Samsung 830 256gb with Abit AB9 mobo

[CakeyBakey]

I just got my new SSD a few days ago and installed Windows 7 64Bit, unfortunately I only learned today that I should have set the bios to use AHCI first, so I did the windows registry fix so that I could use it and then attempted to set my SSD to AHCI in bios.

I've googled around but I can't really find anything so I thought I'd make a thread here, in my bios the only setting relating to setting AHCI is under 'JMicron sata controller', so I set that to use AHCI rather than IDE or RAID, then I checked out my hdd to see if there are any other settings I might need to adjust and I noticed it has this 'IDE extended mode' set to auto, so I turned it off and windows didn't boot, tried turning it back to auto and it boot fine, my question is; what is this setting? What does it do? I also noticed that one of my other drives doesn't have this setting, it has some SATA thing with settings 'large', 'auto' and some others, but it's the only one with these settings when I view it; the others all have 'IDE extended mode', does this mean I'm just using the wrong SATA port for my SSD?

Because of this I'm not sure whether my drive is actually running in AHCI or not so I did a benchmark using AS SSD Benchmark and got these numbers:

AS SSD Benchmark 1.6.4237.30508
------------------------------
Name: SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series ATA Device
Firmware: CXM03B1Q
Controller: intelide
Offset: 1024 K - OK
Size: 238.47 GB
Date: 14/07/2012 16:59:58
------------------------------
Sequential:
------------------------------
Read: 240.38 MB/s
Write: 203.20 MB/s
------------------------------
4K:
------------------------------
Read: 19.18 MB/s
Write: 38.43 MB/s
------------------------------
4K-64Threads:
------------------------------
Read: 21.84 MB/s
Write: 52.09 MB/s
------------------------------
Access Times:
------------------------------
Read: 0.130 ms
Write: 0.088 ms
------------------------------
Score:
------------------------------
Read: 65
Write: 111
Total: 216
------------------------------

Do they look good? I was of the impression that sequential read should be around 500?

 

[JohnnyLucky]

The is overly simplistic but the IDE extended mode refers to support for larger capacity drives. A long long time ago the capacity of drives was limited. The extended mode supports larger capacity drives. No need to fool with that BIOS setting.

You have an old socket 775 plain vanilla motherboard that was first introduced in 2007 before consumer ssd's became popular. It is equipped with the Intel P965 / ICH8 Chipsets and should be capable of supporting SATA 2 3Gb/s. Your Samsung 830 is backwards compatible but there will be a performance drop down to SATA 2 3Gb/s levels.

You have 2 SATA choices:

4 motherboard connectors for SATA 2 3Gb/s through Intel ICH8
2 motherboard connectors for SATA 2 3Gb/s through JMicron

Switch to Intel ICH8. JMicron wasn't very good. That should bring you up to SATA 2 3Gb/s levels. Check the motherboard manual to find out which SATA connectors on the motherboard are for Intel ICH8. They may be colored coded.

In addition you should check to see if there might be a System BIOS update, chipset update and newer drivers.

When you went into the System BIOS did you actually see an AHCI mode setting? Some of the older socket 775 motherboards did not support AHCI. If that is the case, then it is time to start thinking about a new motherboard.

 

[CakeyBakey]

Thanks very much for the detailed reply; yeah I did see AHCI, and I turned it on, but it was only for the JMicron controller. I didn't see any settings at all for the Intel or anything else that related to SATA settings.

I was thinking about a new build anyway, but I wanted to wait a year or so as performance is still great for me and being a PC gamer I sort of wanted the new consoles to come out so I could judge what to build based on their specs (assuming most games have console led development), but I might actually build sooner.

Thanks.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

well, the current notes is that the PS4 will use an AMD Llano or Trinity system

 

[JohnnyLucky]

Bad news. ABIT shut down their web site last February. I forgot they went out of business.

Here is a link to the Abit AB9/AB9 Pro owners manual courtesy of Tiger Direct:

http://static.tigerdirect.com/pdf/Abit_ab9_series_Manual.pdf

You can use google to find BIOS, chipset, and driver updates.

 

[CakeyBakey]

Yeah I saw that about the Abit website, well thanks for the responses guys, you've been very helpful.
I might look at a new build now then

 

[CakeyBakey]

Best answer selected by CakeyBakey.