JMicron 363, Intel ICH9R, SATA dilemna with P35

[boohoo]

So I bought the GA-P35C-DS3R. Now I'm not having any problems because I haven't started building yet. But it seems that there's two different controllers on the board for SATA connectivity.

(x) Intel ICH9R (6 ports)
(x) JMicron 363 (2 SATA ports, 1 PATA port for 2 devices)

Here's what I have:

Two 320GB SATAII Seagates
One Lite-ON IDE DVd burner
One Lite-ON SATA burner
One IDE 200GB some stupid old disk

Now I'm confused as to how to connect these for optimum performance.

This link here: http://www.tastycomputers.com/...nload/gbsata2_raid.htm
And this one : http://techreport.com/reviews/...yte-p965/index.x?pg=12

Have me utterly worried. The first one mentions not to use the JMicron controller at all, if you're going to use IDE devices (in bold red a quarter of a page down). The second link mentions that the SATA ports for JMB363 have ridiculously high burst read speeds.

I'm in two minds, my logical brain is saying leave IDE devices on the JMB363 controller, put everything SATA on the Intel one. But then I'm thinking, ditch all IDE devices and put the hard drives (the more often used stuff) on the JMB363 controller.

Any suggestions? And for what it's worth is ACHI/AHCI whatever it is worth the effort? In fact I'm not sure what kind of effort is involved in setting it up.

Thanks.

 

[StopSign]

If it's anything like the configuration on the 965P-DS3, don't use the JMicron ports. The IDE devices will run through the JMicron controller whether you like it or not. It's just a matter of installing the JMicron drivers or not. If you install the driver, then you'll get access to the AHCI functions of the JMicron controller. If you don't, then you just run it in IDE emulation mode.

Put all your SATA devices on the ICH9R. It will perform better and should have native AHCI functionality.

 

[boohoo]

Even though the JMicron apparently has better burst speeds?

 

[StopSign]

It shouldn't. I don't know what's going on with their boards (or why their ICH8Rs are lower) but by design they should not be faster. The ICH8R ports are controlled directly by the southbridge while the JMicron goes through the PCI-E bus.

The JMicron controller is a terrible device. Manufacturers use it because it's the cheapest way to put an IDE port on their boards.

 

[boohoo]

Woah, I didn't know that. So if it does go through the PCI-express bus, won't the graphics card performance be impacted? Maybe I could not install any IDE component at all. But then I was wondering in PATA world there's something known as the one device at a time, so if a DVD is burning then the entire PATA interface or whatever suffers because the DVD burner blocks and all. Is this the same case with SATA?

If it is, then I guess I can still keep my DVD burner on IDE, and only disks on SATA. But if it's not, I could just do away with the IDE components all together. Somehow I feel letting the DVD burner on the IDE is a better idea than putting it on the SATA, but you be the better judge!

Thanks alot

 

[StopSign]

It won't impact performance. There is plenty of bandwidth to share, and surely you won't be burning DVDs while playing games.

 

[imported_OrSin]

I have the Asus P35 board and I and several others have been having crasy problems with the Jmicro stuff. First if you can aviod it dont load the raid drivers at all. It have messed up so many systems it not funny (xp and Vista). The other issue is you are using Vista ultimate ( it seems business is not effected) then you can do any dvd emulation if you have
Jmicro beening used.

The Jmicro emulaters Ide as Scsi ans since most dvd emualtor do the same they conflict big time.

I'm this close to rebuilding my system as vista business just to get these apps working since I use dvd emulators alot.

If you can avoid Jmicro do it.