ATI AHCI drivers w/Intel SSD = crummy performance

[woodchuck]

With the alleged support AMD now has for TRIM in it's AHCI drivers, I switched from IDE mode in my BIOS to AHCI and expected a performance improvement. Instead I get lurchiness in playback when the computer is multitasking. It especially occurs when I login to a concurrent RDP session while watching recorded television. I thought AHCI was supposed to be better than IDE mode??? Looks like I'll be switching back and using the Intel SSD toolbox to keep the drive clean.

For the record, I record to an Intel Caviar disk. The Intel SSD is for the OS.

[richard1980]

Try removing the AMD AHCI drivers and just use the Microsoft AHCI driver.

[STC]

Does your System Event Viewer point to any issues?
You sometimes have to kick Windows in the nards and turn off Write caching, reboot, turn on, reboot.
-Could be worth a try.

[STC]

This is what I'm getting with a Crucial M4 64GB and AMD Sata drivers:

as-ssd-bench M4-CT064 M4SSD2 30.09.2011 6-56-18 PM.png (37.95 KiB) Viewed 1577 times

[woodchuck]

I'm running an Intel x25m, so I think you have me beat on all out performance. When I have the AHCI driver loaded, the fastest overall rating I can get is 350. When in IDE mode, my score is 150, but I don't have problems with lurching playback.

Any thoughts on how I should have my SATA drives arranged and on what channels? Maybe that is the problem. Currently, I have the SSD as the OS, a 2tb WD Green for media, a 1tb WD Green for movies, and a SATA Bluray player. They take up channels 1-4 respectively on the SATA bus. I do have the option to control the mode of SATA ports 1-4 and 4-5 differently. Should I consider moving some of the drives over to the higher ports? Is this like the old PATA days where a single slow drive can encumber an otherwise fast drive on the same channel?

Ideas?

[woodchuck]

Wow! Problem solved! But, I can't nail down what did it. It might have been the combination of MSAHCI driver, toggling the cache options in Device Manager, and numerous reboots. Either way, I'm on AHCI now and don't have the lurching I reported in my original post.

[STC]

Good to hear!

[WarrenH]

Pity you don't know what you did.

I did as recommended by Intel for their P67 board and X25 SSD and turned on AHCI in the Bios. My boot up time is now twice as long as it was without AHCI. Not an issue - just a step back for no other noticeable benefit.

[STC]

In my case, a laptop with Sata3 I have been setting up for my wife, I can not run the MS drivers. All sorts of errors, blue screens and lockups occur.
This is in a AMD A6 APU, ID1705 / A75 Southbridge chipset, so I can understand why...

I did have to cycle the write cache to get performance up after changing from MS back to AMD drivers.