GA MA790XT-USB3

[clandill]

Hi, I posted this to the Gigabyte Technical Suport zone a couple of days ago. I am disappointed to see on the status that it has not even been opened yet by Gigabyte - fantastic Mobo, crappy tech support ! So I am hoping that I might be able to get some help by posting on this forum

I have just completed my first self build. Here's the config
AMD Penom II 955 3.2GHz
MA790XT - USB3 rev 1.0
4GB OCZ DDR3
WD 1TB SATA II drive
ATI Radeon HD5770
LG DVD-RAM SATA II

It's fanatstic, booted first time and goes like a train but I have one niggling problem. Note that I have no floppy drive and the XP requires that the SATA II driver supplied by Gigabyte is installed from a floppy - bit of a snag! So I configured the drives as Native IDE which works fine. I have now upgraded to Win 7 and had hoped that it would have a native driver. Then I would just have to reset the drives in the BIOS to AHCI and all would be well, I thought naively. However that doesn't work so now I am stuck. I dont want to have to buy a floppy just to install one driver and never use it again. So I would be really grateful if someone can give me any ideas on how to convert the drives to SATA II without the floppy.

Thanks in advance
Paul

[absic]

Hi Paul,

If I have understood correctly, you now have Windows 7 (is it 32 or64 bit) installed, the HDD is in Native IDE Mode and you now wish to change your settings to AHCI mode.

Before going further, could you just confirm this is the case.

Cheers

[clandill]

Hi Absic, and thanks for taking the time to reply to my query. Yes, you are correct. I now have Windows 7 installed (its the upgrade pack and requires Windows XP be installed first so I can't do a completely clean install). It is 32 bit (I wasn't sure that I would get much performance advantage with 64bit given that I only have 4Gb of memory). The Western Digital HDD and the LG DVD are set to Native IDE mode in the BIOS and now I would like to switch to AHCI so that I can get SATA II transfer rates. Thats the slowest part of the system at the moment and I would like to get it up to its best speed. Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Regards
Paul

[absic]

Hi Paul,

as you have discovered, trying to enable AHCI after installing Windows 7 is a bit of a problem.  I have found this off-site link to be useful: http://www.ithinkdiff.com/how-to-enable-ahci-in-windows-7-rc-after-installation/

But, I don't think you will gain quite as much as you hope by enabling AHCI and I'm not convinced that it is worth the effort. (Windows 7 experience index seems to show SATA II HDD's @ 5.9 no matter what I have tried).

Good luck and let us know how you get on. 

[clandill]

Just a quick udate having read the forums more thoroughly ! I only want to go to AHCI because I presume it is higher performance than Native IDE. If it isn't then I will stay with Native IDE as I don't need ot swappable disks. I decided not to go for Raid because all the performance data I have seen for Raid 0 indicates, that counter to what you would expect, the performance improvement is minimal in most circumstances.

Previous posts in the forum indicate that you can install the driver from a USB drive (the forum actually said USB floppy) but this would mean a reinstall of XP, installation of the driver for SATA from a USB drive (which I dont have) and a subsequent reinstall of Windows 7 which all seems like a bit of a palaver!

Paul

[absic]

Hi Paul,

I have to agree, the performance gains are minimal and the aggravation of enabling AHCI or re-installing the OS isn't worth it.
If your system is stable and running OK, I would leave it alone.

[clandill]

Absic,
Thanks for your advice. I think, given what you say i will stick with the Native IDE if I am not going to gain much in performance terms. I have to say that it is astonishing that Gigabyte are persisting with such a Heath Robinson solution and completely unacceptable that Windows 7 doesn't natively support these drivers on the installation CD - it's not like Gigabyte Mobos are wildly unusual ! But then thats fairly typical of what we have all come to expect from Micros**t.

On the other hand, I would like to thank you again for taking the trouble to help. Building this machine has been a great experience and I have been amazed how many people have been prepared to donate their time and knowledge to helping a newbie. It's pretty life affirming to discover such a generous community of people.

Best regards
Paul

[absic]

No problems Paul,
by the way, you can load the pre-install drivers from a USB pen-drive rather than a floppy and you have been able to do so since Vista. However, I have to totally agree with you regarding Micros**t !!

Take care and Happy Computing.

[clandill]

Absic (aka Obi Wan)
I bow before your superior genius, oh great guru of the northbridge  

I checked out the link you found. It just requires one simple change to a registry value using REGEDIT, then shutdown and reset the BIOS to AHCI and the machine came up perfectly. It is now running perfectly with the drives set to AHCI. Absolutely brilliant ! No reinstalls of OS or anything like that.

Now given the amount of traffic in the forum on this subject wouldn't it be nice if Gigabyte documented the fix officially as it obviously causes problems for loads of people

Again, thanks, and I hope in the future I will be able to help another newbie out of the maze, as you have helped me !

Paul

[absic]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your comments, I'm all embarrassed now. 

I'm sure, once the FAQ section is up and running properly this topic will be addressed so others don't have to struggle so much.

ATB

absic115