Confused About Intel RAID Drivers

[Whisper2]

Last October, I upgraded my system with a Gigabyte P55-UD4P MB, an I-7 860, new memory and Windows 7 64-bit. I set the BIOS to AHCI prior to installing Windows. I have been very pleased with the performance these items have added to my system.

Yesterday, I decided to clean-up / update my software. I started by loading an Acronis image from February 2010 that included most of the software that doesn't release new versions very often (Office, etc). Then I proceeded to add newer items. Everything works fine.

Now, the confusing part. During boot-up, the screen shows: "AHCI BIOS installed" ... "Intel Rapid Technology - Option ROM - 9.5.0.1037" This is the RAID driver version that Gigabyte currently lists for my MB, but was posted in March 2010, after the date I installed Windows and after the date of my image file. However, I did not install this driver yesterday. Instead, I installed 9.6.0.1014 that I downloaded from Intel's site. Windows Device Manager shows this driver.

Based on the above, I conclude that the drivers provided by Gigabyate update some ROM on the MB but the Intel provided drivers don't. I do not know if this is part of the regular BIOS chip or another component. Having one version on the MB and another in Windows doesn't appear to be the best path.

Can someone please enlighten me on this subject. Thanks.

 

[sub.mesa]

I don't really follow you. You deleted everything on your drive by writing a ghost image making it clean again, correct?

You then installed Intel driver 9.6.0.1014, but during the BIOS boot up you still see 9.5.0.1037 listed, correct?

Does everything work properly aside from this? Can you confirm the 9.6.0 driver is active using AS SSD?

 

[Whisper2]

sub.mesa,

You followed me very well. I did wipe the disk and restored it to the way it was in February.

Correct on the second point.

Everything works fine. I did confirm Windows is using the 9.6 driver with Device Manager and Systernal's (Microsoft) Process Explorer.

My questions can be summarized:

Do AHCI/RAID capable MB's have a separate chip for these features or are the capabilities a subset of the normal BIOS chip?

It appears that this code is updated by installing a Windows driver rather than flashing a MB BIOS. Is this true?

Does it matter whether the BIOS and Windows versions are the same? If it does, then one should avoid installing the Intel generic drivers and use only those provided by the MB manufacturer.

 

[Nothinman]

Do AHCI/RAID capable MB's have a separate chip for these features or are the capabilities a subset of the normal BIOS chip?

Just about everything outside of the normal BIOS POST and ACPI stuff is separate from the BIOS itself. Motherboard chipsets, PCI devices, etc have always had the ability to have their own ROM for things. That's how storage controllers do their extra initialization, PXE booting, boot from iSCSI storage, etc all work.