For my socket 775 G33 MB, should I use SATA II , or PCIe x 4, for boot drive SSD

[eltouristo]

GA-G33M-DS2R
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2534#ov

I think is PCIe v 1.0 only, not sure. Has an open PCIe x4 slot. But idk if that
would work any better overall than a 2.5 drive on SATA II (3.0gb). I think trying to use
PCIe for this sorta thing might actually cause problems, even if has potential.
Especially since I want to boot from an SSD. I know it's older but it has Q9650 at 3.6, 8mb 4-4-4-12 6400 DDR2. GTX 670 which I may update. So please don't just say it's not worth it etc. I just don't want to get into a quagmire trying to deal with a controller etc if it's going to cause any issues. Idk if M.2 can be put on a controller. Idk if they come with a controller already and you can just put in the slot. Anyone know about this specific question? Is it worth trying to mess with PCIe x4 on this chipset etc? Or is it likely to be more trouble than it's worth? One last upgrade, lol. And any specific PCIe hardware suggestions if you think are good would be awesome. If was just doing SATA, would prob just get EVO 950. But I'm really lost about PCIe drive config. Thanks!

 

[dorsai]

It's highly unlikely your socket 775 board would recognize a PCI-E based SSD...PCI-E SSD's typically require BIOS support that only became available recently. Stick with a SATA style SSD and you'll avoid a lot of hassle.

 

[Paul NZ]

Thats true the new build here I had to update the BIOS, so it'd support PCI-E based ssd's

 

[marko55]

That board absolutely will not boot to a PCIe SSD. You're out of luck on that front. Even if you put a 950 on a PCIe adapter card, and plugged it in to an open PCIe slot on that board, it is PCIe 1.1 which is a whopping 250MB/s per lane. If you put it on your 2nd PCIe slot, which is an x4, you'd get 1GB/s which would be very fast, but it could only act as a storage drive. I would assume the 950 Pro can talk backwards all the way to PCIe 1.1 but you'd want to confirm that to. More likely an XP941 would though.

 

[eltouristo]

Thanks to you all, awesome help! Sorry I forgot to mention the open PCI slots. I think you are saying neither the PCI or the PCIe x 4 slot will support SSD boot. Is that correct? Just wanted to confirm that. As you can see it has 2 open PCI slots as well as the PCIe x 4. The PCIe x 16 is obviously being used by the GPU. I don't think there is a BIOS update, the last official one I think was 2009, and I'm probably running it. idk. I will go run it and see if I see any options. But I kinda think I might have to have something installed, perhaps as storage, to know for sure if will show up as boot option. Wish I had one laying around. But this will be my first SSD lol. But even if there was a way to get the PCI or PCIe to run it, even as a boot, I still fear it would cause me some issues. So I think I'm close to giving up on the idea, maybe not totally, if you have any further clarification about PCI vs PCIe boot on herethat would be interesting. Thanks! I will go check the BIOS...yeah don't see anything.

So should I just go for EVO 850, or is that going to outperform I/O speed of SATA II somehow? Meaning, should I get something cheaper than EVO, because SATA II is bottleneck? I guess I can go read this somewhere... But if you know please tell. But thanks again, I'm getting closer!