SSD only running at SATA I speed (150mbps)

[GarethA]

I've recently installed a 120gb Kingston HyperX Fury to one of my old computers which has an Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe mb with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ (socket 939) CPU but have noticed that CrystalDiskInfo shows the transfer rate as SATA/150 | SATA/600, the first being current mode and second being supported mode. The mb is old so only supports SATA I + II. It also does not support AHCI which I understand you need to have in order for the performance of the SSD to be optimum but why the heck is it connecting at the slowest rate, I have connected the SSD to the mb with a new PNY SATA III cable so what is causing this? Using Windows 7 Professional SP1 32bit with 3GB RAM (2.5GB usable). All tests I've done show similar speed results which are no better than some 7,200rpm hard disks I've tried around the 118mbps mark (read/write). The boot time is still pretty good but I want to get the best out of it without upgrading. How do I change it to connect at SATA II speeds please?

 

[4745454b]

Why would it support SATA III? Because of the cable? That chipset only supports SATA I AFAIK. It doesn't support SATA II to my knowledge. If there are some SATA II ports on it make sure you are using the right one.

 

[GarethA]

Why would what support sata iii? The SSD does but the motherboard only supports sata ii or 3gb/s, the cable I'm using is a sata iii cable which should be backwards compatible with the other two standards no? I'm only getting connected at sata i speeds, I want to connect at sata ii which should be possible.

This is my mb here:
http://www.motherboards.org/reviews/motherboards/1503_2.html

 

[maddogfargo]

* IF * The motherboard supports AHCI mode you need to set that in the BIOS.

Just bear in mind the SSD can only operate at a speed the motherboard will support.

 

[4745454b]

Yes, I do see under SATA where it says 3.0.

Storage support is very good on the A8N Deluxe, as it offers four SATA150 connections and two UltraDMA 133/100/66/33 connections via its native nVraid offering the following configuration options, RAID0, RAID1, RAID 0+1 and JBOD span cross SATA and PATA. In addition to NVIDIA's storage support, the board also incorporates the Silicon Image 3114R RAID controller offering an additional four SATA150 connectors supporting RAID 0, 1, 0+1, and RAID 5 configurations.

What I don't see in the description is where it says SATA 300. (SATA II) I knew it used the NF4 chipset, but I don't remember that supporting SATA II, only SATA. After looking online I see the SI 3114R doesn't support SATA II, and the NF4 MIGHT support it.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/AMD/120

NVIDIA's nForce4 chipset is offered in three variants.

nForce4: This chip is the lowest cost version, it has no support for SLI or SATAII.
nForce4 Ultra: This is the midrange version, it supports Serial ATA II but not SLI.
nForce4 SLI: This is the high-end version with support for both SATA II and SLI.

I don't know if the red or black SATA ports are attached to which controller, so assuming you have the NF4 ultra or SLI, try using the other color ports. If its just NF4, then you don't have SATA II ports anywhere.

Edit: I checked you link again, you have the NF4 SLI. Try the other color ports and see if you get 250+

 

[GarethA]

Yes I think I have SI 3114R as it displays on the second screen just after bootup.

I'm quite sure the mb I have has the nForce4 SLI as I have two 6600GT cards in SLI mode. AFAIK I have always and only used the black sata ports for HDDs as I have never need to use RAID. However I did connect the SSD to one of the raid ports and it would not boot into Windows, it said system disk error or something like that. I also connect the ssd to another sata port instead of the 'sata 1' port of which there is four in total but it still showed as connected as sata i in Crystaldiskinfo.

From that mod website you linked to I cannot seem to find the Nvidia part on the green board on my mb so I guess it is underneath the very small fan which is very close to the actual sata ports on the mb.

So what I think will have to be done is to make a connection between the pins to enable me to have sata ii functionality. Unfortunately I am not comfortable doing this myself so either I will have to grin and bear it or take it to my local computer guy and see if he can do it.

Thanks very much for the swift help though, I never even knew about there being different models of the nforce4 even though it seems I have the high-end one, still I cannot believe why sata ii isn't enabled by default.

 

[4745454b]

I wouldn't mod the board. If I remember correctly that was something people did back in the day to turn the NF4 Ultra into the NF4 SLI which you already have.

Did you install windows with the SSD already attached? If you go into the bios can you change the SATA ports to IDE? Perhaps the red ones are on RAID and that's causing an issue when the SSD is plugged in.

 

[GarethA]

NF4 SLI which you already have.

Yes so what do I have to do to get sata ii if it is probably already enabled?

Did you install windows with the SSD already attached? If you go into the bios can you change the SATA ports to IDE? Perhaps the red ones are on RAID and that's causing an issue when the SSD is plugged in.

Yes I did. The bios doesn't have those options to change to IDE I don't think as I have tried looking a number of times and the interface is fairly basic. Yes you are right the red ports are for raid but I don't intend to use that. All I want is my single ssd drive that I have to be connected as sata ii, nothing special! Why oh why is it so hard to fix this. I'm sure I had sata ii hard disks connected via sata ii on this system before in Crystaldiskinfo as I noticed the drive which came with the computer was itself only a sata i drive so would only connect at sata i speeds however I also had other more modern drives connected at the same time and they would show as being sata ii. Maybe the mb does not like ssds for some reason.

Edit: re seeing drives in sata ii mode I think I might have been using XP home 32bit and not W7 like I am doing so now. Also as its a new install I had to go through windows update and download a ton of stuff including the optional updates. Also yesterday I installed this file direct from Nvidia servers:
nforce_winvista32_15.01_international.exe

I don't like to rely on the Asus site for updates as they can be outdated. It's supposed to be the nforce chipset but they didn't have a download for windows 7 but it installed normally as you can do so with programs for Vista on win 7 I have found out. I will try and uninstall this to see if anything changes.

 

[4745454b]

I suggested the different color ports as the ones you are using might be the SI controller and not the NF4 controller. The SI only supports SATA and you need the NF4 to get SATA II. Honestly I would have chucked this system a long time ago as even the lowest of the new CPUs is much faster than what you have and you can get PCIe 2 or 3 with SATA III and USB3 for cheap. SLI 6600s? I think the 730 is as fast if not faster. Tech moves forward really fast and with the age of this system it isn't worth it. A driver update might do the trick. But if you want new tech, it's best/easiest to move onto a new system.