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Intel P55 Mobo Choice w/Crucial RealSSD C300

B

bznotins

Member
After reading Anand's 6gbps SATA Performance article I'm confused about my upcoming motherboard purchase.

My Crucial RealSSD C300 is en route, and the reason I bought it was for the SATA 6gbps performance.

The mobo I had targeted was the Gigabyte GA-P55-UD3, which according to Anand's article won't "really" run my RealSSD in 6gbps mode unless I lower the PCI-E speed of my graphics card (a single 5850, no plans for xfire) to x8 from x16.

Most of the articles I can find on x8 vs x16 performance are pretty old. Any thoughts on the impact of this? I'd hate to cripple my vidcard performance for the sake of SSD throughput. But I'd also hate to have spent the premium on a 6gpbs drive and not be able to use it.

The other two options are to go the x58 route and spend ~$150 more on a CPU/mobo, or bump up to one of ASUS' "Pro" motherboards that implementls the PLX chip for ~$60 more.

If the difference between x8 and x16 is negligible, then my preferred solution is the Gigabyte P55 board, I can't seem to find and recent info on the impact of that choice.

Any thoughts?
 
From what I recall the difference between x16 and x8 was very small, maybe 6-7%. Is it worth an extra $150.00? Probably not. I doubt you'll notice a difference betwen 93fps vs. 100fps.

Aren't there other P55A motherboards that will run x16 in conjunction with a SATA 6G SSD? It's not like you *have* to buy the Gigabyte board or anything.
 
Sounds like I run the exact setup that you are interested in. I run the P55A-UD3 with a C300 in 6 SATA III mode as well as a 5870.

I read this article here - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling - that outlines about a 2% decrease when running a 5870 in 8x mode vs 16x mode. In my experience I noticed no change. You will be fine.

If you are looking to buy used I have my combo for sale since I have a i7 930 and X58A-UD3R that just needs to be installed...
 
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