• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

OCZ vertex 3 ssd ahci?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

frixin

Registered
Joined
Nov 5, 2011
Location
South Africa
Hello everyone
I have just bought a 60Gb vertex 3 arriving on sunday!
but I have been reading about ahci as well and want to know how great will the performance be if i change over from ide?
also my board doesn have sata3 controllers >< but apparantly i read that it doesn make too much of a difference as i just want to use the drive primarily for OS and everyday programs
 
AHCI is important to get the full capabilities of the drive.

Also, noticeable is a funny word. Straight transfer speed will be reduced, but the more important small file size write/reads will not be inhibited by the SATA2 bus. (The MAXIOPs version would but not the regular Vertex)
 
o ok now I would just like to know if i set my mobo to ahci mode will it still be able to see my cd rom drive i heard on other places that these need to be run in ide mostly, altho my cd rom drive has a sata port?
Also would i need to format everything or would changing it to ahci and clean install of windows on the vertex be sufficient?
 
You shouldn't have any issues. The key is to have everything set before the new SSD is installed.

You can try it out right now. Set in BIOS to AHCI and see what happens. You can easily switch it back if it doesn't work. I doubt you have any problem.
 
Ok thanks a lot. I will try as soon as I get the time. Can I also just ask as to whether I need to enable anything or do anything specific to better "maintain" or tweak my os. I am using win7 64bit ultimate. And I read about trimm and all but do u have to enable it or does windows do it automatically.
Many thanks
 
Just as a reference, nothing more.

I got 60MB/s higher in Seq. read & write, while in AHCI mode compared to IDE mode.\

Edit: With an OCZ Agility 2.
 
When you get the new SSD, this is what I would (did) do on my system.

1) Set SATA settings to AHCI in BIOS.
2) Load OS. I have same OS as you do. Make sure you load the latest chipset and SATA controller drivers.
3) Check and if necessary update firmware on SSD to latest version.
4) Load programs.
5) Enjoy!

Yours is a SATA II board. I've ran an SSD in both a SATA III system and SATA II system, SATA II won't be as fast but will still be noticeably fast.

Also, since the SSD is so much faster. Loading a the OS and programs is no big deal. Win 7 will automatically enable TRIM and do garbage collection. It'll also disable schedule defrag to the SSD drive and should disable hibernation. With an SSD you should put the computer to sleep and not hibernate.

Finally, when you are installing the OS, disconnect any other HDD attached to the system. Obviously once the OS is installed, plug everything back in.
 
Ah thanks alot, lolz i just set the bios to ahci now now and it still detects all drives and my CD-ROM, but blue screened at the windows and restarted(think its due to registry), now just cant wait for sunday for the vertex to arrive.

also I would just like to ask why is it that other drives should be disconnected when installing I also read on several forums to do this but noone says why.
 
I have the same drive it is a very good drive I get a 7.9 WEI rating in AHCI mode I disabled hibernation and system restore have all my files directed to my 2tb drive have all my programs installed and still have almost 30gigs left you can do a search on how to save space on a ssd drive
 
Ah thanks alot, lolz i just set the bios to ahci now now and it still detects all drives and my CD-ROM, but blue screened at the windows and restarted(think its due to registry), now just cant wait for sunday for the vertex to arrive.

also I would just like to ask why is it that other drives should be disconnected when installing I also read on several forums to do this but noone says why.

As far as the BSOD, that should be expected. Odd advice to have you change this now.

Generally if you disconnect any other drives you limit your chance of accidentally formatting one of them during the Windows process, I would think. Necessary? No.
 
When you get the new SSD, this is what I would (did) do on my system.

1) Set SATA settings to AHCI in BIOS.
2) Load OS. I have same OS as you do. Make sure you load the latest chipset and SATA controller drivers.
3) Check and if necessary update firmware on SSD to latest version.
4) Load programs.
5) Enjoy!

Yours is a SATA II board. I've ran an SSD in both a SATA III system and SATA II system, SATA II won't be as fast but will still be noticeably fast.

Also, since the SSD is so much faster. Loading a the OS and programs is no big deal. Win 7 will automatically enable TRIM and do garbage collection. It'll also disable schedule defrag to the SSD drive and should disable hibernation. With an SSD you should put the computer to sleep and not hibernate.

Finally, when you are installing the OS, disconnect any other HDD attached to the system. Obviously once the OS is installed, plug everything back in.

All great points... Except for the firmware update.

You need to do that before you ever install the drive as the primary...

What I mean is... Plug the drive in as a secondary drive... Boot to your current OS and HDD... Update Firmware... THEN proceed with installing onto the new drive.

Reason being.... Most (all?) SSD drives will not let you update firmware if they are the boot drive.
 
Ya I just read the updating firmware thing.
Might sound noob but it says i can't run ssd in primary if i wanna update and I must run it in AHCI.
So i change to AHCI BSOD so wat I did was set to AHCI clean installed windows and not goin to put anything on and just goin to leave it till sunday then going to update in AHCI then clean install again.

I read up another option to use linux but was so lazy to read through all that cause I have never touched linux before.

O that brings me to one last question I have taken a picture of device manager(damn how do I insert picture :-/), well it has 2 standard AHCI1.0 serial ata controller and 1 standard dual channel pci ide controller. anyways bottomline is, is there a specific port I need to plug in my ssd or is all my sata now running in AHCI mode.
 
I know when I got my drive from newegg it had the latest firmware so I did not have to do the update
 
I have a Corsair Force Series 120 GB SSD and have updated the FW 3 times while it is being used as my primary OS and program drives without any problems. I must say Corsair implementation of FW updates for some of their drive is dead easy. Should be the same for the Vertex drives as it uses the same Sandforce 2281 controller. Check with OCZ forums. Most likely your new SSD will already have the latest FW.

Just toggle it back to IDE and you'll be up and running again with your existing HDD.

Yes, the SATA port you plug into is important. As per page 32 of your MB manual, plug into one of the SATA ports "Controlled by ICH10R, Blue". It's the native Intel SATA controller so downland the latest controller driver from Intel.

Since you also have another bank of SATA ports, controlled by Gigabyte (GSATA2), you can always leave the Gigabyte SATA ports in IDE mode. That way if you have anything that doesn't play nice with AHCI you can plug it into one of these ports. That way you can have both if need be.
 
WHEW Juz finished installing the windows and all the programs, the SSD has arrived! performance is amazing loading up windows and opening closing and operating "feels" very responsive now, probably one of the best buys ever done. the SSD came with the newest firmware on it as well so didn need to update. I ran ATTO and got read of 280mb/s and writes of 260mb/s which is understandable since im using sata II.

Anyways i would just like to say thanks to everyone that has helped me with my problems in the past few days u guys are best thanks!
 
Back