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Helpful ReplyEnabling AHCI on 790i Ultra

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Shocker
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2009/12/09 22:47:37 (permalink)
I have a 790i Ultra and I am wondering if the the Jmicron controled SATA ports are the only ones that support AHCI? (sata 6-7) I see the bios setting for these ports.
 
does the nvidia MCP controlled sata ports (Sata 0-5) also support AHCI? IF they do How do I enable it?
 
I am wondering if you set any SATA 0-5 port as eSata, will this enable AHCI by default. What about setting them to RAID?
 
The reason I am asking is that I would like to move to an SSD and to maximize performance they need AHCI.
 
 I am jst not sure which Sata ports to connect the SSD to. 0-5(NV MCP)  or 6-7 (Jmicron)
 
Thanks
post edited by Shocker - 2009/12/09 23:58:36
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    InputUsername
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 02:42:09 (permalink)
    Well, basically under Integrated Periphials it says:

    JMicron AHCI Controller...............[Enabled]

    And you can chose to enable or disable it. What this means in reality however, i have no clue. Please write down exactly where you find the option on SATA 6-7 (C0, C1), i can't see it myself, also include what it says please.

    I've taken an afternoon looking for answers on AHCI with the 790i, there's a thread of it somewhere in here, it appears to be a black hole, pretty much no knowledge or information obtainable through google.

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    thornev
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 06:20:08 (permalink)
    My read on this is that enabling JMicron (eSATA) is global so that if you have an SSD drive connected to ANY SATA ports on the motherboard, it will be supported.   thorne

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    Shocker
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 09:51:55 (permalink)
    InputUsername

    Well, basically under Integrated Periphials it says:

    JMicron AHCI Controller...............[Enabled]

    And you can chose to enable or disable it. What this means in reality however, i have no clue. Please write down exactly where you find the option on SATA 6-7 (C0, C1), i can't see it myself, also include what it says please.

    I've taken an afternoon looking for answers on AHCI with the 790i, there's a thread of it somewhere in here, it appears to be a black hole, pretty much no knowledge or information obtainable through google.


    I might have the sata numbers mixed up but from what I have read the the red sata port and and the esata port on the back are controlled buy the Jmicron controler

    From the tech report
    "Atop the slot stack, you can just make out a red Serial ATA port. This is the board's seventh internal SATA port, and it's connected to an auxiliary JMicron JMB362 SATA controller. Nvidia amusingly suggests the placement of this port is ideal for optical drives, which seems odd, because the board has four other internal SATA ports that are much closer to where optical drives would be mounted in most enclosures."

    Look at the chart at the bottom of page 3
    http://techreport.com/articles.x/14350/1


    This chart also says that the 790i MCP does not support AHCI but from what I read AHCI is needed for RAID and esata so I am confused in that the 1st 6 sata ports supports these functions. Also when I enable the Jmicron AHCI with my hdds connected to one of the 1st 6 sata ports my system does not BSOD like it is supposed to when my your OS does not have the AHCI drives installed and it ii BIOS enabled.


    Look at the chart at the bottom of page
    http://techreport.com/articles.x/14350/1
    post edited by Shocker - 2009/12/10 10:09:48
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    VistaHead
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 09:57:13 (permalink)
    I am confused....If I understand your above post correctly, why are you wanting to run a RAID array using the JMicron controller?  You performance would be faster if you used the normal black SATA ports for your RAID array, which uses Nvidia RAID controller.  The JMicron ports are alright for things like optical drives, e-sata drives, etc., but not your OS drive.
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    Shocker
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 10:17:45 (permalink)
    VistaHead

    I am confused....If I understand your above post correctly, why are you wanting to run a RAID array using the JMicron controller?  You performance would be faster if you used the normal black SATA ports for your RAID array, which uses Nvidia RAID controller.  The JMicron ports are alright for things like optical drives, e-sata drives, etc., but not your OS drive.


    I apologize fore the confusion. I am not trying to run a RAID array. I would like to connect a SSD to an AHCI enabled Sata port. As far as I can tell the only ones that support AHCI are the red sata port and the esata port on the back because they are controled by the Jmicron JMB36x controller and I am assuming that the JMB36x controller= the Jmicron AHCI in the Bios. Please correct me if I am mistaken.

    I had thought that the black sata ports might support AHCI because they are RAID and esata capable but again I believe that this is incorrect.

    In short, Which Sata port should I connect my SSD to?
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    VistaHead
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 10:31:14 (permalink)
    Use SATA port number 3,4,5, or 6 (pg 15 in your manual).  You could use number 1 or 2 also, but the are placed on the side of the board.
    post edited by VistaHead - 2009/12/10 10:33:23
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    d2thez
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 10:33:07 (permalink) ☄ Helpful
    The MCP55 (790i southbridge) does not support true AHCI.  The best you will get is to perform the install and either use Win7's built in driver, or use nVidia's official 11.1.0.33 SATA driver.  I do not personally know if the bult-in driver or nVidia's will give better performance with a SSD.  I can say the nVidia driver will NOT pass the TRIM command at this time.

    I can't speak for the JMicron chip, but it us usually a good rule of them to use the built-in port rather than ports provided by add-in chips.

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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 11:19:49 (permalink)
    d2thez

    The MCP55 (790i southbridge) does not support true AHCI.  The best you will get is to perform the install and either use Win7's built in driver, or use nVidia's official 11.1.0.33 SATA driver.  I do not personally know if the bult-in driver or nVidia's will give better performance with a SSD.  I can say the nVidia driver will NOT pass the TRIM command at this time.

    I can't speak for the JMicron chip, but it us usually a good rule of them to use the built-in port rather than ports provided by add-in chips.


    Thanks. I probably be using XP and using a manual TRIM. I think Im going to just try both the built in sata ports and the jmicron ports and see which ones perform better. 
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/10 11:33:00 (permalink)
    Well it seems that is all might be a moot point anyways. People are reporting that the drive I want (OCZ vertex turbo) performs just great in IDE mode. Some people says its better in AHCI mode. Im not so worried about it now.

    http://www.ocztechnologyf...showthread.php?t=58215
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    d2thez
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    Re:Enabling AHCI on 790i Ultra 2009/12/11 12:10:58 (permalink)
    Yeah, with XP you will need to run manual TRIM of rely on the garbage collection version of the firmware if you want to restore the performance.

    Beyond that, I am guessing you may experience better performance with XP using the nVidia SATA driver.  The regular IDE driver in XP is pretty old compared to the Vista/Win7 version.  But the only way to know for sure is to benchmark both.

    As for the JMicron controller, you can benchmark with that too.  However, I would really caution against using that as a primary boot drive controller because the most common opinion is that the JMicron controller is not so hot compared to Intel/nVidia/AMD.

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