Should I enable AHCI?

[Infohawk]

I have an Asus P5Q SE2 motherboard. There is an option to enable ACHI. Wikipedia describes it as a newer technology for interfacing with sata drives which makes NCQ possible as well as hot-plugging. I am fairly certain I don't need to hot-plug. But what about native command queueing? Is anything else interesting about ACHI or should I just forget about it?

 

[Deville]

Some motherboard chipsets support AHCI better than others. Whether you'll get any benefit from AHCI depends on your hardware.

That said, in my view it's crazy not to take advantage of a high performance feature if it's available to you.

I have used that feature set, and I didn't see any real noticeable improvement in performance. But my motherboard southbridge is AMD's SB600. Not exactly a winner, in terms of performance. It does support Phenom 2 pretty well though. It'll keep me happy for another 6 months or so.

 

[Shaftatplanetquake]

If windows is already installed then you likely will be unable to change the setting and then boot right into windows.

you will need to repair or reinstall, perhaps using different drivers for the mass storage controller.

if you are using raid, you probably will not even be able to use this ahci setting.

 

[Infohawk]

Originally posted by: Shaftatplanetquake
If windows is already installed then you likely will be unable to change the setting and then boot right into windows.

you will need to repair or reinstall, perhaps using different drivers for the mass storage controller.

if you are using raid, you probably will not even be able to use this ahci setting.

Yeah I noticed that. I am not using RAID.

But I'm just curious if other people think there is a performance increase.

 

[krose]

I was debating the same thing last week. I found this article on IDE mode vs. AHCI. So I did an install of XP Pro with AHCI enabled to test it. First thing I noticed is that the computer took a lot longer to boot because of the AHCI bios detecting the drives. I ran the disk benchmark in Everest and there was little difference. Next reinstall will be in IDE mode.

 

[OPaul]

I believe it also depends some what on how well your hard drive(s) handle NCQ. http://www.storagereview.com/ often compare a drive with and without the feature enabled.

 

[StriperMike]

Stick with IDE. No gains using AHCI IMHO. Ive tried both and went back to IDE mode. I use Acronis alot and other boot utilities and having IDE mode eliminates the headaches of loading additional drivers to see the drives.

 

[StriperMike]

Stick with IDE. No gains using AHCI IMHO. Ive tried both and went back to IDE mode. I use Acronis alot and other boot utilities and having IDE mode eliminates the headaches of loading additional drivers to see the drives.

 

[tcsenter]

AHCI is still a work in progress. Its been four years now since the first AHCI spec went live and it still has too many little idiosynchracies for my comfort level. And yes, ATA/ATAPI had them for the first three to four years, too. Anyone remember the first two generations of PCI Bus Mastering and Ultra DMA? EEEK!

Sometimes it seems like they are replacing some technology or interface just when it finally becomes really stable.