Asus Crosshair 1 with nForce 590 SLI (MCP55)

[SaintNick]

My Asus Crosshair I with nForce 590 SLI (MCP55) southbridge, and with AMD Athlon X2 5000+ (Windsor).
It has the latest Asus supplied Award BIOS V 1207 from 2008.
Now I’ll be installing Windows 10 64 bit (hopefully), on a single Samsung EVO 850 SSD.

Does a bios update (from Asus) include the code for the nVidia Sata/raid controller? Or should I be looking to upgrade it from this site?
Should I be looking to just stay with the default Windows 10 drivers for this chipset, or will I find improved drivers here?

Cheers

[Fernando]

@SaintNick :
Welcome at Win-RAID Forum!

@SaintNick

Does a bios update (from Asus) include the code for the nVidia Sata/raid controller?

Probably yes, but your current and future system does neither need nor use any NVIDIA MediaShield RAID ROM module, because you will run your new SSD in IDE mode (note: only by using the Win10 in-box IDE driver you will get TRIM support within your SSD).

Should I be looking to just stay with the default Windows 10 drivers for this chipset, or will I find improved drivers here?

I am not sure about that.
This is what I recommend to do:
1. Download the related 32/64bit "Latest nForce Driverpack for Win7-10" and store the unzipped driverpack somewhere (just to have a driver alternative).
2. Do a fresh install of Win10 onto your SSD.
3. Run Windows Update and install all offered drivers.
4. Open the Device anager and look for devices with a yellow "missing driver" mark.
5. If there are any, right click onto them, choose the "Update Driver Software" > "Browse my Computer…" options and navigate to the previously stored nForce driverpack.

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

[SaintNick]

Thanks Fernando.
But ugh, after trying everything, and finegoogling, I must finally conclude the nVidia MCP55 chipset does not support AHCI. (MCP65 up).

Oh well, after first thinking I would just plonk in an Evo 850, and yeah ok add some (expensive!) DDR2 ram, and give my main PC a new life with Win 10, I discover a new Mobo is needed. Ugh!

Any recommendation for the best price/performance ratio non-gamer Mobo brand, ATX format? I’m not going to replace the PSU!!! But… yes the mobo, the processor, the ram, already the SSD, the screws… ;-(

[Fernando]

@SaintNick

I must finally conclude the nVidia MCP55 chipset does not support AHCI. (MCP65 up).

Didn’t you know that?

Any recommendation for the best price/performance ratio non-gamer Mobo brand, ATX format?

To be on the safe side I recommend to take an Intel chipset mainboard. ASRock mainboards usually have a good price/performance ratio.

[SaintNick]

@Fernando

Zitat von SaintNick im Beitrag #3

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I must finally conclude the nVidia MCP55 chipset does not support AHCI. (MCP65 up).

Didn’t you know that?

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Nope. But to fair fair to myself, it was the last in the series that didn’t support AHCI.

And yes, Asrock is good, I have an ION330HT under the TV. But I’ve decided not to go the whole way, I’ll just use the SSD in IDE mode (leaving 20% free for lack of trimming?). That’s already a huuuuge performance gain. Plus 2GB–>4GB performance gain. Plus Win 10 performance gain. More than enough for what it deserves, I don’t use the machine that much. But I still love my Pininfarina case:



Still, I have a little plan-B: the Asus Crosshair Mobo has a second Sata controller, SIL3132, oh… never mind, also no AHCI support.. So IDE it is.

[SaintNick]

This was fun to read, here:

You focus on speed rather then access-time. I can assure you that the difference between 1ms (IDE) over 2ms (AHCI) has a far greater impact then the few kilobytes you gain in speed.
Ever tested SCSI versus SATA at the same RPM? Well there you will see exactly the benefit of access-times. Speed is rubbish when AT isn’t good.
Test controllers on AT first, speed second, the picture will be a lot different in favor of IDE mode.
Same as with Internet, band-weight is nice, but if your ping is crap it won’t be fast either.
You focus on the wrong points to measure a drive.

[SaintNick]

also a good comment, here:

I should have qualified my response better. You’re right that AHCI mode’s NCQ makes a huge difference on "benchmarks" however in real-life doing real "normal" things. There is s negligeable difference in "perceptual" performance between IDE and AHCI modes (when using fast SSD’s). If the OP is doing what most people do, playing vid games, browsing the Internet, checking e-mail, running numerous desktop apps, etc, etc. I stand by my statement that there is a negligeable difference between the two modes. I have run both modes with SSD’s and for things like boot time, game screen loading times, copying large numbers of files between disks, etc, etc one cannot tell the difference at a human level (unless their PC is crap; like a really slow processor).

With HD’s, you can often feel the difference in IDE and AHCI perforrmance, like with copying large numbers of files and such on really fragmented drives, but with fast SSD’s, you really can’t.

The average PC is generally not I/O request-queue bound when using SSD’s. Now if you’re talking high I/O server-type work, then yes, the depth of HD/SSD queue abilities can make a serious impact. If I were to magically change everyone’s (even enthusiasts) PC from AHCI to IDE mode, the performance difference between the two modes would have little if any impact on their system’s daily perceived performance.

It’s better to have AHCI, but between a choice between trim support on a slower IDE mode, versus no trim with AHCI, I’d still choose trim’d IDE mode over no-trim AHCI any day of the week, because I generally wont notice the missing features like NCQ/TQ, but I will notice the SSD’s no-trim speed degradations over time. I’d miss hot-swapping more than lack of NCQ/TQ by far.
adamantinepiggy is offline

And , to my surprise, with my SSD in IDE mode TRIM seems to be enabled:

1
 

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
 

This gives 0. so TRIM is enabled.

[Fernando]

Zitat von SaintNick im Beitrag #7

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And , to my surprise, with my SSD in IDE mode TRIM seems to be enabled:

1
 

fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify
 

This gives 0. so TRIM is enabled.

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The answer "0" only means, that the OS is sending TRIM commands into the direction of the SATA Controllers, but not automaticly, that TRIM is active within the SSD.
Note: Only the generic MS IDE driver named PCIIEDE.SYS is able to let TRIM pass through the nForce SATA Controller. As soon as you replace the MS IDE driver by any nForce SATA driver, you will not have any TRIM activity wthin your SSD.