SSD with a Intel i945PM (ICH7-M) chipset ? 1.5Gbps limitation

I have a Dell XPS m1210 laptop which has Intel i945PM (ICH7-M) chipset. ICH7 desktop version supports SATA 3Gbps but where as the mobile one only does 1.5Gbps SATA. I am planning to get the Intel SSD and wondering if there is any way to activate the 3Gbps support for my chipset.

I know that lot of netbooks come with this southbridge (ICH7), do they suffer from the 1.5Gbps limit as well? and some of these netbooks come with SSDs in them. Why would Intel do this?
Anyone using a SSD with this chipset, please comment on the performance.
Thank you
Yudi

 

No, there is not.

Netbooks with the ICH7-M chipset will also be limited to 1.5Gbps.

Why do they do this? It saves power in newer netbooks, and back when the M1210 was designed there was no reason to even consider using 3Gbps on a laptop whose hard drives were not even close to smashing the 1.5Gbps limit of the chipset.

 

I guess I will still go for a SSD but will have to do with 1.5Gbps.

 

Any SATA SSD will work, they are backwards compatible with 1.5Gbps. It is just that you will not see speeds higher than 150MB/s. Focus on random read and write performance. Either the X25-M (has major buggy firmware disadvantages though) or the OCZ Vertex/Agility are the best buys out there right now if you can get them for a fair price.

 

Yep, Greg's pretty much got the good options covered here. As long as you don't get a JMicron-based drive, though, most choices should be fine. If you really care about not "wasting" bandwidth, you might want to look at the 40GB X25-M that Kingston's putting out. I think it's a great, cheap solution if you don't need much space, though other seems to be put off my the slower not-so-important sequential write.

 

Is any version of the ICH7 capable of SATA 2??

 

... the desktop version?

 

Is that a question or answer?

 

Greg is right on the mark. Your random 4kb reads will determine your OS/application response, since they read chunks of data off your drive from different areas. Your sequential read/write will come into play for streaming operations such as playing/copying large multimedia files. Crystaldiskmark shows Intel X25M/Mtron SSDs just breaking 30MB/s for 4kb reads, so these consumer SSDs are not even coming close to breaking the the sata-I limit of 1.5Gbps limit in their 4kb read speed. Their sequential read speed can be > 200MB/s.

As advised, Indilinx-based SSDs like G.Skill Falcon/OCZ Vertex or Intel X25M G2 are the best value, with Samsung a third. Jmicron based SSDs have stuttering issues on small file writes and are best avoided.

 

I will wait for the Intel Gen 2 SSDs to mature and get one. I read that the firmware upgrade caused some serious issues. My priority is random read/write and Intel the best out there.

I do not agree with Greg's reason for having ICH7m in netbooks. I doubt running a SSD at 1.5 instead of 3Gbps would really save much power. I think they are using obsolete chip-sets in netbooks so that they do not encroach on the traditional laptop market and at the same time getting more mileage out of old junk.

I do not see a reason why their top end chipsets (ICH9) cannot be paired with atom processor except for trying to protect their very lucrative Centrino cash cow. This is the reason why they were not happy with Nvidia ION.

I am really hoping ARM cortex A9 dualcore coming out next year will live up to the hype.

ARM cortex A9 + Nvidia ION (something similar) + USB 3 + SATA6
I would pay good money for the above combo.

cheers

 

Lenovo does this with some of their regular Thinkpad's notebooks. My x61s is proof of this It's not exclusive to netbooks.

Have you any pricing info on the newer Intel chipsets in comparison to the pricing for the current netbook platform chipsets?

 

It is a bit of a generalization, but run at twice the speed...it will consume twice the power. And that is assuming the running voltage is the same.

I'll see if I can look into the datasheets for power consumption numbers.

 

http://ark.intel.com/chipset.aspx?familyID=22817
http://ark.intel.com/chipset.aspx?familyID=35515

The ICH9M consumes 2.5W vs. ICH7M's 3.3W. How accurate is the actual power consumption might differ...

 

That is assuming they did not move the ICH7M down to the more mature manufacturing processes they use today.

I'm kind of surprised about this myself. The SATA bus is only one of many components in the I/O hub, so there must be something else sucking up power.

 

How old is your X61?
And it's not exclusive to netbooks but to intel's chipsets.

 

I have to wonder...does cost factor into this? I bet it does.

 

I do not have the price data but I highly doubt the price difference would be so huge. Even if the price difference was huge, why not offer some netbooks with better chipsets and charge a premium. Let the consumer decide. Just like ION.

The point I am trying to make is Intel does not even offer a choice.

 

It is not Intel that is not offering a choice. BTW, a netbook with a price premium is called a 'laptop.' Or a CULV notebook...those are already priced just a bit higher than the Atom platforms.

They've got the Atom platform, the new CULV platform, the standard 965 chipset (which can come with 25W, 35W, or 45W quad core processors), the desktop chipsets that get used in larger notebooks, and the new Core i5 and i7 chipsets. Plenty of choice here.

BTW, yes the ICH7 is going to be lower cost. They've already recouped the R&D costs, it is a mature technology is (probably) close to 100% yield, and I still bet using a newer chipset could cost more power (possibly by requiring a more power hungry Atom design) in the end.

 

I am trying to compare an atom + ICH7 with an atom + ION. They both fall under the netbooks category. Not the notebooks.

 

Greg, one of the design points of ICH9/10 was a 30% reduction in power consumption and a near-zero use of cpu resources for i/o when compared to similar workloads on ich7. One would think that both of those points are applicable to both Atom and the SU/SUL processors. Or not.

ich8 isn't discussed much anymore.

Both ich 7 and 9/10 are in Intels long-term availability and service plan. This means that Intel is guaranteeing the availability of the parts for a minimum of 10 years. Intel also does this for about 1/3 of its CPU releases.

Other than cost, there is nothing much to recommend ich7 over ich9/10.

With Atom v2 coming out in a few weeks, it will be interesting to see if the Intel reference designs *or* some aggressive netbook maker adds ich9/10 to the Atom mix.