Slower Crystal Disk scores in AHCI

PracticalShutIn

Honorable
Jul 25, 2012
3
0
10,510
I have just swapped a 7200 RPM HDD with a Hybrid SSD (Momentus XT 500).

My BIOS has 3 options for Sata mode: SATA, RAID, AHCI

It has been in SATA mode, and my crystal disk mark speeds (at idle) improved slightly when swapping in the new drive.


So then I changed the mode to AHCI and made the changes in Windows to also use AHCI. After 3 reboots and everything seems happy, I tested it again at idle.

Some of the new tests are significantly lower than they were in SATA mode for the same drive.
SSHD with SATA mode:
90/89
30/35
.362/588
.509/.585

SSHD with AHCI mode:
77/65
29/31
.359/.622
.685/.610

Is something wrong here?

I didn't install any drivers because on both the Seagate and Asus (P5N7A-VM mobo) websites, there were no downloads for drivers or software for AHCI.

Is there something I should do or just switch back to SATA mode?

Other info:
I have 2 SATA HDDs in the computer used for storage, the hybrid drive is my new Windows Drive.
I would like more performance in gaming, probably for load times.
Win 7 x64

Thanks for any help
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator
You set your SATA mode in your BIOS. There are 3 modes (IDE, AHCI, and RAID) on nearly all modern systems.

There are no Seagate drivers required. All you need are the chipset drivers you previously installed with Windows.

So, in your BIOS, what SATA mode are you using?
 

COLGeek

Cybernaut
Moderator

+1. This is very true. BTW, your system should definitely be running in AHCI mode per my previous questions.
 

PracticalShutIn

Honorable
Jul 25, 2012
3
0
10,510
Yeah it's an old Windows installation cloned onto the new drive.

Call my BIOS crazy, but under SATA Mode the 3 options are exactly: SATA, RAID, AHCI. I assume the first is really IDE.

I did notice loading the game's map was faster (27 down to 20 seconds) in the AHCI mode... but then again that could be because it was cached after the first time I tried it in SATA.

I don't know if I should switch back to IDE mode because of those lower numbers...