SATA3 and Gigabyte X58A-UD5

[Bert9]

Hey guys I just went out and brought a SSD: Intel 520 Series 120GB and a HDD:WD Black 1TB but a friend of mine said to me that I coundn't hook them up in SATA3 because there is a fault in the Gigabyte X58A-UD5, Is this true and what can i do about it ?


System Specs

PU: Intel Core i7 930
MOBO: Gigabyte X58A-UD5
RAM: Patriot Gaming Kit 6GB 1600MHz DDR3
GFX: Sapphire 2GB 7870 OC PCI-E VGA Card
SSD: Intel 520 Series 120GB
HDD: WD Black 1TB
Seagate Barracuda 500GB
PSU: Thermaltake Evo Blue 650W APFC Gaming
CASE: Coolermaster HAF922
CD DRIVE: Pioneer SATA 24x DVDRW
COOLER: Nactua-V1 2P-SE2

 

[Xenturion]

Well, your friend is incorrect. There isn't any reason you won't be able to install the drives on your current Motherboard. Your board (and mine) doesn't support SATA 3. It does, however, support SATA 2. Essentially, you just won't see the full performance potential of the Intel 520 120GB drive. They'll still function normally.

The standards are SATA 2: 3.0Gbps and SATA 3: 6.0 Gbps. Only the SSD will be able to take advantage of the differences in bandwidth.

 

[Dereck47]

All X58 chipset based motherboards use a Marvell controller for their SATA 3 (6Gb/s) ports.

The Marvell 9128 controller on your motherboard has a maximum data bandwidth of PCIe x1 at 5Gb/s (500MB/s).

The Marvell controller is not faulty, it just cannot handle the speeds of modern SSDs. It was designed when 1st generation SSDs were released.

You can connect your SSD to the Marvell ports but you will not get the advertised Read/Write speeds.

 

[Bert9]

Would it be better hooked up I'm sata 2 then 3. What my mate said was it had sata 3 capability but because it was first gen it wouldn't load the disk properly on start up

 

[Dereck47]

Yes, connect all of your drives to the Intel ports in AHCI mode.