Ahci mode vs ide mode

[Roberty]

New system build and I have a question about ahci mode vs ide mode. All of the drives in my system are Sata including the DVD burner so I turned off IDE in the bios. I installed Windows 7 in Sata IDE mode and I tried enabling the Achi mode in the bios about a week later after the install and now it takes like 30 seconds longer to boot into Windows then it did before in Sata IDE mode. I noticed that now most of the difference is (by looking at the hard drive activity light) that it pauses now at the Windows 7 startup screen for about 20+ seconds before it starts to actually get hard drive activity. Should I have installed Windows 7 in Achi mode to begin with? Would it really make a noticeable difference anyway? I'm running a single OCZ Vertex Turbo boot drive btw and getting a 7.1 score on the Windows experience and was wondering if it would be higher if I had enabled Achi first before the install. I would reinstall Windows 7 and enable Achi first if it would make a difference but if it really won't make a difference I won't worry about it. I switched back to Ide mode for now.

 

[Little_4nic8er]

AHCI sped up my boot times, and I do not even see the W7 Welcome screen, it boots to fast. (That's the SSD though.)

So you did the registry tweak in W7 then enable AHCI via the BIOS? Did you turn on RAID/AHCI or just AHCI?

If your up for it, try reinstalling W7 with it enabled this time. Though it shouldn't, and didn't matter when I did the reg hack way myself.

 

[polonyc2]

AHCI slows down boot time, it doesn't speed it up

that's the only negative though as AHCI works better once Windows is loaded...I've benchmarked my SSD with both IDE and AHCI and AHCI is always a bit faster...I always prefer to setup AHCI before installing the OS

 

[SicKlown42012]

With traditional platter based HDDs, I never noticed any kind of difference between AHCI and IDE modes. But, with my SSD, IDE mode reduced my sequential reads and writes by 20%, and random reads/writes by 10% and 15% respectively. From what I've read though, it seems my experience is the exception, rather than a norm.

 

[Metaluna]

Other than supporting TRIM, I'm not entirely convinced that the default MS AHCI drivers are all that fast compared to, say, the Intel Matrix drivers (assuming you're running an Intel controller). I switched from Intel to MS AHCI drivers when the latest TRIM firmware came out for the G2 SSDs, and I do notice the boots seem a tad slower and the overall response of the system is not quite as snappy as I remember (still plenty fast though). Unfortunately I didn't do a before/after benchmark so I can't back this up with numbers. It could also just be me becoming accustomed to the speed of the SSD so what seemed blazing fast a few months ago just feels normal to me now.

 

[Little_4nic8er]

AHCI slows down boot time, it doesn't speed it up

It did for me. I used to be able to read the majority of what was on the POST screens, but not anymore. It flashes by in 1-2 seconds now instead of the normal 4-5 second pause between screens.

P.S.

Now you have me wanting to test it Metaluna. I swear mine sped up.

 

[danman]

Nothing sucks more than the Intel drivers. These cause more BSOD's than nVidia and AMD combined.

 

[Roberty]

AHCI sped up my boot times, and I do not even see the W7 Welcome screen, it boots to fast. (That's the SSD though.)

So you did the registry tweak in W7 then enable AHCI via the BIOS? Did you turn on RAID/AHCI or just AHCI?

If your up for it, try reinstalling W7 with it enabled this time. Though it shouldn't, and didn't matter when I did the reg hack way myself.

I already did the registry tweak and then enabled ACHI (not raid ACHI) in the Bios, let it install whatever it needed at reboot and then restarted. I just timed it and after the Windows 7 splash screen comes up it's 45 seconds before I see any hard drive activity at all from the HD light. Then it finsihs booting 7 just fine but that 45 second delay is driving me nuts. I don't get that if it's in IDE mode. I re-ran the Windows Experience assment and before I was getting a 7.1 in disk data transfer rate but now I get a 7.4 after enabling ACHI mode. I guess I need to do a re-install of Windows 7 with ACHI mode enabled first so I can get rid of the 45 second Windows 7 lag.

One more thing, I'm running a Gigabyte 790XTA-UD4 motherboard with the latest bios (F2). It has 6 sata connectors controlled by AMD SB750 (3gb/s) and two (6 gb/s) controlled by Marvell 9128 for the new 6gb/s hard drives just coming out. None of mine are 6 gb/s but is there any advantage at all of one controller over the other? Right now I have them all being controlled by the AMD SB750.