Acer 5315 and SATA II Drive and CPU Upgrade

My setup is as follows:
Acer 5315-201G08Mi
Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 550 @ 2.00GHz (Socket P)
TOSHIBA MK8046GSX
Intel GL960 chipset
IO chip being 82801HBM (ICH8-M).
2G DDR2 533 ram
Vista Home Basic
MB - ICL50

I've noticed that the supplied Toshiba SATA II drive is running in SATA I mode and not SATA II even though the controller chip supports SATA II.

Any ideas? Perhaps the BIOS has disabled SATA II?

In addition, I'm keen to upgrade the CPU to a T7300, I assume if I follow the directions on this site, everything should work fine? Any known problems with this model?

 

Either the HDD or the interface is capping you at SATA-I 1.5Gbps. They negotiate the link together. Can check if it's the interface is being capped by bios by viewing CAP.ISS as shown here, since ICH8M is 3Gbps capable.

With your HDD, SATA-I or SATA-II is not going to make much of a performance difference, perhaps only if the HDD's read/write of cache works at > ~140GB/s. Fast SSD like OCZ Vertex would be performance limited by SATA-I interface speeds rather than their 220MB/s+ streaming.

 

Agreed, I know there will be little or no difference unless I put in a better disk but the question is, the system should still run the disk at SATAII because it supports it. If I go out and purchase a good drive and find it only runs at SATA I I'll be pissed. I'm trying to figure out while the hardware says it SHOULD run at SATA II, it is only running at SATA I.

Has anyone else experienced this with the 5315?

Do you know if my planned upgrade will work?

 

Question is, what is putting the link/drive into SATA-I 1.5GBps mode? It could be your HDD if it's an older unit, or it could be a bios imposed limitation on your 3Gbps capable ICH8M I/O interface. Only really need to check if it's the latter, since newer HDD/SSDs can work at SATA-II 3Gbps speeds. Can check if you are being bios capped by viewing CAP.ISS using baredit as shown here. If capped then hassle Acer for a bios update.

 

Thanks for that. According to Toshiba, it's a SATA II drive, so it shouldn't be running in SATA I mode???

In addition, there's some funny stuff with the chipsets. CPU-Z says the chipset is a GL960, yet Intel's own chipset tool indicates the following:

Detected Chipset:
Intel(R) GM965 Express Chipset

Chipset Components

Memory Controller:
82GM965

I/O Controller:
Intel(R) 82801HBM/HEM I/O controller hub (ICH8M) SATA Controller found in AHCI mode

Integrated Graphics:
Intel(R) 965GM Graphics And Memory Controller Hub(GMCH)

God knows why there is the difference in detection...

 

You're link to here seems to reference dell coupons. I've downloaded baredit but don't know how to find CAP.ISS can you provide another reference?

 

Whoops.. wrong paste. Find the value of your CAP.ISS as per instructions here. If capped then hassle Acer for a bios update.