AHCI and Vista???

[de8212]

I ran across a thead here and have some questions. Reading the thread it seems ithat you have to install these drivers before vista or your hard drive run as ide.
Do you have to load the AHCI drivers via F6 before you install Vista?

I'm a little confused as I've never used Vista and am not sure the significance of
AHCI.

I have a Gigabyte P35-DS4 Rev2 motherboard running Vista Ultimate 64. OS drive is a RaptorX 150GB. I also have another WD SATA drive as well as a lite on sata dvd burner.

I looked in BIOS and under SATA RAID/AHCI Mode. The choices are
Disabled
RAID
AHCI

Mine is disabled.

Any info on this?

 

[mechBgon]

To give Vista drivers for setup, you'd watch for this screen :camera:. If you want to install Vista with AHCI mode enabled, you can put the necessary drivers on a USB drive or whatever. AHCI gains you advanced features, notably NCQ (native command queueing) and hot-pluggability of drives which are compatibile with those features.

 

[postmortemIA]

Vista should already have drivers for intel's ICH AHCI.

 

[Megatomic]

mechBgon, aside from NCQ and hotswap, does having AHCI drivers installed rather than standard IDE drivers make any difference performance-wise? My laptop's HDD doesn't support those features and I've been running in IDE mode. Have I been missing out on anything?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Megatomic
mechBgon, aside from NCQ and hotswap, does having AHCI drivers installed rather than standard IDE drivers make any difference performance-wise? My laptop's HDD doesn't support those features and I've been running in IDE mode. Have I been missing out on anything?

From what I've read, it doesn't sound like we're missing much. If I had a system with AHCI capabilities I'd do a firsthand test, but I can't afford an upgrade right now.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA
Vista should already have drivers for intel's ICH AHCI.

They're generic AHCI drivers, they'll work for any controller (although installing Intel's AHCI drivers after the fact would still be a good idea).

 

[Megatomic]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: Megatomic
mechBgon, aside from NCQ and hotswap, does having AHCI drivers installed rather than standard IDE drivers make any difference performance-wise? My laptop's HDD doesn't support those features and I've been running in IDE mode. Have I been missing out on anything?

From what I've read, it doesn't sound like we're missing much. If I had a system with AHCI capabilities I'd do a firsthand test, but I can't afford an upgrade right now.

In XP Pro, there was no performance difference. But I'm going to be going Vista within a few months so I'd like to figure out ahead of time whether or not to load special AHCI drivers or stick with IDE when I do. Just me being lazy I suppose.

 

[de8212]

Thanks for the replies. So, can I enable AHCI in BIOS now or does it have to be done before vista install?

Where are the drivers? On the gigabyte cd? I'm at work now so I can't check but I don't remember seeing them.

I'd like to take advantage of it if it's a noticable performance increase.

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

You can enable it afterwards because once Vista is installed the SATA drivers will be installed automatically even without AHCI enabled. When AHCI is disabled the controller functions in legacy IDE mode.

On the Gigabyte install CD, assuming the directory structure is the same as they use for their 965 chipset, the SATA install drivers are located under Other\GSATA\Floppy32 (or Floppy64 for 64-bit).

Note that those drivers apply to the Gigabyte RAID/SATA ports only, which are separate from the 4 Intel SATA ports that are native to the ICH9. At least that's how it works on my GA-965P-S3 board. I'm assuming your board with the P53 chipset has the same SATA configuration.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: de8212
Thanks for the replies. So, can I enable AHCI in BIOS now or does it have to be done before vista install?

Where are the drivers? On the gigabyte cd? I'm at work now so I can't check but I don't remember seeing them.

I'd like to take advantage of it if it's a noticable performance increase.

If you're going to enable AHCI after installing Vista, you'll want to read this first; sometimes Vista's AHCI drivers are disabled if they went unused during the install.

 

[jchin]

Originally posted by: ViRGEThey're generic AHCI drivers, they'll work for any controller (although installing Intel's AHCI drivers after the fact would still be a good idea).

So lets say after I do as you suggested, how would i go about enabling drivers for my p5q pro motherboard which i've downloaded from here: http://support.asus.com/downlo...=en-us&model=P5Q%20PRO

I'm not quite sure where or at what point to enable these drivers without reinstalling windows..

 

[joutlaw]

Start Vista in ATA mode

Read this and change regkey
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

Reboot and change BIOS to AHCI mode...

It should work now.

 

[plion]

why did you get it from there jchin? Isn't it better to get the ahci drivers from intel's site?

 

[plion]

Anyone? Just curious what's the best option.. I'm thinking intel has the latest/better version of the driver or does Asus has an optimized version?

 

[BD2003]

Go with intel - the manufacturer drivers can often be out of date. I've never heard of a manufacturer tweaked controller driver.

 

[plion]

ok thanks, just wanted to be sure