Z68 setup help

[Sonny73N]

Hi guys, I have my newly build only around 7 weeks but I have decided to upgrade my motherboard. Mainly because USB problems on my current one, the Gigabyte GA-Z68M-D2H which I got totally based on excellent reviews and seemed like a good budget board at the time. My new board GA-Z68XP-UD3P will arrive sometime at noon tomorrow. I currently have the i5-2500k, 90GB Corsair Force3, 2x4GB 1333MHz GSkill memory Cas7, OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w, HIS Radeon 6770 and Zalman 9500AT. I'll be using Windows 7 Ultimate x64. What I don't understand is that I saw on the UD3P that it has Marvel controller. How about Intel controller? Why is that Marvel chip had been added on there?

I use my system mainly for Photoshop and video encoding. I have 2 external USB drives for back up. I had AHCI configured on the D2H but I didn't see in BIOS any other option for using Marvel or Intel driver. I'd seen the Intel and Marvel drivers on Gigabyte download support page for the UD3P that instruct to press F6 to load driver from floppy (?). I don't have floppy drive but do I need to install one of those driver before installing Windows?

I do want to overclock the i5 a bit, to the safe limit of heat which it can takes. So what is the best setup for my system on this new MB? AHCI or IDE? What about those confusing drivers? Can you guys point me some direction. Thanks in advance.

*Sorry I had to post this again because I only have half a day out of a week to play with my system.

 

[blazorthon]

The marvel was added on to provide more SATA 6Gb/s ports because Intel only provides two of them. There are still the two Intel 6GB/s and the four Intel 3Gb/s ports. If you use AHCI on an Intel port then you should use AHCI on an Intel port on your new board and if you use IDE emulation mode you should use it on the new board.

Pressing F6 when installing windows XP to install a raid driver (XP can only install RAID drivers from floppy disks) is what gigabyte probably meant. Unless you want to reinstall your operating system and your operating system is windows XP and you have a hardware RAID setup you can probably disregard this.

AHCI is better than IDE emulation mode in some ways, you'll have to Google them if no one else explains what those ways are because I can't remember them right now.

 

[Headspin_69]

Z68 is Marketing BULL.

 

[blazorthon]

Z68 is Marketing BULL.

Would you elaborate further upon your claim? I would like to know what about z68 is marketing bull. Do you have a problem with having SSD caching for hard drives and being able to use the IGP on the CPU without sacrificing overclocking?