AHCI, can someone explain?

Personally, I have tested both AHCI and IDE on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R with a Seagate 7200.12 1TB, a Western Digital 1TB caviar black and now an Intel X25-M2 80GB SSD. For all intents and purposes, my speeds were pretty much the same across the board in either IDE or AHCI mode.

What makes my decision to stay with IDE simple is that when my box posts, and AHCI is enabled, there is about an 8-10 second pause as in initializes the controller and tries to find the drive. This 8-10 second slow down on EVERY SINGLE boot outweighs any negligible performance gain that I get back from NCQ... And with my setup, I don't have any need for hot swapping drives...so that is a moot point for me.

pparks1 said:

Personally, I have tested both AHCI and IDE on my Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R with a Seagate 7200.12 1TB, a Western Digital 1TB caviar black and now an Intel X25-M2 80GB SSD. For all intents and purposes, my speeds were pretty much the same across the board in either IDE or AHCI mode.

What makes my decision to stay with IDE simple is that when my box posts, and AHCI is enabled, there is about an 8-10 second pause as in initializes the controller and tries to find the drive. This 8-10 second slow down on EVERY SINGLE boot outweighs any negligible performance gain that I get back from NCQ... And with my setup, I don't have any need for hot swapping drives...so that is a moot point for me.

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That is my experience too. I have the same board and i can confirm that there is no actual benefit from AHCI , tested with velociraptor 300gb.

@PParks1 , you should try the f12e bios (still beta). The boot sequence is the same between ahci and ide. Also you can try the new option "quick boot" that will save you 3-4sec.

mathewgx said:

@PParks1 , you should try the f12e bios (still beta). The boot sequence is the same between ahci and ide. Also you can try the new option "quick boot" that will save you 3-4sec.

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Thanks for the info. I'll wait until this BIOS is out of Beta. I'm not one for BIOS updates unless there is a real problem. All too often it turns into fixing something that isn't really broken.

If you still wish to enable AHCI then you might try this:

How to enable AHCI in Windows 7 RC after installation | ithinkdifferent

It worked for me on my two machines and also on my brothers machine.