AHCI x IDE: Is IDE more stable? Having issues under AHCI mode  

Long time W7 Pro user, with Western Digital HDDs on a custom built machine. HDDs were always the slowest link in my setup, draing WUE to 5.6 while the rest is around 7.8/7.1 score. So recently updated to a Crucial SSD.

While doing the swap, I also changed from IDE mode to AHCI mode. I did see some performance improvement under HD Tune (from ~195 MB/Sec to 220 Mb/Sec) but something weird also seems to happen now: I have Winamp (MP3 Player) constantly running on the background, under AHCI Mode under heavy load the system seems to "scratch" in a weird way. I can tell something is "overloaded" because the music in the background acts up, similar to a DJ "scratch".


I strongly believe this is related to either the SSD or the AHCI/IDE change.

Anyone experienced this before? Right now I am back t IDE mode, going to confirm system is stable (fresh W7 installation) then I'll try AHCI mode again. Just wondering if my suspicion makes any sense at all.

One thing I would like to try is to give Winamp more CPU priority to avoid the music scratches. Does this make any sense at all??!!

Thanks in advance,

wither 2 said:

Not sure why giving the CPU priority would make any difference in the sound quality. I don't have Winamp installed. Does it have any noise reduction filters?

It is definitely not a "sound quality" issue. It is hard to explain, but occasionally when the system is under a certain load, there seems to be an interruption of data processing and when that happens and Winamp is playing, it translates into a "scratch" on the music playing.

It seems like it is more noticeable when Winamp is playing because I can hear the split second interruption in the music. Imagine a split second system freeze and how that would translate if music was playing during the momentary freeze.


The idea to give Winamp more CPU priority was to make sure it had resources to to avoid the freeze... but i doubt it would work as the system freeze seems to be global.


Not sure what to make out of this, other than avoid AHCI mode, as these sporadic -under-heavy-processs-load-freezes only happen under AHCI.

I understand. It's one of those things that's hard to track down.

I didn't go back and look but I thought the discussion link I gave you talked about how to remove pauses between songs and while playing a song. In some cases, those might sound like a crackle. This often occurs for music ripped from discs. If the music was on an audio CD, it's represented as LPCM and has to be converted to mp3. That can introduce anomalies.

You didn't say if this occurs when using a different player.

Also, some people in that link reverted back to an earlier version of Winamp which didn't have that problem.