Help
cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Rampage III Black Edition AHCI Issues

Retired
Not applicable

‎08-18-2011 06:52 PM - last edited on ‎03-05-2024 08:06 PM by Community Admin

Just bought the Rampage III Black Edition board with everything else for a new system, including a Corsair Force 3 SATA III 240GB SSD. I have 3 components connected via SATA. The SSD connected to SATA III, a 750GB HDD connected to SATA II and a BluRay ODD connected to SATAII. They are connected like so.

SATA1-SSD
SATA2-EMPTY
SATA3-HDD
SATA4-ODD
SATA5-EMPTY etc.

Does this board support AHCI for SATA III SSDs? If so then should I connect the HDD and ODD drives to SATA5 and SATA6? And if thats the case, I didn't see any option to change AHCI from 1-4 to 5-8. I'm lost here. I want to set up my SSD for AHCI on SATAIII for maximum performance.
Labels:
0 Kudos
7,741 Views
7 REPLIES 7

Noein
Level 7

‎08-18-2011 07:59 PM

/ninja black edit
sata 6g = grey color ( page 65 in manual !! ) funny part is in manual is writen that ahci is on by default what is nice lie ( at least for r3g was ide 🙂 )
page 123 !! in manual : advanced / onboard device / onboard sata6g controller change there to ahci
normal sata = black color
hope this will help you :]
ps. I used manual from asus site for your mobo .
0 Kudos

Retired
Not applicable
In response to Noein

‎08-19-2011 12:41 AM

Thank you for your reply.

I looked into the manual, specifically the pages you mentioned and followed the steps. According to the BIOS the SATA6G controller is in AHCI mode, however the AHCI config still only shows the SATA3G ports. I'm going to try reinstalling the chipset drivers and seeing if that helps. I'll report back with my results.
0 Kudos

Noein
Level 7

‎08-19-2011 09:05 AM

Oo you did what I wrote ? in onboard device / onboard 6g sata set ahci and plug sata cable into GREY sata port NOT black one black = 3 GB GREY = 6 GB
when you will have it during post you will have sata 6g msg that its starting blabla or something like this . my ssd doesnt support sata 6G so i dont use it
0 Kudos

Retired
Not applicable
In response to Noein

‎08-19-2011 11:01 AM

I went to Advanced/Onboard Device Configuration and set SATA6G Controller to AHCI. But it does nothing. The SATA3G controller is still in AHCI mode and the SATA6G controller stays in IDE mode. After reinstalling the Marvell SATA6G Controller Driver the problem persists. I just can't seem to get the SATA6G Controller to actually go into AHCI mode despite the BIOS settings showing it has been changed to AHCI.

The drives are plugged in like this.

GREY
SATA0 - SSD
SATA1 - Empty

BLACK
SATA2 - HDD
SATA3 - ODD
SATA4 - EMPTY
SATA5 - EMPTY
SATA6 - EMPTY
SATA7 - EMPTY

NinjaEdit: I also called Asus Tech Support. He told me the driver they have on the site is not the latest and that they've gotten reports of issues with the older driver they offer on the Asus website. So I installed the latest driver for the Marvell 6G Controller but no luck. Bios says 6G is in AHCI mode, but still registering the SSD in IDE mode.

NinjaEdit2: Also I have another question in which the great God Google did not see fit to provide an answer to. To the best of my knowledge the 6GB/s of SATA III is only for sequential reads. What would the effects be if I just plugged this SATA III SSD into a SATA II port for AHCI? My best guess is that I would only get 3GB/s sequential reads but I would see an increase in read/write speeds of about 100+ MB/s. I'm starting to think that the current Controller and/or Driver doesn't support AHCI in SATA 6G properly and will have to be updated by Marvell to support it. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
0 Kudos

Noein
Level 7

‎08-19-2011 03:20 PM

btw how do you know that 6g run in ide mode not ahci ?O,o plug it to 6g and run some ssd benchmark , then do same on sata 2 compare result . i am not sure but as far as i remember when ahci on 6g was up it was writen in post or something 😜 as i wrote before my ssd doesnt use 6gb advantage so i dont use 6gb ports at all :<
ps. you should know very good if 6g work in ahci if u had installed OS while ahci was up otherwise on ide it will end with nice BSOD .
0 Kudos

Retired
Not applicable
In response to Noein

‎08-19-2011 04:29 PM

Yeah I didn't get any BSODs. I'm a few steps ahead of you. I ran HD Tune on SATA 6G, got a low of 150ish, high or 235ish and an average of 198. Ran HD Tune on SATA3G and got slightly higher results. Low of 155ish, high of 245ish and average of 200ish. Ball parking those figures as I can't remember exactly what the values were but those figures are close. I'm not sure what it means being so close to one another. I wish there was some solid way to tell if the SSD is actually running in AHCI mode. I know on post I get a Marvell screen that lists my SSD, running at 6GB/s but it doesn't say AHCI or IDE. I'll try to get a pic of it while booting so I can look at it carefully. It tends to be quite fast and I can't read everything on that screen.


EDIT: Nevermind. I'm aparently either an idiot or blind. I read everything on that Marvell post screen and it does say AHCI mode. So yes, my SSD on SATA 6G is in AHCI mode. However now I'm curious why the BIOS registers it as IDE.
0 Kudos

Noein
Level 7

‎08-20-2011 09:12 AM

dl sandra ( sisoftware sandra ) udner storage device select physical disc double click and in properties of your ssd if NCQ = YES it mean AHCI is running .

ps. while P.O.S.T is running you can press pause/break so it stop at it and u can as many screens as you want 😆 just press again pause/break to let it run ..
0 Kudos