Hi Dieter, I remember you are some sort of guru when the talk is about nvidia chipsets:
given a motherboard with GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a chipset, is it possible to make it run in AHCI mode with SATA II speeds?
the idea is to use a SSD to speed up the old desktop, so TRIM is needed.
motherboard link:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/nvidia/n68c-s%20ucc/
TIA
@elisw :
As you probably know, NVIDIA has never built an nForce Serial ATA Controller, which fully supports the AHCI protocol.
Nevertheless the nForce 630a chipset (=MCP67) includes a NVIDIA nForce SATA Controller with the option “AHCI”, but the related NVIDIA nForce AHCI drivers do not support TRIM.
What I do not know is, whether the generic MS AHCI drivers (MSAHCI resp. STORAHCI) of the modern Windows Operating Systems from Win7 up do support any NVIDIA Serial ATA Controller running in “AHCI” mode.
Since I don’t have access to an nForce chipset system, I cannot test it myself.
So if you want to run an SSD with an nForce 630a chipset system and want to have full TRIM support, the best choice would be the generic MS in-box AHCI driver. If this driver should not work, I recommend to set the NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller to “IDE” mode. This way you will not get the best possible SSD performance, but TRIM support anyway.
Hi
Is TRIM Support absolutely necessary for SSD?
I had MCP78 system nForce SATA_IDE driver v11.1.0.43 for XP integrated, successfully installed nvidia SATA after OS install completed.
But there was instability problems on the system and I think it could have been TRIM support missing. What do you think? The system kept freezing but then would resume after a 50seconds. Sometimes more. The HDD access light sould stay solid when it did freeze. So I am confident its lack of TRIM and XP support thats the problem,
@shorterxp :
No, the missing TRIM support doesn’t have effects like freezing. TRIM support is good for SSDs, especially when they are heavily used and don’t have a good garbage collection, but it is not essential for working properly.
Okay thanks. Its a mystery why that config wasn’t working well. But not a problem any more. I smashed the motherboard lol.
Sounds like could maybe be a SSD firmware issue (indilinux did that sometimes, and early sandforce too I think). What drive is it and did you update the firmware on it yet?
Most likely though, just old system and some other stuff drivers or hardware was causing that issue, but it does remind me of some older SSD issues (Not 50 second freezes, but long enough to complain sometimes)