Typical: My 680i does not support AHCI!

Amraam · 17 May 2011 at 19:29

Just spent £90 on a 60GB SSD, have spent the last couple of hours prepping my machine to install it and NOW I discover that my 680i does not support AHCI! Can I continue without it? I have the latest BIOS revision.

Surveyor · 17 May 2011 at 19:56

You don't "need" AHCI.

It will work in IDE mode, maybe not as well, but it'll work.

cmndr_andi · 17 May 2011 at 19:59

Surveyor said:
You don't "need" AHCI.

It will work in IDE mode, maybe not as well, but it'll work.

+1 Its good to have it in AHCI but it isn't required.

I ran an SSD in my old C2D dell laptop that didn't have AHCI in IDE mode and the performance increase was astounding over a 7200rpm HDD.

Philtor · 17 May 2011 at 20:14

Indeed... the benefit over a traditional HDD is considerable and you would be pushed to tell the difference anyway between IDE v AHCI mode unless running benchmarks.

Amraam · 17 May 2011 at 22:01

Cool thanks all. Just reinstalling updates and drivers as we speak

Turned off defrag, anything else? Windows indexing?

Philtor · 18 May 2011 at 08:02

With my SSD I also reduced the amount of space allocated for system restore, disabled hibernation, windows search indexing and drive indexing.

Dutch Guy · 18 May 2011 at 10:25

Last week I read a test comparing IDE mode to AHCI with three different SSD controllers and with some controllers the difference was minimal, I am gutted I did not save the bookmark.

What I remember is that is you have a SSD with a Sandforce controller (OCZ Vertex2 for instance) AHCI is faster but with a different controller the difference was smaller.

When setting up my Vertex2 I started with IDE mode and it was still very fast, later I changed to AHCI and reinstalled and it was faster but I needed a benchmark to notice.

[edit]I think this is it: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.p...k=view&id=505&Itemid=38&limit=1&limitstart=12 [/edit]

philjohn · 18 May 2011 at 10:42

Strange, I'm sure my 650i Ultra (little brother to 680i) supported AHCI mode. May have been if the board was put in RAID mode.

Ch3m1c4L · 18 May 2011 at 15:55

philjohn said:
Strange, I'm sure my 650i Ultra (little brother to 680i) supported AHCI mode. May have been if the board was put in RAID mode.

my 790i doesnt support AHCI, while raid is turned on, its not turned on for that port, but I am using the ahci driver in windows without an issue.

I spent a while trying to confirm what I was using for sure and couldnt find out so decided to not care as it was already silly fast boot times, before I added another raid card

Ivyforce · 18 May 2011 at 16:47

I use vertex2e on a 680i board

Works absolutely fine,only thing that does not seem to work is the ocz toolbox facility which is not really a problem tbh.

matthab · 18 May 2011 at 22:07

I thought the 680i support AHCI or it was another thing wihich was broke which Nvidia had a half arsed attempted at fixing.

Dutch Guy · 19 May 2011 at 09:47

Ivyforce said:
I use vertex2e on a 680i board

Works absolutely fine,only thing that does not seem to work is the ocz toolbox facility which is not really a problem tbh.

The toolbox not working is a known issue with AHCI, I have the same.
But does that mean you run your SSD with AHCI?

@Amraam, maybe you need a BIOS update?

Ch3m1c4L · 19 May 2011 at 10:40

Dutch Guy said:
The toolbox not working is a known issue with AHCI, I have the same.
But does that mean you run your SSD with AHCI?

@Amraam, maybe you need a BIOS update?

its also a known issue on the nvidia chipset, and the workaround is to use a different pc to update firmware etc.

Amraam · 19 May 2011 at 14:31

Dutch Guy, I have updated to the latest P33 BIOS as I needed to for it to support the E8400 I just fitted. It's a hardware restriction IIRC.

Is AHCI required for TRIM?

Ch3m1c4L · 19 May 2011 at 15:15

Amraam said:
Dutch Guy, I have updated to the latest P33 BIOS as I needed to for it to support the E8400 I just fitted. It's a hardware restriction IIRC.

Is AHCI required for TRIM?

I think it is, but garbage collection should still work fine, which is plenty good enough (TRIM is only windows, and SSD's are fine on other OS's)

cmndr_andi · 19 May 2011 at 15:26

You don't need AHCI for TRIM to work.

Rroff · 19 May 2011 at 15:54

Pretty sure all 680i boards support AHCI, however the option may not be visible until you change some of the IDE/RAID settings - and you may not actually get AHCI with the settings you actually need but thats another story.

Amraam · 19 May 2011 at 17:12

Strange, I've in a few places that it doesn't. I can't see AHCI anywhere, regardless of RAID being enabled or not. I'm going to have to reformat my machine anyway, as I didn't realise I had to install Windows to unallocated space with an SSD.