Chipset driver for early AM2+?

[NTMBK]

I'm getting hold of a second hand Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe, and I'm looking to install Windows 7 64-bit on it. Does anybody know what chipset drivers I should be using? It's got a 790FX NB and an SB600 southbridge, which confuses matters a bit- some AMD driver packages list support for "700 series chipsets", but I don't know if they would support the southbridge correctly. The manufacturer's website just has the Vista drivers listed, not Win7- any idea if they would work?

 

[Cerb]

Does the board support AHCI? Old as it is, if it does, then the drivers built in to the OS should do the job.

 

[NTMBK]

Does the board support AHCI? Old as it is, if it does, then the drivers built in to the OS should do the job.

Yeah, the SB600 does AHCI. But do you not lose performance by using the Windows driver instead of the manufacturer driver?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, the SB600 does AHCI. But do you not lose performance by using the Windows driver instead of the manufacturer driver?

Depends on how poorly the mfg driver is written. The MS AHCI driver is decent, and very compatible with devices. I in fact prefer it to the AMD or NV AHCI drivers.

 

[Cerb]

Possibly, but usually not, with older AMDs. The controller itself was on the slow side. SB700 and SB750 were nice improvements, even for HDDs (Intel wasn't any better, selling ICH7 for what seemed like an eternity).

You could try amd.com, though, and see if the 7-series or 6-series driver packages have anything extra.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Depends on how poorly the mfg driver is written. The MS AHCI driver is decent, and very compatible with devices. I in fact prefer it to the AMD or NV AHCI drivers.

Seconded. The MS AHCI driver also has good support for ATAPI drives (ODD), something missing from a lot of manufacturers AHCI drivers.

 

[chucky2]

AMD used to have SB600 drivers on their website however, while still having the option in their dropdown selection menu for 6-series, when you get to where to download the driver, it will only support 7-series and higher; and that is not just the txt on the website, running the driver will produce a fail as it will not install.

Now...if you download the driver from your mobo manufacturer, and the one from AMD's website, and allow them both to unpack, you can open up the .inf and copy your information from the mobo manufacturer into the newer driver. That may allow you to use the newer AHCI/RAID driver when "F6'ing" (or chosing Load Driver or whatever it is in the initial windows setup). When you do the stare and compare, you'll see your mobo driver inf and new driver inf have a lot in common, just copy the devices the old driver has but the new doesn't into the new driver inf. Save to USB stick and try that during Windows setup.

EDIT: I've made AMD aware of this, and, rather than remove the 6-series section as they aren't providing drivers that work for 6-series chipsets, or, preferably, at least post the last supported driver that supported 6-series chipsets (which would be far newer I'm sure than what the mobo manufacturers have), they instead told me to go to my mobo manufacturer and then just kept the 6-series dropdown available with a driver that doesn't work with it. Times must be very bleak at AMD to suck that bad at something so exceedingly simple...

Chuck

 

[chucky2]

You know, as a follow up, you might still try running the 7-series (it'll be 13.4 I believe) driver to see if it installs something for some part of the 7-series 790FX northbridge you have. It won't install anything for the SB600 though. I think if you want a newer driver you'll have to do the inf edit, put on Windows stick, install Windows and load those drivers, and then continue on with install.

 

[NTMBK]

Thanks for all the help guys Sounds like I should give the Windows AHCI driver a go, and I'll try installing the 7-series chipset driver to get any drivers for my northbridge.

 

[nenforcer]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/

Step 1. Choose 'Integrated Motherboard Graphics'

Step 2. Choose either 'AMD 6-Series Chipsets' or 'AMD 7-Series Chipsets'

Step 3. Choose 'All 6-Series Chipsets' or 'All 7-Series Chipsets'

Step 4. Choose Windows 7.1 64-bit Edition

Both choices will lead to Catalyst 14.9 Download

 

[chucky2]

Right, but for people with a pure 6-series solution (such as those running 690G), or, for people running a hybrid setup (7-series northbridge and 6-series southbridge) that want the AHCI/RAID driver from AMD, what happens is that installer won't run for you to satisfy what you need for 6-series. That's what I was saying earlier: AMD has 6-series as an option, and then the drivers for their option flat out don't work as delivered for their option. Either they need to remove 6-series as an option (bad for us), or, either load the last supported 6-series driver (2nd best option for us) or, most preferably, edit the current driver set and add 6-series support (best option).

The feedback I got from AMD support on this after getting them to understand this was frankly crazy: Yes, we know what we're providing doesn't work, but, go to your mobo manufacturer instead.

 

[NTMBK]

The built in Windows AHCI driver worked a treat Installed Windows 7 with no problems, even enabled TRIM for my SSD correctly.