Hello there.
I’ve just updated my Acer Aspire 7520 laptop with an SSD drive in an attempt to speed it up and bring it up to date.
I realised that I had to make it work in AHCI mode in order to operate the SSD optimally, so I unlocked the BIOS (phoenix v1.33) in order to enable AHCI mode and did a clean install of Win 7 Ultimate SP1
I’m using the original Win 7 32bit drivers from Acer’s website and the computer appears to be working OK, but I don’t think the nVidia drivers are controlling the chipset optimally.
I noticed that Fernando here had written some improved drivers and I wondered which of these would be best to download and use.
Here is a snapshot of my system:
PC: Aspire 7520
OS: Win 7 Ult SP1 32bit
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual core Processor TK-55 1.8 Ghz
Mainboard: Fuquene
RAM: 4GB PC2-5300
Chipset AMD K8 Bridge
Southbridge NVIDIA nForce 560
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 7000M / nForce 610M
BIOS: v1.33 (Unlocked to enable AHCI)
System Disk Drive: Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB Disk drive fitted.
Chipset: nVidia MCP67 v13.13
containing:
Installer (v5.54)
Ethernet Driver (65.84) WHQL
SMBus (v4.6) WHQL
SMU (v1.31) WHQL
AMT 1.3.1 (Active Management Technology for remote management) - Is this needed?
Graphics: VGA MCP67 167.49
These drivers appear to be from 2008.
If you could suggest improved versions - particularly to take advantage of AHCI, I would be most grateful.
EDIT by Fernando: Post reformatted (for better readability and to save space)
@Barclaycon :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
Since I haven’t had access to any nForce chipset system for a very long time, it is not easy for me to help you.
Questions:
1. Which is the name of the Controller, which is listed within the “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” section of the Device Manager?
2. If the word “AHCI” should be within its name, which is the in-use driver?
Advice:
Due to the fact, that
a) the nForce 650 (MCP65) chipset mainboards do not 100% support the AHCI protocol (they were the very first ones with an nForce AHCI Controller) and
b) the NVIDIA nForce AHCI drivers do not support the TRIM command at all (bad for the long-term usage of your SSD),
I do not recommend to install any NVIDIA nForce IDE resp. AHCI driver.
Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)
Thank you very much for the reply.
In the “IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers” section of the Device Manager, it said:
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 0
ATA Channel 1
ATA Channel 1
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller
So I guess this means that the driver is still IDE protocol.
Regarding TRIM.
I typed in fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify into Cmd and it said that Trim was working (DisableDeleteNotify = 0)
but you say that the NVIDIA nForce AHCI drivers do not support the TRIM command at all.
So really you think there’s nothing to be gained by using new nVidia drivers because the chipset mainboards aren’t modern enough ?
Maybe my SSD adventure is over and I should return to a standard Hard Drive.
Just one final question. I noticed that you posted on the the nVidia forum under:
Win7 driver for nForce 560
The guy mentioned that he had got everything working with 15.23 Vista WHQL.
You replied:
The last official nForce chipset driver sets, which did support MCP65, were the 15.25 sets for Vista 32/64bit. They contain nForce IDE drivers v10.3.0.46, which were the last and probably the best of the v10.x.x.xx series.
If you are running the SATA Controller in “AHCI” mode, you may try a customized version of the nForce SATA driver v11.3.1.0.33. You can download such driver folder, with I have customized by adding the missing HardwareID’s of several nForce chipsets (inclusive nForce 560), from >here
The link no longer worked. Would that customized driver work with my system in AHCI mode ?
@Barclaycon :
As long as no Controller with the word "AHCI" in its name is listed within the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" or "Storage Controllers" section of the Device Manager, you will not be able to get any AHCI driver installed.
Please check the BIOS settings regarding the nForce SATA Controller. It has to be set to "AHCI".
Attached is the original 32bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v11.2.20.9 dated 05/18/2012. This driver definitively supports the nForce SATA Controller of nForce 560 chipset mainboards, it it has been set to "AHCI" mode. On the other hand the generic Win7 in-box MS AHCI driver will support it as well and may be even better.
Good luck!
32bit nForce SATA_IDE driver v11.2.20.9.rar (345 KB)