Gigabyte GA-G31MF-S2 SSD drive support.

[Shrikery]

Would anyone happen to know offhand if the 7 year old Gigabyte GA-G31MF-S2 motherboard has issues with SSD drives? It's a SATA 3Gb/s mobo but the last time i tried a Samsung EVO SSD in it i could only get it running maybe 15-20% faster than my old 80gb spinner, so i'm hoping i was doing something wrong. Reason i'm asking is because of a cheap SSD in todays black friday sales.

Here's the mobo - http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2756#ov

Thanks for any help!

 

[Shrikery]

Seems the ICH7 southbridge simply doesn't support AHCI 🙁

 

[VirtualLarry]

Even though it doesn't support AHCI, you should have seen a bigger performance improvement than that.

What OS, and was your partition aligned properly? That last bit is very important for SSDs, and won't be aligned if you are using XP.

 

[Shrikery]

I'm using Win7 and i don't believe i did anything to ensure alignment at the time but i did use the Samsung partition cloning software that came with it. I've pretty much given up on using an SSD with this old jalopy now, time for an upgrade anyway.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wouldn't give up just yet. What benchmark programs did you use? HDD benchmark programs often don't show the true speed of an SSD. Try CrystalDiskMark.

Edit: Run CDM, post a screenshot (can't upload directly, need to use a picture-hosting site and IMG tags), and members of this forum will be able to tell you if you are getting the expected performance.

 

[Shrikery]

I just used the benchmark included with the Samsung Magician setup software. The results from it were about 20% of what it said the drive was capable of. That drive is long gone though so i can't do any more benching but thanks for the help!