Native IDE Vs. AHCI

[AngelfireUk83]

I am puzzled on what each 1 does I am currently running N-IDE mode I was talking to a friend today saying my 250GB seems well a bit slow and I've experienced some strange things like say listening to music and opening Live Messenger only for the HDD to go crazy.

On my old 939 rig it wouldn't run for more than a sec and most of the time it never ran really noisy like it does now. He said switch to AHCI mode it's better but I can't find anything to back up his theory I did research that XP needs a driver just wondering if I did switch it will XP continue to load with me not installing a driver like you during set-up (F6).

Also can anyone point what each does?

[Know Nuttin]

look at your DMA settings for why it is so slow.

IDE mode is a compatibility mode so you lose out on NCQ and a few other SATA performance increases (though it is debatable to some extent).

AHCI mode requires a driver, you should be able to install the proper drivers in Windows, then enable AHCI and it would work.

[AngelfireUk83]

look at your DMA settings for why it is so slow.

IDE mode is a compatibility mode so you lose out on NCQ and a few other SATA performance increases (though it is debatable to some extent).

AHCI mode requires a driver, you should be able to install the proper drivers in Windows, then enable AHCI and it would work.

Right looking into device manager and the IDE/ATAPI Controllers

I have my DVD-RW on the Primary IDE Channel which is Ultra DMA 2 and my HDD is on Secondary IDE Channel under Ultra DMA 6 mode the AMD SATA Controller says (Native IDE mode) next to it. Just wondering how do I install the AHCI driver I can't find it on the CD that came with my board.

[redduc900]

Chances are that if you change from Native IDE to AHCI mode in the BIOS after the OS is already installed, Windows won't load correctly and you'll need to perform a repair install. There is a way around this though, and this is one of the better posts on how to do it without the need to repair or reinstall Windows...

HOWTO: Enable AHCI mode after installing Windows
http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=444831

I should note that this method doesn't always work (not just this particular method; but the act of changing from Native IDE to AHCI mode in general), but from my experience you have a better chance of it working in XP than you would w/ Vista in a post install.

[Xaero_toast]

Wow. My machine has been running in native ide mode for a long time. Is there that much storage performance that I have left on the table by doing so?

[AngelfireUk83]

I have recently just installed XP again from fresh so what I'll do is wait a few months and then when I re-install again I'll switch it to AHCI mode just going to Gigabytes website to find the floppy drivers.

Thanks for that link I'll try that 1st before a format now I have to go buy a floppy drive shame you can't install the driver from a USB drive but XP dosn't see it and only accepts floppies.

Could anyone confirm that the driver at the bottom is the right 1 for the that F6 driver install it just says SATA RAID but it's only 1 I can find.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_Model.aspx?ProductID=2800

[Mr.Guvernment]

performance going from IDE to AHCI, no, not really, your drive still runs at it's max speed, not like it is slowed down running in IDE mode.

NCQ really onle helps in multiple user environments by prioritizing packets

[redduc900]

Could anyone confirm that the driver at the bottom is the right 1 for the that F6 driver install it just says SATA RAID but it's only 1 I can find.

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_Model.aspx?ProductID=2800
Yes, that's the right one...

AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)
O.S. : Windows® XP 32bit,Windows® XP 64bit
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Driver&FileID=3742

[forceman]

performance going from IDE to AHCI, no, not really, your drive still runs at it's max speed, not like it is slowed down running in IDE mode.

NCQ really onle helps in multiple user environments by prioritizing packets

For me, the big benefit of running AHCI is the ability to hot-swap drives. Being able to flip on an eSATA drive and have it show up right away is gold when it comes to backing up files.

[JCLW]

IDE mode is capped at 133MB/s (intel controllers 100 because intel never jumped on the 133 bandwagon). SATA allows 150 or 300, hot swapping, staggered spinup, NCQ, port multipliers, etc...

If you're just running one drive per port on a desktop computer you probably won't see much difference.

[Malakai]

I know this thread is a few months old but I have something to add. First win7 installed onto my system in AHCI mode with no separate drivers. It has the amd ahci controller driver built in.

Anyway for vista install, I just leave the setting to ide. Then use the method in the link above to enable the standard microsoft ahci driver. Then reboot and change to ahci in bios.
Then when I get back into windows, I install the newest catalyst sata/raid driver from game.amd.com along with the northbridge switcher driver thing (they 2 separate downloads, under chipset, under main catalyst option). When you are all done you have proper NEWEST amd ahci drivers running your disks. I dont know that this actually yields any performance increases over the default ms ahci driver, or ide mode. I just know this vista64 install done with this method feels more responsive and stable than my prior install lacking these drivers.

I read somewhere the SB600/700/750 are broke and the AHCI does not support NCQ. This true, and does it actually hurt performance? It does according to this new techreport price/performance article
http://techreport.com/articles.x/16570/6