Sata controller driver

[Jeff Huff]

Hi all,
I have an Alienate with an x58 chipset for which I recently added an SSD as my OS drive and reinstalled windows.
After getting my system up and going I went into the windows performance index and saw that for storage I went from a 5.4 to 7.6 which was more or less the purpose of my upgrade.
Sometime after that I noticed in the device manager that I didn't have a driver installed for my sata controller. I tracked down the most recent version of the driver and installed it. Eventually I went back into the performance index for windows and reran the assessment. To my surprise, my storage number dropped back to the original number of 5.4.
I am absolutely sure that I have the correct driver and my bios is set to AHCI. I am very confident that my computer is set up as appropriate and that all the drivers are at the correct level.

Has anyone experienced anything similar?
what are the drawbacks of removing the driver and going back to the situation where I have no driver and good performance within the Windows Performance Index?

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do next?

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is an Alienate? Is that a computer that makes you lose all your friends because it sucks or has bad jokes? Just kidding. Did you mean Alienware? If so, what is the model number of your Alienware rig? What are the rest of your system specs?

Post detailed system specificatons:
http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2177560/post-detailed-computer-specs.html

 

[Jeff Huff]

Alienware Aurora with X58 chipset & i7-920 processor. What spec information are you specifically interested in?

 

[Darkbreeze]

I just wanted to check and see if there was maybe an updated storage controller or chipset drivers for your device that were maybe not evident. You might also want to go to the OEM site for your SSD and see if there is a firmware update. A lot of the SSD's released in the last two years have had controller issues that were eliminated or at least improved through firmware updates.

 

[Jeff Huff]

I went to the OEM of the controller when I installed the driver.

Silicon Image
Driver date of 6-24-2009
Driver version 1.0.15.6

Dell/Alienware has the same driver so I guess they didn't release a tweaked version.

I bought my computer in February of 2010 so the controller is definitely a bit old and not within the 2 year period you mentioned.

 

[Jeff Huff]

One thought that comes to mind is my BIOS revision. I am running A04 and now it is up to A11 or something close to that. I have always been a bit hesitant to upgrade BIOS because of the real chance of bricking the MOBO. I am thinking that might be the bottle neck though...

thoughts/comments?