SSD and AMD600 Southbridge

[barry2811]

My motherboard is fairly old but I'm hoping to get an SSD for my birthday this month. I'm looking at the Corsair F60 but after reading about the firmware problems I'm tending towards the 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E.

Will I have any issues with my AMD600 southbridge or should it as I suspect work without issue? Anyone using an SSD with an AMD600 southbridge? Would I better off getting a PCI Express SATA add-on card or is that just wasting money and space? I might be using a dual-slot graphics card before long so would prefer not to use the PCI Express x4 slot on my board as it is close to the x16 slot.

[d3fiant]

The SB600 is SATA 3gb/s as is the SSD you mention so bar some bad driver performance I would stick with the onboard ports. Check the OCZ forums for advice on specific drivers to use

[barry2811]

I've been reading the OCZ forums and other stuff. It looks like I should enable AHCI, something I don't use currently due to the AMD driver being crap and the Microsoft one not being particuarly efficient.

However, it looks like in SSD land, in particular, newer SSD land, AHCI is required to allow the TRIM command to pass to the drive and for firmware updates. Although it looks like AMDs drivers don't currently allow the TRIM command through. There is talk that AMD have maybe just released drivers with TRIM support added but I seriously doubt they will go back and update the SB600 drivers.

I'm currently inclinded to enable AHCI and use the Microsoft driver so that TRIM works. I hope that the detrimental performance of the Microsoft driver won't touch the benefits of using an SSD.

[Sputnik]

I have the SB750 and I've used it with both the MSahci driver and the AMD AHCI driver. The latest 10-9 AMD AHCI driver is supposed to support trim.

[barry2811]

I have the SB750 and I've used it with both the MSahci driver and the AMD AHCI driver. The latest 10-9 AMD AHCI driver is supposed to support trim.

Did you notice any difference between the drivers performance wise? I've read about the 10-9 driver but I don't think they'll update it for the SB600.

[Sputnik]

I have not done much conclusive testing between the two but, it seems to have got better benchmark scores with MSahci.