[KingTim]

Hello,
I'm planning on this bundle:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=BU-012-OB
i5-750 with the GA-P55-UD5 motherboard.

Then planning to hook up an SSD as the OS drive and two 1TB Western Digital 7200rpm drives.

I'll be using a single GPU, the ATI Radeon HD 5770.

My question is, will this motherboard throttle an SSD drive?

The follow on question is then, will a GA-P55A range motherboard help the situation with it's 2 x 6Gb/s Sata? The factor to weigh in there is the 'feature' of the P55A range of switching PCI channels around depending on some bios settings and whether you're using the USB3/Sata3 ports.
And maybe if you're using two GPUs?

In this scenario, if I'm also using the other PCI slots (say for a wireless card) will these ports be turned off if I'm permanently using the SATA3 port?

Thanks for any advice!

[KingTim]

Maybe I should add what I'm planning on doing with it:
I want to run the PC as a music workstation with Cubase mainly but would also like to be able to game on it to a reasonable level.
I will have an external Audio Interface that connects via USB2.

Another question on that part of it, but I'll re-post it somewhere more appropriate
2. Will a USB2 device benefit in anyway from being used in a usb3 port? Will more power be supplied to it or are all parts of the USB3 spec reserved for USB3 devices/cables?

Two more for good measure!
3. Will the adding of a PCI card for the 6Gb/s Sata and USB 3 connections still have the same bottlenecking of an SSD on the P55 range? I'm guessing it must.

4. Does an SSD require the 6Gb/s compatiblity to benefit from a 6Gb/s port? For some reason I'm imagining that if a 3Gb/s port is throttling an SSD, plugging the same one into a 6Gb/s port will help but this could be naieve!

Thankyou for any help!
Tim

[KingTim]

The article that mentions the throttling is here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17598/6

[EarthDog]

I have never heard of that (doesnt mean it doesnt exist though). And unless Im crazy (which is also possible) that article doesnt even mention your specific board..All its saying is that some boards have two controllers for its sata ports, use the native ones over the Jmicron ones.

[Evilsizer]

Originally Posted by KingTim

Maybe I should add what I'm planning on doing with it:
I want to run the PC as a music workstation with Cubase mainly but would also like to be able to game on it to a reasonable level.
I will have an external Audio Interface that connects via USB2.

i need to find out what Cubase is but depending on the level of gaming you need. even with the newest cards, stick to one GPU on P55.

Originally Posted by KingTim

Another question on that part of it, but I'll re-post it somewhere more appropriate
2. Will a USB2 device benefit in anyway from being used in a usb3 port? Will more power be supplied to it or are all parts of the USB3 spec reserved for USB3 devices/cables?

USB 3.0 has a different styled connector then USB 2.0. USB 2.0 cannot take any kind of advantage from USB 3.0 at all just wont work.

Originally Posted by KingTim

Two more for good measure!
3. Will the adding of a PCI card for the 6Gb/s Sata and USB 3 connections still have the same bottlenecking of an SSD on the P55 range? I'm guessing it must.

PCI buss is only 33MB/s so yea it would really limit the transfer rates of a SSD. If you go with a add-in card for SATA III, i would look for a 4x PCIE card.

Originally Posted by KingTim

4. Does an SSD require the 6Gb/s compatiblity to benefit from a 6Gb/s port? For some reason I'm imagining that if a 3Gb/s port is throttling an SSD, plugging the same one into a 6Gb/s port will help but this could be naieve!

Thankyou for any help!
Tim

yes it does, since the controllers are built around using that standard. you can connect a SATA II SSD to a SATA III port but the controller on the board(being SATA III) will set it self back to a SATA II standard. it would be the same if you bought a SATA III drive, you can plug it into a SATA II port but the drive will have lower transfer rates then if on SATA III. the SATA II port wont throttle a SSD, there is no throttling to speak of. the bandwidth being used is the problem, ie the link from the PCH to the CPU. the DMI link from PCH to CPU just isnt that big(bandwidth wise). making it really hard to have nice performance from SATA III on P55 depending on how the board was designed. i know i covered it but i feel like i need to agian. a SATA II drive will not take advantage for SATA III for the fact that the drive was made and controller designed around the SATA II standard. there is no performance benefit from running a SATA II drive on a SATA III controller.


ED,
jmicron doesnt have a SATA III controller that i can find. right now all i see is one from Marvell for SATA III controller, be it add-in or put onto the motherboard(with the P55A's).

[Brutal-Force]

Since I would imagine that Cubase to be very intensive on the processor, RAM and Hard drive, I would either wait to see what the generation of Sata III holds (Prices expected to be outrageous) or go ahead and get your standard set-up now and just add a Controller card and Sata III SSD when prices come down. I wouldn't want to be the early adopter because of prices and I would imagine that any S1156 Quad core or S1366 will be more than adequate for your needs.

If your mostly using this for music editing, then I would recommend the i7 860 over the i5 750. If you plan more on Overclocking, then stick with the i5 750 it runs cooler or you could get the i7 860 and just turn HT off, then later on when you need a faster CPU, you just turn it on.

to the OCF!