AHCI question

[rapperwith1p]

Ok so I just installed a new mobo and psu and am going to reformat and reinstall either XP or Vista. I haven't had a problem with either os and wouldn't care installing either one as I like Vista and XP is XP. My concern is ahci and its performance gains over non-native sata. Are there any noticeable gains by having ahci enabled? If so by how much? AHCI allows hot plugging and NCQ but does it offer faster disk transfers as well?

The new board is a DS3L (iCH9) and I read about the hacked ahci method on XP and I'm not convinced that it's actually enabled. Seems like it's merely a cosmetic hack to display the sata controller in device manager. As for Vista am its ahci support does this mean that I can just pop in my Vista disc and go all the way through the install with no issues?

I seem to recall some Microsoft rep discussing the importance of NCQ and HDCP to the Vista experience while the os was still in development. I'm making a big deal out of this but I would like to try out ahci if there is a chance of any possible performance gain.

 

[NoxTek]

AHCI does exactly what you said, it enables hot plugging and Native Command Queuing. NCQ can provide a slight performance increase depending on what you use your PC for. NCQ shines when you're doing lots of multitasking with several programs doing reads/writes at once. If you're just an average PC user / gamer then you won't notice a difference whatsoever.

If you're going to install Vista, you might as well enable AHCI mode in the P35-DS3L BIOS and go from there. You don't need any special drivers to install Vista, just boot from the DVD and install as normal. Once you've got Vista installed make sure to install the latest driver package from Intel (available from the Gigabyte site) and it will install the proper AHCI drivers. Just remember if you ever want to go back to Windows XP you'll need to disable AHCI in the BIOS.


There is no reason to bother with AHCI in Windows XP. Even if you CAN get it enabled it's a sloppy hacked together job which no one is really sure works worth a damn over standard SATA IDE emulation mode anyway.

 

[Kangg]

All I can say about AHCI in XP Pro 32 bit is the Intel Storage Matrix Manager tells me that my 3 SATA2 drives are running in Gen 2 mode and that NCQ is enabled. If they are faster or not, I do not know haven't tried benching em. It seems to me that they run faster that way, but again who knows .... lol

 

[DeaconFrost]

You'd have a very hard time testing or finding an actual measurable difference between the two. I'd say, if you use XP, leave them in IDE mode for simplicity sake. If using Vista, it is okay to use them in AHCI mode, since the drivers are built in to Vista for most new chipsets, especially Intel ones.