AHCI is fast!

[themisfit610]

Hey folks..

So I recently reinstalled my box, but this time I made a custom XP disc with RyanVM and the ICH9 drivers.

I enabled AHCI mode in the BIOS (okay, RAID mode, but this is intel's recommendation since it's AHCI and more), and was treated to the rather slow but detailed detection of my drives. I also found out one of them was throwing constant SMART errors. Backed up data and have a replacement on the way. Thanks Intel.

I'm pretty much amazed by how fast AHCI mode runs. My previous install wasn't old, about 3 months, but I had done a fair amount of testing and experimenting. It had slowed to a crawl, even after thorough AV / spyware scans.

I've reinstalled most of my usual applications and things are still lightning fast.

The few service hogs I have left to install (iTunes and Adobe CS3) may slow things down some, but I can't help but feel that AHCI drivers are doing their fair share. Response time is shockingly fast, the windows leap into existence where they lagged a bit before.

Oh yeah, hotplugging with my eSATA drive works now!!! Supposedly this was a Vista only feature...

Is this in line with what other people have experienced?

~MiSfit

 

[Old Hippie]

Oh yeah, hotplugging with my eSATA drive works now!!! Supposedly this was a Vista only feature...

Hot swap is one feature of AHCI, and Vista installs it automatically.

Enabling AHCI actually slowed my drives down a tad on my old Asus A8n-SLI deluxe.

Sounds like you had other HDD problems to make you slow to a crawl.


I'm glad things are working out for ya! :thumbsup:

 

[jdkick]

I have RAID (AHCI) enabled on my P5K-E and am also pleased with the performance. When I was setting up the new box I was impressed at how fast games installed from CD/DVD. I hadn't built a machine in a few years... so this was a nice (re)intro. 🙂

 

[Ika]

I can't enable AHCI on my Vista x64 machine. When I set it to AHCI mode in the BIOS, Windows begins to boot, then immediately gives me a split-second blue screen and restarts. I thought Vista supported AHCI natively, but I guess not or something. I'm gonna load up AHCI drivers for my mobo and see if it'll work then.

 

[themisfit610]

Yeah, you have to install with AHCI mode enabled from the get-go.

Supposedly it's possible to switch without reinstalling, but I've yet to figure it out.

I don't think bandwidth or real performance has changed at all.

But random access seems to improve. It's something hard to quantify - but the system feels very snappy. Much more so than I recall a clean system ever feeling. Especially how fast Windows gets to the desktop and how fast explorer windows pop up. I actually felt like my Q6600 was a little slower than my 3800+ X2 in this regard - recently at least. Now with a clean install and AHCI it's like a rocket ship on crack. Placebo effect or not, loving it!

Now if only Apple would get their shite going and cobble together a version of iTunes that will sync the iPhone on x64, I would be into the land of Vista with 8 gigs of ram for Photoshop!

~MiSfit

 

[ChronoReverse]

AHCI enabled NCQ so theoretically, multitasking situations would improve a tad...

 

[themisfit610]

Funny... the nForce chipsets could do NCQ without AHCI, right?

~MiSfit

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: themisfit610
Funny... the nForce chipsets could do NCQ without AHCI, right?

~MiSfit

I can't exactly remember, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. I updated the drivers with one of those "Combo driver sets", and a lot of options appeared under drive properties. NCQ and hotswap, I believe. I turned that stuff on, and the burst speed actually declined.

That was with an older Raptor 74GB.

 

[konakona]

was trying to install xp onto a separate drive in a machine with vista and without an optical drive. hated how I couldnt get any of the hdds get recognized in 98se. ended up grabbing the cdrom from the main rig and install xp.
was it AHCI's fault or something else entirely?