Mobo with best AHCI implementation

[perdomot]

Curious as to which of the latest mobos for amd and intel have well implemented AHCI so that hotswapping and NCQ work properly. Thanks.

 

[nenforcer]

I'd stay away from AMD, nVidia and VIA chipsets and just stick to Intel manufactured motherboards if you want the BEST AHCI implementation.

High end Intel server motherboards from Intel, Fujitsu, HP, Sun and Dell are most likely to have the best certified AHCI support.

 

[perdomot]

Why is it so hard to get AHCI right? I know my 780G mobos AHCI is supposed to be problematic but nvidia's too?

 

[nenforcer]

That's a good question, as I am also aware of numerous difficulties encountered by the other manufacturers in their AHCI implementations.

I think it really comes down to it being an Intel specification and driven technology and not really a priority for consumer level products.

That is surprising because many open source operating systems fully support it (NetBSD, Linux, OpenBDS, FreeBSD,etc).

 

[perdomot]

What gets me is that something as handy as hotswapping hdds which ahci allows hasn't made manufacturers work hard on this, especially with the advent of external sata drives.

 

[Old Hippie]

especially with the advent of external sata drives.

Now a days, most MBs that have an eSATA port, use a marvell controller which does support hot swap.

I suppose most people won't be swapping there internal drives around under power, but I have used this Hot Swap utility and it claims to make all your drives hot swappable on some chipsets.

I didn't have the balls to try the internal swap. :laugh:

 

[perdomot]

I'm using that utility and it works fine for me.

 

[The Keeper]

It would seem that even HDD manufacturers and Microsoft themselves have difficulties with proper AHCI implementation. Most HDD's have poor NCQ performance under Windows on all motherboards. Seagate 7200.11 is one of the few exceptions that have good NCQ performance under Windows. As to how it achieves that, I haven't got a clue.