Single BX100 250GB benchmark as a secondary data disk:

[bigsuirlife]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

Welcome to the forum.

Your best ssd performance will probably be with the native Intel 3GB/s sata2 ports and you should connect your ssd to the sata2_0 port.

The GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7 (Marvell) 6GB/s ports might not be as reliable as the Intel ports.
Page 7 in your motherboard user manual has a diagram that shows the location of the sata ports.

You should be able to copy/clone your current operating system to the ssd using Macrium Reflect freeware.

The specifications for your motherboard:

[B]Chipset:[/B]

    6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices
    Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, and RAID 10 

[B]Marvell 9128 chip:[/B]

    2 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (GSATA3_6, GSATA3_7) supporting up to 2 SATA 6Gb/s devices
    Support for SATA RAID 0 and RAID 1 

* SATA3 RAID 0 4x and SATA3 2x performance are maximum theoretical values. Actual performance may vary by system configuration.
* SATA3 SSDs are not recommended for use in RAID 0 mode on Marvell SE9128 ports.

I have ssd's in my P35 and P45 systems using the Intel sata2 ports with excellent performance, and the real world performance is much better than using a hard drive for the operating system. I have two new 250GB ssd's that will installed in a raid0 configuration in my EP45-UD3P system in several days. Even though the the raid0 performance will be about twice as high, I don't expect the raid0 performance to be noticeably better except when I'm doing intensive photo manipulation.

Raid0 benchmark using 2 x 250GB Crucial BX100 ssd's:




Single BX100 250GB benchmark as a secondary data disk:

thanks for answer.
regarding SO i'll perform a fresh installation on SSD.

ty again

[profJim]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

You're welcome.

Before you do a fresh O/S install on your ssd, you should first enable AHCI mode in the bios.

To avoid MBR (Master Boot Record) problems, do not have any other ssd's or hard drives installed in your system while installing win7.
After the O/S is installed, you can then connect additional drives.

For existing setups, the following information is good to know:

AHCI mode is better than IDE mode.

Post an AS SSD benchmark result with your current hard drive installed.
This will tell us if you are currently using AHCI mode.
If you are using IDE mode, you will need to make a change in the windows registry to enable AHCI mode.

Sample AS_SSD benchmark showing that msahci mode is used:

[profJim]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

A web search using: Marvell 9128 controller ssd performance provides useful information.

Many of the links compare the native Intel sata2 performance with the Marvell 9128 sata3 performance.
The results were even worse (with the 9128 ports) than I remembered.

If you don't want to read a lot of the links, at least check out: Is the onboard Marvell SE9128 really *THIS* bad? - AnandTech Forums

Check out Does Windows 7 have AHCI drivers at install - Windows 7 Help Forums for some straight forward information when installing windows 7.

Let us know how everything turns out or if you have any more questions.

[bigsuirlife]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

I'll connect the SSD on defaul SATA Intel port , activate RAPID option from Samsung magician application and now win 7 64 start in 1 min :)

so thanks all for the help

[profJim]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

These are my AS SSD benchmarks using my P35 motherboards:

[boondocks]

Re: SSD on GA-P55A-UD3

Boy you weren't kidding, profJim. The Marvell ports are supposed to be SATA III??